Grace Notes: A Collection of Editorials by Tricia Tunstall for The Ensemble by longymusic

Grace Notes a collection of editorials by Tricia Tunstall for The Ensemble Introduction by Eric Booth with a foreword by Karen Zorn LONGY SCHOOL OF MUSIC OF BARD COLLEGE

Grace Notes a collection of editorials by Tricia Tunstall for The Ensemble

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2019 cover illustration: Nate Duval www.nateduval.com

“Music is a conspiracy to commit beauty.” —José Antonio Abreu z This collection is dedicated to every program leader, every teaching artist, every teacher’s aide, and parent volunteer—all those enrolled in the beautiful conspiracy to expand what is possible for all children, in music and in life.

Foreword

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foreword Karen Zorn

President of Longy School of Music of Bard College

When you’re in a field that’s as sprawling and diverse as El Sistema, it’s a little hard to know what it actually looks like. Over the past nine years, Tricia Tunstall has been our mirror. Or, more accurately, she is our portraitist, painting an ever-evolving picture of this wonderfully expanding initiative. As the editor of the monthly Ensemble newsletter and as a dedicated chronicler of El Sistema, Tricia—along with her partner, Eric Booth—has possibly seen more El Sistema programs worldwide than anyone else on earth. She’s sketched us up close, observing string ensemble rehearsals in neighborhood núcleos, attending impromptu concerts packed with families and friends and participating in convenings large and small. She’s drawn us from 30,000 feet, giving us a clearer picture of who we are as a whole. Most importantly, she’s fashioned an image of what an older, wiser El Sistema might look like. And in this collection of brief, insightful essays, she’s given us a trail of breadcrumbs we can follow to get there. vii

Each of the editorials collected here is a brushstroke; one by one, they paint a picture of a cause, the aspirations that drive it, the challenges that hinder it. She has seen the light and goodness within us and depicted our frailty and shortcomings as well. It’s an amazing gift when someone cares enough to paint a picture that is so honest, detailed, and lovingly crafted. Thank you, Tricia, for helping us see ourselves more clearly, and for constantly nudging toward the model we want to become. •

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Introduction facets of We

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Facets of We Eric Booth

Founding Publisher of The Ensemble

About one of his books, Mark Twain once quipped, “If I’d had more time, I would have made it shorter.” Tricia Tunstall is at least as busy as everyone else in the Sistemainspired world, but every month for nine years, she has found the time to take a complex set of thoughts about our work and polish them into a short 350-word gem of an editorial in The Ensemble. This collection, generously prepared and distributed by Longy School of Music of Bard College to mark the transition of The Ensemble and The World Ensemble to their care, shares the nineyear journey of Tricia’s insights, discoveries, and aspirations for the Sistema-inspired field. As publisher, I was able to watch Tricia work through that process almost a hundred times. For the first three weeks of each month, she would consider possible messages, thinking about her recent Sistema experiences, tapping her knowledge as an extraordinary music educator, listening to colleagues, and distilling

her big ideas into bite-sized nuggets; her eventual choice usually organized itself around an actual incident and specific details to ground it. And then over the course of a few mornings, before her piano teaching afternoons began, Tricia would draft and tweak the words. She especially loves the revision process—finding just the right phrase, making the sentence flow more musically, perfecting the closure. The unforgiving brevity of the newsletter template’s column length forced out everything that wasn’t absolutely necessary. She enjoyed that struggle to make things fit. •

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Contents

Foreword

Introduction

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2011

2012

2013

2014

2015 107 2016

127

2017

153

2018 177 2019 203

2011

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Creating a Sistema Movement in the U.S. and Canada November 2011 In May 2010, at the end of the first national U.S. symposium on El Sistema, at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, our Venezuelan colleague Rodrigo Guerrero had some parting words of wisdom for attendees. “My friends,” said Rodrigo, “before you leave, look around you. Look to your right. Look to your left. Because these are the people who are going to help you. They are your strongest allies.” “Networking is incredibly important,” he told us. “You cannot work alone.” Almost two years have passed since then—two years that have seen the emergence of more U.S. and Canadian “núcleos” than any of us, even at that moment of euphoria, would have thought possible. And it’s truer than ever that “you cannot work alone.” The people who can help your program toward true long-term success are, in fact, the people who are doing the same work you’re doing, inspired by the same ideals.

