el conjunto

 
El Ensemble busca conectar e informar a todas las personas que están comprometidas con la educación musical de conjunto para el empoderamiento de los jóvenes y el cambio social.

EDITORIAL
A Question We Could Not Answer

09-02-2026

One of our longest-standing members asked a question at a meeting this year that I still cannot answer well. He had rehearsed four or five pieces for our concert last December. On the afternoon itself, he participated in playing only one of them. He wanted to know how that had come about. He put his question to everyone in the room.

GUEST PERSPECTIVE
Why Willing Volunteers Still Don’t Show Up: How youth music programs can turn goodwill into support

09-02-2026

Last month, my daughter’s choir director needed parents to take tickets to the year-end concert. I had been a choir singer and director myself, so I know the invisible work it takes to put students on a stage. When the request came, I wanted to be the kind of parent who showed up.

Then, my week got overwhelming. By the time the concert arrived, I was no longer deciding between helping and not helping. I was deciding which responsibility would boil over first if I took my attention off it.

EDITORIAL
Snapshots of the Work Tell the Story of Our Impact

07-08-2026

Every other week this season, I wrote updates to my Los Angeles Philharmonic colleagues—a small, internal note meant to keep our broader institution abreast of what the Learning Department was up to. On the surface, it could be viewed as mundane: a calendar snapshot, a few highlights, the ever-important statistics everyone needs. But as I scrolled back through nine months of messages, I realized the depth they carry. These were not only stories about music lessons, concerts, and special events. They were testaments to the impact of connection built across programs, networks, and industries.

GUEST PERSPECTIVE
When Art and Music Create a Shared Listening Space

07-08-2026

What does visual art have to do with listening?

It’s an unusual question—but one that’s well worth exploring, as I discovered recently when I attended Sguardi Paralleli (Parallel Glances) – Art Therapy and Autism: Art as Language, an exhibition held in Alassio, Italy and curated by art therapist Carla Paura.

EDITORIAL
Attending to the Skills of Attention

06-03-2026

“Spotlight attention vs. lantern attention.” I first encountered this distinction in the work of the U.S. psychologist Allison Gopnick.

Spotlight attention means bringing full focus to a specific task. We develop this capacity over time, and we must!—it’s hard to succeed in life without the ability to focus well. Schooling is dedicated to developing this capacity: all those hours sitting at a desk and “paying attention” to information that rarely feels relevant; all those tests to measure spotlight skills.

EDITORIAL
Practicing Collaboration

05-06-2026

In arts education programs, we tend to work with our heads down. Doing our work every day is enough: it takes more time than we have to create our lesson plans, to build healthy organizational infrastructure that is adaptive and responsive, or even to collaborate with the colleagues within our own organizations. As artists and arts leaders, we forget to look up and out. But as various crises combine forces to pull us away from each other, our need for collective work is not something we can afford to have on a backburner. It needs to be a central focus. We need to build strong local networks and to diversify our collaborators. 

We need to connect—with fellow arts organizations, and with organizations we might never consider in our daily work.

EDITORIAL
The Stories We’re Speaking Into

04-01-2026

Across the field of music for social impact, a lot of energy goes toward communication: Tell your story. Build your evidence base. Find the right combination of data and narrative, and you’ll finally get the support or decisions you’re seeking.

I work across sectors on exactly these goals: helping organizations design research studies that reflect their unique approaches and articulate their impact in ways that actually land. So I get it: refining communication is valuable work.

But it’s not the full picture. And our failure to see that full picture keeps us from igniting the changes we value. 

EDITORIAL
Playing in the Same Key: Aligning Purpose and Practice for Students

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

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.

GUEST PERSPECTIVE
A Foot in Both Worlds: Mentorship and Maturation at Sistema Ravinia

02-04-2026

As Sistema Ravinia prepared for in-person learning after the pandemic lockdowns, I attended a Zoom meeting with other incoming high school freshmen, most of whom were good friends. A manager asked us, “This is the first time we’ve had high school students in our program. What would you guys like to see happen?”

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