Editorials

 
The Ensemble seeks to connect and inform all people who are committed to ensemble music education for youth empowerment and social change.
 
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EDITORIAL
Playing in the Same Key: Aligning Purpose and Practice for Students

Fiona Cunningham, Director, Academy for Impact through Music

03-04-2026

“What’s the biggest thing keeping you up at night, as a leader or as a teaching artist?”

When Nikoletta Polydorou, founder of Sistema Cyprus, recently posed this question to music-for-social-action leaders and teaching artists across different countries and contexts, one concern surfaced repeatedly: when a program’s purpose isn’t clear, and collectively owned, the learning is less focused and effective.

EDITORIAL
Musical Benchmarks Build Equity

Adam Karelin-Anderson, Executive and Artistic Director, Riverside Arts Academy

02-04-2026

Over the past decade, our field has worked tirelessly to ensure that music education is holistic, addresses socio-emotional learning, and is culturally relevant to our students. These are incredibly important objectives that will help us ensure that well-adjusted, diverse people shape the future of our society and music industry.

But to diversify that industry, they have to be able to enter it.

EDITORIAL
Young People Are Speaking To Us. Are We Close Enough to Hear Them?

Dalouge Smith, Founder and Executive Director, The Creating Abundance Collaborative; Co-founder and CEO, The Lewis Prize, 2018–2024

12-03-2025

I’d been missing the presence and perspective of young people in these gatherings dedicated to arts education, young people’s wellbeing, and community health through the arts. When young people were present, it was most often as performers, and occasionally as panelists alongside adults.

Throughout these events, I had been wondering, “How is it that we continue to position young people as objects of conversation, and not the subject?”

EDITORIAL
The Power of Youth Voice

Ayde Diaz, El Sistema USA 2025 Youth Ambassador; YOLA Torres Student

11-05-2025

An instructor once told me, “When we listen to our students, we remember why we’re here. Their perspective makes us better.” That was the moment I realized our learning experiences aren’t a one-way street. In programs that truly value our voices, the impact extends far beyond the classroom. It reaches families, neighborhoods, and entire communities.

EDITORIAL
Stronger Together: An Enduring Leitmotif

Christine Rhomberg, Director of Music for Social Change at the Hilti Foundation, 2013-2025

10-01-2025

More than 12 years ago, during my first visit to the then-fledgling Sinfonía por el Perú program, I met a boy—let’s call him Juan—who stood out from the crowd of children. Not only because his double bass was more than twice his size. It was also his charisma, the joyful enthusiasm with which he played his giant instrument, and, even then, his social skills and his attentive devotion to his fellow musicians at his núcleo in the La Victoria district of Lima, Peru.

EDITORIAL

A Space to Be: What One Classroom Taught Me about Art, Listening, and Inclusion

Giovanni Acquilino, 2025 Cohort Member, Global Leaders Institute

09-03-2025

This was a Mus-e session at a public primary school in Genova, Italy, in a room filled with light, nervous energy and about 20 children in motion. Some moved eagerly. Some hung back. Some followed Olivia Giovannini, the teaching artist leading the session. Others wandered in their own rhythm. Throughout it all, something subtle was happening: no one was being excluded. 

EDITORIAL
Rehearsing Community for a Better Tomorrow

Gabrielle Molina, Executive Director, Project Music; Lead Program Consultant, El Sistema USA

07-09-2025

As Executive Director Liz Moulthrop remarked during El Sistema USA’s East Coast Regional Gathering, “Community is our power.” Yet too often programs operate in isolation, brilliant islands of musical striving that rarely connect with the broader archipelago of creative youth development work happening across the world. This siloing, while understandable given resource constraints and logistical challenges, represents a missed opportunity to address our urgent need for unity.

In fact, we must double down on gathering. The practice of community.

EDITORIAL
Navigating Constraint with Dignity: Lessons from Kinshasa’s “Positive Fatalism”

Lukas Pairon, Professor and Founder of Chair Jonet, University of Ghent, Belgium; Founder of the scholarly network SIMM; Founder of the Music Fund philanthropy; Co-founder of the contemporary music ensemble Ictus.

06-04-2025

What can we learn from people who live in one of the most constrained urban environments in the world—and still find ways to make life possible?

EDITORIAL
Forty Years of Radical Inclusion: What We Can Learn from Lavender Light

Eric Williamson, Artistic Director, Lavender Light Choir; Adjunct Professor, New York University Steinhart School; General Music Teacher, P.S. 32 in Brooklyn, NY, USA

05-07-2025

When you hear the phrase “social change through music,” what comes to mind? For many in our field, it means ensembles of student musicians learning to play and sing together.

Sometimes, though, it can mean people of all ages coming together and forging new communities of belonging through music. That’s the nature of my organization: Lavender Light, in New York City.

EDITORIAL
Teaching Artistry: West Meets East in Potential

Eric Booth, Co-founder, The Ensemble; Co-founder, ITAC; Senior Faculty, Academy for Impact through Music

04-02-2025

Teaching artistry is the sleeping giant of social change. 

And that giant is waking up. At least that’s what I claim, in my relentless advocacy for the global field. 

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