Only by weaving a robust fabric of connection between our many núcleos can we ensure that they all thrive. It’s our hope that The Ensemble can contribute to that fabric of connection…and an El Sistema in the U.S. and Canada that is not just a profusion of núcleos, but a movement. •

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Your Students, Your Mission Statement December 2011 Do your students know your mission statement? It’s a question I wouldn’t have thought to ask until last week, when I heard a student at Community Theater Works in Providence, RI, articulate confidently and unprompted his commitment to aligning his personal actions with his program’s mission. He spoke at the conference “Music and Civil Society,” co-sponsored by CMW, a remarkable, El Sistema-resonant organization structured around the permanent residency of a string quartet in an urban neighborhood of Providence. The CMW students, along with students from the visiting El Sistema-based Philadelphia program “Play On Philly,” showed us, through their words and music, some of the connections between music and civil society with more eloquence than we had achieved in our academic talks the day before. “Our mission,” the CMW student told us, “is to create a cohesive urban community through music

education and performance that transforms lives.” His ease with these ideas reminded me of the fluency with which Venezuelan children speak about their orchestras as crucibles for citizenship as well as art. In a Venezuelan núcleo, every single person—students, teachers, even janitors—knows exactly what the mission is, and orients their choices and behaviors on a daily basis. Are we in the U.S. and Canada being too timid about using our mission statements as a powerful force for alignment and energy? If all students, even the youngest, understand the commitment to bringing social change into musical learning, they can absorb and embody that commitment in everything they do. Our students feel our mission, even without words. To give them words for it is to empower them even further to be musical agents of change in their own lives and their communities. •

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2012

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“Just One America” January 2012 “It’s very important to have our complete continent together. No ‘South,’ no ‘North,’ no ‘Central’—just one America.” So said Gustavo Dudamel to the audience at his Hollywood Bowl inaugural concert. The ideal of a multi-cultural, pan-American identity is very important to Dudamel—and to Maestro Abreu, who speaks of El Sistema as the first major innovation North and South America can share as true equals. A wonderful confluence of inter-continental energies took place this November, when the national youth orchestra of Sistema Brazil came to the New York area for its first-ever international tour. Performing with the collective discipline and passion we are used to seeing from Venezuela, they concluded their tour in the unlikely venue of Union City, NJ, where they played to help generate funds and excitement for a new Sistema program in a city with no wealthy donors or large businesses. Speaking with Angelica de la Riva, a Venezuelan singer who performed with them, I learned that the orchestra had struggled to make the tour happen. “In 23

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Brazil, they were in the streets at traffic intersections, soliciting money for the tour,” she told me. De la Riva and her musical partner, guitarist Nilko Andreas Guarin, decided to help sponsor their tour. “As soon as I heard those kids play, I knew I had to help them,” she said. “When a mission knocks at your door, you don’t say no!” Union City Music Project founder Melina Garcia imagines that her program will someday produce such a youth orchestra. “Some may call me naïve,” Garcia has said, “but I have the will and the vision to bring this program to Union City.” As our movement grows, building alliances with our Latin American comrades may be one of our most important priorities. When Brazilian energy and Union City vision unite, who knows what can happen? •

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Fusing Our Musical and Social Goals February 2012 It’s an article of faith within the U.S./Canada El Sistema-inspired movement that our work involves the deep alignment of social and musical goals. We are inspired by this ideal of alignment, and we talk about it...only all the time. Yet the language of our conversation tends to be one of duality: we think of these goals as two separate ones, and it’s our task to connect them. A cultural tradition of pursuing social and musical goals as separate spheres of endeavor and separate professions, even with separate funders, tends to destabilize our article of faith. At the Take A Stand Symposium this week, I was freshly reminded that in the language of Venezuela’s El Sistema the two goals are inseparable—they are in fact one goal. Venezuela’s FundaMusical Bolivar Executive Director Eduardo Méndez told us that “we are not simply about children in a room together, doing something.

