El Sistema Sweden

I went last week to Side By Side By El Sistema Swe- den, an intensive international music camp spon- sored by the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra in partnership with the city and El Sistema Sweden. Let’s start with the statistics.

In 2016, Ron Davis Alvarez took a bus from Gothenburg, Sweden to a home for young refugees in the Swedish countryside.  A former nucleo director in Venezuela’s El Sistema who had just been appointed Artistic Director of El Sistema Sweden, Ron wanted to build an orchestra where he saw that the need was greatest.  He played his violin for the young refugees and presented his idea about an orchestra.  He wanted to do something for these young people without relatives in a foreign country.  He also wanted to show the world how El Sistema works.

A few weeks ago, several dozen students from the Trenton, NJ Sistema program Trenton Music Makers began their New Year by visiting the campus of Princeton University, a 20-minute drive but a world away from their daily lives. They were jittery with excitement as they piled into a classroom in the university’s Woolworth Music Building, took out their instruments and began to tune. It wasn’t so much Princeton that gave them the jitters; it was the fact that they were about to play for one of the greatest maestros in the world.