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Harmonizing Across Many Languages

Ken MacLeod, President of New Brunswick Youth Orchestra & Founder of Sistema NB

02-04-2020

At Sistema New Brunswick (NB) on Canada’s east coast, we’ve recently faced a unique challenge with broad implications: How best to integrate students of disparate languages into one program? What began in 2009 with one centre and 50 children has grown to over 1,200 children daily, in ten locations, all learning and playing orchestral music. Until September 2019, however, all of these students worked in their own districts, using their own languages.

New Catalogue of Latin American Cello Music

01-23-2020

The new Sphinx Catalog of Latin American Works powerfully dispels the idea that “classical music” is a uniquely European creation. The library, released by the Sphinx Organization, is the most extensive of its kind, with more than 2,200 entries of cello music from Latin American composers ranging from 1783 to the present.

Athens to Texas: “We’re With You”

Tricia Tunstall, Co-Founder and Executive Editor, The World Ensemble

01-08-2020

Over the past few months, some El Sistema activists in the United States have been mobilizing resources to launch an El Sistema program this month for immigrant children in Tornillo, Texas, who are living in the acute stress of the border crisis. Raising money for this has been a challenge; a music industry charity, the NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) Foundation, recently came through with sufficient support, with help from the Leonard Bernstein Foundation, but many funders with deep pockets don’t understand how ensemble music learning can alleviate a humanitarian crisis.

Share Your Time & Talent: Sistema Connect

Graciela Briceno, Founder and current board member, Josiah Quincy Orchestra Program
Former Managing Editor, The World Ensemble

01-08-2020

Looking for a meaningful New Year’s Resolution that will benefit children and your own musical journey? Sign up to become a Sistema Connect Volunteer and help an emerging El Sistema program, whether through travel or from the comfort of your home. Sistema Connect is a new initiative founded in the U.S.; its mission is to connect people who want to share their skills with programs who need those skills.

Editorial: January 2020

Karen Zorn, President, Longy School of Music of Bard College, Cambridge, MA

01-07-2020

At the start of every New Year, I look for inspiration, and this week I found it. “It (Still) Takes a Village,” Krystle Ford’s article also in this issue, reports on the work of the Indianapolis Symphony’s Metropolitan Youth Orchestra, which seeks to engage multiple generations of family members in its El Sistema work.

It (Still) Takes a Village

Krystle Ford, Metropolitan Youth Orchestra, Indianapolis, IN

01-07-2020

What does it mean to teach with a village mentality? This is what we do every day at the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra (MYO). Families learning alongside one another is at the core of our program.

Editorial: December 2019

Christine Taylor Conda, Director of Reach*Teach*Play Ravinia; Chair, Board of Directors of El Sistema USA

12-03-2019

Right on time, after ten years of start-up and growth, Sistema programs in the U.S. are entering a new phase, in which we are ready to embark on an exploration of the “Q” word: quality—an essential building block of excellence.

Sistema as School: WHIN’s Ways of Being

Charles Ortiz, Executive Director, WHIN Music Community Charter School

12-03-2019

As the world has seen El Sistema stretch far beyond the barrios of Venezuela, musicians, educators and citizen artists around the globe have been experimenting with how to use the principles and ideologies of Maestro Abreu in new and exciting ways. In northern Manhattan, that experiment takes the form of the WHIN (Washington Heights & Inwood) Music Community Charter School, an inclusive full-day charter founded on the principles of El Sistema.

Teaching Habits of Mind

Lorrie Murray, Director, Bay Area Music Project

12-03-2019

Nearly a decade ago, I helped transform a public elementary school in Alameda, CA into an arts-integrated elementary school, Maya Lin School. Through this, I learned about the Studio Habits of Mind (SHoM), a framework for learning. Developed by a team of researchers and educators at Harvard’s Project Zero, the eight SHoM are: develop craft, engage and persist, envision, express, observe, reflect, stretch and explore, and understand arts worlds.

BLUME Haiti: Building Leaders Using Music Education in Haiti

Rachael Cohen, BLUME Haiti board member, Global Leader 2020 Cohort 

12-02-2019

BLUME Haiti uses the extraordinary impact of music as a tool to empower musicians throughout Haiti. Responding to urgent needs after the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti in 2010, co-founder Janet Anthony, who has taught in the country since 1996, saw the opportunity for an organization that could facilitate getting instruments and supplies to Haiti to help with rebuilding efforts. Thus, with the help of her colleagues and students, BLUME Haiti was born.

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