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We are about children in a room together, making music. And without the striving for musical excellence, there is no social transformation.” •

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A Seminario By Any Other Name… March 2012 As the Sistema movement grows in the United States, we have a quiet but continuing perplexity about how often to use the Spanish words we’ve inherited from Sistema tradition. Sometimes we drop the word “Sistema” from our program names, or we refer to our “sites” rather than our “núcleos.” We gain clarity about our North American identity, but lose the rich web of associations that cling to the Spanish words. Seminario! What should we do with that one? Dictionaries translate the Spanish word as “seminary” or “seminar.” What we witnessed in Pasadena in February (and in Baltimore last spring) certainly had nothing to do with ecclesiastical training or academic wheel-spinning. It’s likely that the Venezuelan Sistema builders simply appropriated this mellifluous word for their own exuberant purposes. Which leaves us wondering whether there’s an English word we might hijack that would do the trick.

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A wildly ambitious, necessarily under-planned but infectiously high-spirited gathering of childrens orchestras and their parents and teachers to create a one-day fusion of musical hearts, minds, bowings, and phrasings, culminating in an enormous joint concert: how do you say THAT in English? •

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A Pedagogy of Energy April 2012 I recently gave a talk about El Sistema to one of my favorite personal posses, the informal association of piano teachers in my community. They were avid to hear about what El Sistema looks like in practice. “Tell us more about how teachers teach,” they asked me. “Energy!” I said immediately, before I had even thought about it. It’s one of the most vivid aspects of teaching, El Sistema-style: gales of positive energy pouring from teachers, and flowing back at them as sheer musical gusto. As NEC Fellow Jennifer Kessler wrote recently in her blog from Venezuela, one of El Sistema’s most important elements is “not being tired.” “Even if the teachers are tired,” she adds, “they never let the kids see it.” Anyone who has ever stood in front of a classroom knows that long and intensive teaching hours can be exhausting. So we can’t help but wonder—how do they do it? I think it may have something to do with Venezuelan teachers’ strong identification with their students. 29

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“We feel close to them, because we were once where they are now,” a Venezuelan teacher told me. Then, too, Sistema teachers seem to never forget that playing music is just that—play, but at the same time that it’s rigorous work. The conductor of the Guarenas núcleo, when asked how he accounted for his orchestra’s huge energy, responded that it comes from having fun. El Sistema teachers understand that full-out energy can be revitalizing as well as tiring. This understanding is an essential part of what students learn, and we see its fullest artistic expression in the seemingly limitless vigor of the Sistema’s great youth orchestras. As we in the U.S./Canadian El Sistema movement go about the process of creating good and even great teacher training programs, it’s important to remind ourselves that pedagogy is most powerful when it’s charged with generous personal energy and joy. •

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The Venezuelan “Oomph of It” May 2012 Ever since the conclusion of the recent Mahler Project, I have been musing about the idea of “thinking big”—a phrase used by both Maestro Abreu and Maestro Dudamel to describe the way El Sistema Venezuela likes to operate. Surely there can be no better example of thinking big—VERY big—than the Mahler extravaganza. Nine symphonies…two major symphony orchestras performing the full cycle twice, on two continents…singers numbering well over a thousand for the Symphony of a Thousand…All this was big indeed, but there was more. When the L.A. Phil members were in residence in Caracas, they were regaled by one astonishing children’s orchestra after another: very small children—many hundreds of them—playing Handel and Tchaikovsky by memory. In the case of the Mahler Project, of course, “big” meant big numbers—the kinds of numbers that we in the U.S. and Canada, at our early stage of development, can’t approach. But there’s another dimension of ambition here that we can learn from. 31

