Intercambio cultural

 
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.

Dispatches from an Inspiring Trip to Superar Budapest

05-06-2026

If I could offer a travel tip to anyone lucky enough to visit another city or country, it would be this: reach out to a local El Sistema-inspired program, or a similar music for social change program, and visit it! Over the past two decades, I’ve had the privilege of visiting such programs across five continents, learning from colleagues who share a common mission while working in vastly different contexts.

During my spring break this year, a trip to the beautiful country of Hungary led me to connect with the wonderful team at Superar Budapest. What began as a simple visit quickly turned into something much more.

Hosting Fire Up! in Athens: A Week of Collective Practice and Exchange

05-06-2026

When the Academy for Impact through Music (AIM) suggested bringing the Fire Up! residency to Athens, we felt both excitement and a strong sense of responsibility. Our space is deeply meaningful to us; El Sistema Greece is a vibrant community grounded in trust, creativity, and daily collaboration, and inviting colleagues from across Europe into that community felt acutely personal. The residency itself was intense and demanding, with constant transitions between workshops, rehearsals, peer exchanges, and shared experiences. It also afforded us a rare opportunity: a chance to be students in our own teaching spaces, and to see those spaces through the eyes of our peers.

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.

NEOJIBA on Tour

05-06-2026

The youth orchestra of the Brazilian program NEOJIBA has just returned from its 10th international tour, having visited Frankfurt, Germany, and four cities in China.

The NBYO Had Never Sent a Student to the Royal College of Music. Now They’re Sending Two.

04-01-2026

In its 60 years of existence, the New Brunswick Youth Orchestra (NBYO)—Canada’s first provincial orchestra—has celebrated many a milestone. This year, there’s a new kind of success to celebrate: two of its graduating seniors have been accepted into London’s Royal College of Music

The Royal College has never accepted an NBYO player before, let alone two. This is relatively rare for programs that value social-emotional outcomes as much or more than musical ones. But for the students involved, those social-emotional outcomes played a critical role in their matriculation, clarifying the value of a movement that builds arts-and-community pipelines traced back to a player’s earliest years.

From Spark to Flame: A Glance at Fire Up! 2025

04-01-2026

Imagine choosing—on purpose—to stop. To give yourself a moment of attention and ask, without judgment, a simple question: “Why do I do this work?” It’s a small exercise of meditation and self-awareness that we rarely find time for in our noisy daily routine. And yet, in that brief pause, something can appear: a spark that feeds the question, gives it space, and makes it louder.

For me, Fire Up! 2025 in Athens—a four-day teaching artist residency led by the Academy for Impact through Music (AIM)—was that spark. 

Violin Included: Reflections on Leadership, Giving, and Growing Up in This Field

03-04-2026

Last week, I found myself in Union City, New Jersey, USA, sitting in a sea of students, violin in hand, playing “Swan Lake” alongside kids, teachers, and my longtime colleague Melina Garcia. I hadn’t come to visit Melina and her program, the United Children’s Music Project simply for the joy of playing with young people; I was there to deliver a donation. I had just closed a similar program in Pisco, Peru—Notes for Change, Inc.—that I founded 15 years ago, and my donation for UCMP consisted of the final funds from that program. I had expected this to be a bittersweet moment; instead, it felt like a full-circle one. But more about that later.

U.S.-Venezuela Relations Impact Music Exchange Programs

03-04-2026

Musical exchange programs between the U.S. and Venezuela have recently hit an impasse with new travel restrictions between the two countries.

Africa-Europe Cultural Exchange Grants

11-05-2025

The Goethe Institut, in partnership with Expertise France and Institut Français, invites proposals for two different grants supporting artistic and cultural exchange projects between African and European artists.

Chiquinha Gonzaga Orchestra: Building a Culture of Peace Through Music

11-05-2025

The Brazilian Institute of Music and Education (IBME – Instituto Brasileiro de Música e Educação) was launched in 2011 with just 15 students. Today, it serves more than 4,000 young people and continues to grow. Among its many talented ensembles, one stands out: the Orquestra Sinfônica Juvenil Chiquinha Gonzaga, an all-female youth orchestra that celebrates the intersection of Brazilian classical and popular music.

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