the world ensemble

The first Social Impact of Music Making Research Seminar will be held 5-9 November in Helsinki, Finland at the Sibelius Academy Training Center.

Ghetto Classics Tree Planting: Taking advantage of the April rains in Nairobi, the Ghetto Classics students in Korogocho made the decision to improve their surroundings by planting trees.

The World Youth Choir (WYC) is an educational and social experience aimed at talented young singers between the ages of 17 and 26, from all over the world. Each year the WYC hosts summer and winter sessions, organised in different countries, taking young musicians on tour under the direction of renowned conductors.

Sistema New Zealand had its National Hui (gathering) on 30 June in Hamilton, central North Island of New Zealand. This biennial gathering included Sistema Whangarei, Sistema Aotearoa, Arohanui Strings and the hosts were Sistema Waikato. The New Zealand Rōpū (consortium) operates by a memorandum of understanding rather than by a centralised administration, and preparation for the event included Skype meetings to create the type of event and then to agree on shared repertoire.

This July, students from Ghetto Classics in Kenya will be performing at the Brave Festival in Poland, conducted by Radzimir Dębski (JIMEK), the world-famous Polish conductor. 

We just passed the darkest part of the Sistema world year in the Southern Hemisphere and the lightest part of the year in the North—do you know what the BUSIEST place in the Sistema world is all year long?  It’s Sistema Global, especially their Facebook page.

I was fifteen years old. It was the summer of 2012. My dad and I were making the sixteen hour drive up to Interlochen Arts Camp, and I was surfing the web on my iPhone. I began browsing TED talks, when one caught my eye: “The El Sistema music revolution”. For the next seventeen minutes, I sat in awe listening to José Antonio Abreu discuss his founding of a program that changed lives through music. As Maestro Abreu explained the program of social rescue, its structure, and the cultural impact that it has on the people of Venezuela, I grew more and more captivated by the model.

Patricia Abdelnour, the Director of  Fundación Acción Social por la Música (Social Action for Music) in Madrid, Spain, recently gave a strong TED talk at TEDxLuxembourg City.

On May 15, 2018, the Colombian national Sistema program Batuta brought together young musicians from all over the country to join in a huge concert paying tribute to Maestro Jose Antonio Abreu, who died on March 24th.

If “student voice” could be captured in a fairy tale on film, here is one way it might look.

Sistema programs in many countries are exploring ways to increase “student voice” in order to intensify students’ motivation and social development.  A program in Bosnia has taken a unusual approach.