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Simply put, “thinking big” means aiming for the highest ambition within reach—so high that going for it feels like a long shot. That kind of huge aspiration with a wise sense of just-achievable limits is a signature part of the culture of El Sistema. Setting the bar very high, and then going for it with all-out energy and confidence, seems to be standard operating procedure—whether that means aiming to learn a complex symphony, to perform in an unlikely venue, or to mainstream children with disabilities. “The oomph of it”—thank you, Marshall Marcus, for that generous description of the energy of the U.S./ Canadian El Sistema movement. At this stage, our “oomph” doesn’t need to mean big numbers. For each of us, it can simply mean aiming at the highest goal we could possibly achieve—and then committing to it. It can mean being not just ambitious, but outrageously bold. •

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Measuring the Immeasurable June 2012 The Sistema Fellows’ 2011-2012 survey reported in our lead article is the first-ever survey of all El Sistema-inspired núcleos in the United States—and for this author, its findings have a whiff of the miraculous. The number of U.S. núcleos in late 2009, when I began working on my book about El Sistema, could be counted on one hand. Two and a half years later, the exponential quality of our growth here and in Canada is breathtaking. The article’s authors point out that our growth is not yet accompanied by success in developing evaluation tools—a critical problem in an environment where sustainable funding depends on the ability to prove positive results. While some pioneering programs are beginning this work, many are still unsure of how to create meaningful assessment tools, or are too stretched to do the work of finding and creating them. And the Sistema’s deepest values—the development of psychic wholeness, the strengthening of empathic connection, the enrichment of spirit—are precisely the hardest results to measure. 33

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Last week I attended the spring concert of the Corona Youth Music Project in Queens. Before the concert began, a very small boy in a very pressed white shirt complete with clip-on tie climbed into his mother’s lap, next to me, and lay in her arms as he tucked his tiny violin under his chin and began to play open strings. Each small sonic change registered as a different shade of delight on his face. His mother seemed to experience it with him—the dig-in, the lift-off, the warmth and power of the press of bow on string. So much here is immeasurable! Although we cannot measure ineffable moments, it is possible to measure social consequences. That may be our most important challenge now: to find or create research models that evaluate success in building children’s self-esteem, team-working skills, academic performance—and to produce research results persuasive enough to move funders, to win grants, and to continue our essential business of creating immeasurable moments. •

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“Mind the Gap”: Southbank Shows the Power of Seminario July 2012 “I officially declare this núcleo open!” said Jude Kelly last week. By “this núcleo” she meant the Southbank Centre in London, a vast complex of performance spaces on the bank of the Thames River. Kelly, Southbank ’s director, was celebrating the week-long residency of the Simón Bolívar Orchestra of Venezuela by recreating the Centre as an international El Sistema festival. In a way, it did have the feel of a núcleo. The Bolivar musicians led sectionals with the children of “In Harmony,” England’s El Sistema-inspired program. There were concerts every night. The Centre was bursting with Sistema-related people from all over the world—Scotland, Sweden, Ireland, the USA, Japan, and elsewhere. The feeling of connectedness around a common vision was intense and palpable. The Southbank “núcleo” lasted just a few days. But I was impressed by the kinds of continuous connectedness many Sistema-inspired programs have achieved. I heard about the practice, in Sistema Gothenberg, of bringing children from different sites to play togeth35

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er every Wednesday. I heard that in New Zealand, all Sistema teachers meet together once a week. And when Maestro Abreu met with members of the emerging entity Sistema Europe, he stressed the importance of staying actively connected with one another. It’s not easy for Sistema-inspired programs in the U.S. and Canada to achieve this kind of connectedness. We’re so geographically dispersed, and so necessarily focused on the daily challenges of running programs, that it’s easy to become isolated. But the clear evidence is that every time programs come together, in “seminarios” and other less formal ways, the result is a combustible energy for both teachers and students that lasts well beyond the event. As Dan Trahey of Orchkids puts it, “Just get in a car and visit the nearest Sistema program.” Or—just pick up the phone. Being mindful about transcending our geographical gaps can re-energize and invigorate us as we go about the challenging and joyful business of changing lives through music. •

