Spanish Translation

Watch a moving 4-minute tribute to Jose Antonio Abreu by Mexican conductor Alondra de la Parra, who was invited many times by Maestro Abreu to guest-conduct the Simon Bolívar Orchestra of Venezuela.

Xiquitsi is celebrating its fifth anniversary, and is using the marker to share its work with a wider audience and public, in its home of Mozambique and in other countries.  They have had a five concert series in this celebratory year—an ambitious expansion of their previous concert offerings.  This anniversary year has been one of new accomplishments.  

Students from Ghetto Classics in Nairobi have created a new music video that you can view below. For this video, students partnered with SAWA, an organization that partners with local Kenyan women to make beaded decorations for technology like headphones (which can be seen in the film). 

The 12th annual Festival of Books and Culture  was recently held in Medellín, Colombia.

El Sistema is excited to announce the appointment of Maestro David Ascanio as the new Director of the Simón Bolívar Conservatory of Music.

Each Saturday, nearly one hundred young people from all corners of the Philippines come together for a day of music-making with the Orchestra for Filipino Youth (OFY) at the Rockwell Business Center in Metro Manila. Even though some students have to catch early morning boats in order to get there—as early as 5 o’clock sometimes—the musicians are prepared and attentive come the downbeat at 10.

“For the National Batuta Foundation in Colombia, the international exchange of its participants in different music training programs around the world represents a unique opportunity to provide new knowledge, break mental boundaries, and generate hope for a better future within the brightest young musicians of Batuta.  It is, therefore, a mechanism that promotes meaningful social mobility and generates fully cultural citizens,” commented Para María Claudia Parias Durán, Executive President of the National Batuta Foundation.

Read an inspiring interview with Joseph Jones.  He’s a multi-instrumental musician, composer, conductor, and the founder of the Orchestra Amadeus, whose mission is to promote social justice through classical music.

How do you design, fund, and lead a great community arts project?  If you live in New Zealand, or want to learn from its example, you now have good answers.

The Colombian project “Music at the Borders” was created to improve the quality of life of the inhabitants of the border areas of the country.  The project is run by the country’s national Sistema program, the National Batuta Foundation, and financed by the Colombian Chancellery within the framework of Colombia’s Plan Fronteras para la Prosperidad (Border Plan for Prosperity).