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Sistema Comes to Japan August 2012 I am just home from Japan, where El Sistema was officially launched last week. The news from Japan adds a surprising, unprecedented dimension to the potential of El Sistema. We are used to thinking of the Sistema as a transformative tool in the context of poor and at-risk children with little or no access to music learning. What could it possibly offer to Japan, a country with little poverty and a deep, renowned tradition of school music education? Among a cadre of quietly visionary Japanese educators and reformers, the answer to this question has been catalyzed by the earthquake and tsunami of March 2011. Among the communities most catastrophically affected was the coastal city of Soma, in the province of Fukushima. There were 458 lives lost, and over 5500 injuries. Livelihoods were devastated: rice paddies were soaked with salt water, and fishing boats stand rusting in the harbor, since radiation released by a damaged nuclear power plant means that people will no longer buy seafood from Soma. Acres of stone foundations are all 37

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that is left of whole neighborhoods. For Soma’s Board of Education, the disaster’s worst toll is its traumatic effect on children. “ There is a dire necessity here,” said board member Kenichi Murata at a Tokyo symposium last week. “We need to instill in our children the power to live.” The region’s school music ensembles regularly place high in national competitions. But Murata and his colleagues believe that El Sistema can help heal Soma’s children by instilling intrinsic motivation, rather than dutiful compliance, as the reason to play music together. “El Sistema brings peer learning, the pleasure of children learning from one another,” says Yutaka Kikugawa, founder of the organization Friends of El Sistema Japan. “It brings teamwork, the satisfaction of creating something beautiful together. And it brings joy.” Musical joy as a healing agent for traumatized children: this is a powerful new conception of El Sistema’s vision. As the Sistema spreads around the world, people will continue to re-imagine the ways it can heal children and communities. •

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Sharing Our Resources September 2012 It’s a truism, but it’s true: the U.S. is a nation of “can-do” individualists. Our El Sistema movement has grown the way the American West did, mostly through the work of small groups of dedicated people building from scratch, creating something where there was nothing, over and over. Louise Lanzilotti and Dan Trahey remind us in this issue that as our movement grows, we don’t have to reinvent every wheel every time. It’s a valuable reminder. In Venezuela, the deep habit of sharing resources was born of necessity, in a context of scarcity, and became second nature. Our habits tend toward self-sufficiency rather than interdependence. But the work of building and sustaining El Sistema-inspired programs is so labor-intensive that the do-it-yourself model can lead to exhaustion. So it’s heartening to see a sharing-resources model begin to emerge. Sharing resources is more than simply load-lightening; it is also an organic way of creating inter-núcleo connectedness. If a version of the William Tell Overture, arranged for varying skill levels and ages, is shared 39

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among many núcleos, all those children will be able to play the William Tell Overture together, the very first time they meet. The more music is shared, the broader will be the common musical language of the children of El Sistema in the U.S. and Canada. And the more clearly we will give them the message that music learning is most powerful when it’s shared. We want the children in our programs to develop interdependence as a habit of mind—what better way to teach the habit than to model it? As is so often the case, El Sistema Venezuela models it for all of us. I am reminded of the story of a master class in Caracas, in which the teacher was startled to see kids holding up their cell phones as he talked. Were they raising their hands? Was it a ritual that had crossed over from pop music concerts? “I have my núcleo in Maracay on the line,” explained one boy. “I’m holding up the phone so they can all hear you.” •

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Classroom Management October 2012 Classroom management as teachers’ number one concern—that was a key finding of the survey of U.S. Sistema-inspired programs conducted by last year’s Sistema Fellows. Hence the focus of The Ensemble this month on a subject that doesn’t usually appear on symposium agendas but is always on the table when teachers get together. Paloma Udovic Ramos’s article leads us in an interesting direction: instead of discussing right and wrong ways to go about classroom management, she writes about how to prevent it from happening at all. I’m used to thinking about classroom management as a given: one has to manage one’s classroom, and the only question is how. But Paloma’s choice has me thinking about the ways in which the very phrase is at odds with the spirit and goals of El Sistema. Sistema-inspired programs are not in the business of managing children. We are in the business of leading them, nurturing them, opening new possibilities for them. The concept of classroom management arose in the context of the public school paradigm, for the purpose of control. It’s fundamentally different from what we might call El Sistema’s “positivity paradigm.”

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This isn’t to diminish the daily challenge of dealing with disruptive children. But contrasting the two paradigms can remind us that the very practices that distinguish Sistema work—encouraging kids to teach as well as learn, fostering mentor relationships, and creating a space of beauty students inhabit daily—are themselves, in the long run, powerful antidotes to disruptive behavior. It takes time, of course, to build this alternative culture. In the short run, says Eric Booth, teachers’ anxieties can make things worse; often, disruptive incidents loom larger than they should. Keep your eye on the main priority, he advises, and maintain the joyful forward movement of the whole group. Replacing the management paradigm with a positivity paradigm seems next to impossible in our control-driven educational culture. But “next to impossible” is, after all, exactly the place where El Sistema flourishes. •

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El Sistema: Not Just For Poor Kids November 2012 “Is El Sistema only for poor kids?” I’m guessing that many readers of The Ensemble have been posed this question in the course of talking to people about the work you do. It comes at me frequently. We answer, “Usually, yes.” Most children in Venezuela’s El Sistema are poor, although some are middle-class—and all comers are welcome, regardless of income. El Sistema’s defining vision is that for impoverished children, highly engaged music-making in community can help disrupt the cycle of poverty. In the U.S. and Canada, El Sistema-inspired programs have aimed primarily, and appropriately, at serving children in need. But I found myself pondering that initial question recently as I prepared to give a speech about El Sistema at the annual convention of the New Jersey Association of Independent Schools. These schools are, by and large, strongholds of “the one percent,” and their stewards tend to perceive them as standard-bearers of educational excellence. What could El Sistema have to offer them?

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A number of things, I proposed. To academic cultures that value individual achievement above all else, El Sistema offers a learning culture based in community, with individual success and ensemble success deeply intertwined. To a scholastic system that treats students as competitors in a race for the best grades and best colleges, El Sistema offers an alternative paradigm: a network of support, rich in peer-learning and mentoring opportunities and based in empathic connection. To a curricular model that supports team building only in the area of sports, El Sistema offers a different possibility: when an orchestra performs, no one loses. And to school environments that tend to incubate stress, El Sistema offers Gustavo’s famous proviso: “ We never forget fun.” What would happen if the academic environments of prestigious private schools were sabotaged by joy? Would grades plummet and academic rigor evaporate? Or would achievement levels stay high, and morale even improve? The New Jersey educators were genuinely inspired, if also a bit daunted, by these questions. Is El Sistema only for poor kids? Maybe not. •

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Responding to Excitement—or Criticism December 2012 A few years ago, we in the U.S./Canadian Sistema-inspired movement found ourselves constantly having to explain what we were up to. That’s beginning to change. Thanks to our tumultuous growth, people are noticing and responding to our programs and our ambitious ideals. So we face a new challenge: how to respond to the responders? Most responses are positive. Some are passionate, even adulatory. A great many ask, “Is there a way I can be part of this?” To this, I think our answer should always be “Yes!” Even if they’re not musicians, even if they’re not educators, there may be a trombone in the attic, or a friend who works at a foundation. Perhaps there’s a need for someone to provide healthy snacks on Thursdays. However, now that we’re big enough to be noticed, we’re big enough to be criticized. Sometimes the underlying motivation for a negative reaction is simple resentment. Most school music teachers are passionately dedicated and yet marginally (if ever) acclaimed. It’s no 45

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wonder that some might resent the hoopla around El Sistema programs. Our best response to them, perhaps, is enthusiastic appreciation of the work they do, and an exploration of possibilities for partnership—even as we clarify the distinctions Eric Booth delineates in this month’s feature article. But then there are the spoilers, the armchair critics. Their armchairs are sometimes in academic offices, sometimes third row center in concert halls, and their motivations seem to range from principled disapproval to sheer delight in debunking anything the media has extolled. How to react? First, respond with all your heart and mind. Refute misconceptions and false claims. Articulate the truths and goals of your program as eloquently as possible. One of two things will happen. Either your respondee will come back with interest in a dialogue—a potential learning opportunity on both sides—or you’ll be met with escalating critical vehemence. In which case I’d say…don’t waste any more energy. Put it aside, and go back to the daily gift of the work you do. •

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2013

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The Simón Bolívar: An Orchestra of Teaching Artists January 2013 The Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela decamped for home last week, after a packed threeweek U.S. tour that deserved all the adjectives the L.A. Philharmonic has used about the conductor the two orchestras share: Radiante! Electrico! Pasion! For me, the most memorable aspect of the tour was that nearly everywhere the orchestra touched down, there were spontaneous eruptions of conferences, panel discussions and symposia—in general, people gathering to create learning experiences around the concert events. It’s a remarkable development: professional symphony orchestras do not, as a rule, cause outbreaks of music education during their tours. But the SBSOV represents a kind of North Star for the burgeoning El Sistema movement in the U.S. and Canada, and their presence inspires us to come together to learn from them, and from each other. This is precisely as it should be, because within El Sistema itself, performance and education are inseparable aspects of the overarching social mission. Orchestra 49

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members think of themselves as teachers—“maestri”— as much as performers, and these two aspects of their artistry are fused into a single identity. In Scotland and in London last summer, in Berkeley and Philadelphia and New York last month, orchestra members spent their nights as performers dazzling audiences in soldout halls, and their days as maestri, coaching and mentoring the children of Sistema-inspired programs. The ease and fluency with which musicians in El Sistema move between performance, teaching, and learning is very far from our experience, and challenges our tendency to cultivate these as separate categories. But I think we are learning, thanks to the generous spirit of the touring Bolivarians, to take advantage of the potent synergies between performance and education. During a Carnegie Hall-sponsored seminario in New York, I watched a young Venezuelan conductor galvanize third-graders learning the Ode to Joy (he worked with them all day, before he performed that night), and there was no mistaking the energy in the room: it was Radiante! Electrico! Pasion! •

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Re-Learning the Meaning of Music Teaching February 2013 To be an El Sistema storyteller is truly a blessed occupation: never was a bard luckier in the sheer scope, sweep, and inspirational nature of her subject. The business of researching, writing, and speaking about El Sistema is a continual source of joy and satisfaction for me. In recent months I’ve had the opportunity to don a different hat, serving as a consultant with several new initiatives in the process of development. It’s thrilling to be an active, contributing part of a process I’ve so often watched and written about. And it’s humbling to discover that, as much as I know about El Sistema, I can sometimes identify an inner tendency to default, without even being aware of it, to the conventional music education norms and habits that have dominated my lifelong experience as a music learner and music educator. Becoming an active participant in the process of núcleo creation has shown me just how strong a gravitational pull those old habits can exert. When presented with a draft list of the skills that faculty members wanted children to acquire, for exam51

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ple, I knew there was something “off ” about it—but it took me a long moment to realize that the skills listed were all specifically musical, and didn’t include social and psychological skills. That kind of “aha” moment is common, I’m sure, to many núcleo leaders and teachers. Even as you’re pulled forward by the power of the El Sistema vision, and by your clarity and passion around that vision, there can be a strong backward tug toward everything you’ve previously known about learning and teaching music: measuring and evaluating by strictly musical standards, focusing on individual improvement, rewarding soloistic virtuosity. Maestro Abreu often says about North America: “You have such great music teachers!” It’s true that our lifetimes’ worth of experiences in opening up the power and beauty of music to children can serve us well in our new El Sistema-inspired incarnations—as long as we are vigilant about keeping our eyes, ears, hearts and minds aligned with our social mission. If we don’t, we fall short of the potential we envision. I’m delighted to be sharing this challenge with you from a newly “embedded” perspective. •

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Intrinsic Motivation March 2013 Did you by chance have the impression, as February took its long slow time being the shortest month of the year, that you were hearing the words “intrinsic motivation” from friends and colleagues more often than usual? We at The Ensemble hope so. We tried something new this month: a book club for the El Sistema-inspired movement. We chose Daniel Pink’s Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, and invited our readership to read it and join in an online conversation, via a LinkedIn Sistema Global subgroup, about what truly motivates people, particularly children, to learn and succeed. Pink’s big idea is that the most effective motivators are intrinsic, having to do with the inherent joys and rewards of the task itself, rather than extrinsic, delivered by the environment as rewards or punishments. Pink identifies the key intrinsic motivators as autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Relating these ideas to our work, we agreed that El Sistema in Venezuela is remarkably free of the kinds of external motivators—grades, rankings, awards—that 53

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are prevalent in our typical learning cultures. Núcleos pulsate with passionate energy, but it’s the very process of playing together and getting better together that’s the payoff. We speculated about a fourth intrinsic motivator: the desire to be a valued, contributing member of a group. How can we create learning environments in which kids are fired up with intrinsic motivation? First, teachers can be powerful models. “Passion is teachable—or at least transmittable,” as Reynaldo Trombetta of England’s In Harmony program has written. And second, by focusing on the goal of helping each child successfully “access the ensemble musical experience,” in the words of In Harmony’s Richard Hallam, we can tap into young people’s deep yearning for social inclusion, for mastery within a collective endeavor. Reading Drive, along with many of you, gave me a different way to think about what El Sistema has to offer all children, even those who don’t live in material poverty: in a world replete with extrinsic motivators, we can nourish children’s capacity to find ample intrinsic satisfaction in the work and play of making music together. •

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“Tell Your Kids: Chasquido al Talón!” April 2013 So said a teen-aged violinist in the top youth orchestra of Barquisimeto, Venezuela last week, when Eric Booth asked orchestra members for advice we could take back to the children in U.S./Canadian Sistema-inspired programs. The orchestra had just played the fifth movement of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. The ensemble was so big and the room so densely packed that the front row of violinists and cellists narrowly missed jabbing us with their bows. “Tell your kids: Chasquido al talón!” one boy offered, and others nodded. Our translators explained that the phrase means to dig into the string with the lower part of the bow, to create an intense, powerful sound. After spending the day at the Barquisimeto núcleo, I understood the phrase to mean much more than that. We heard a “Baby Mozart” ensemble in which kids as young as seven played oboes and trombones; a marimba sextet who danced their way through their own arrangements of jazz standards; and a percussion/vocal 55

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ensemble weaving together music from Afro-Venezuelan folk traditions. And we heard three full orchestras of varying skill levels and unvarying energy. Energy: That’s the unifying factor, and I think that’s what the violinist ’s advice meant—energy, and also the courage to dig into a string with all one’s power, even if the note might be a wrong one. We heard few wrong notes, but these children did not seem afraid of them; they have learned that an energetic connection to their instruments, the music and one another is the first priority. We spoke afterwards with our Sistema guide, Victor Salamanqués, who played clarinet in the original Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra. “’Chasquido al talón!’” he said, smiling. “That is a phrase Maestro Abreu used to say to us often in rehearsals. He wanted us to go for intensity of the sound!” I love the idea that Maestro Abreu’s exhortation to his orchestra members thirty years ago lives on among the young musicians of Barquisimeto—and that it’s the advice they want to pass on to our students. Play hard, work hard; play with intensity and energy and courage. Chasquido al talón! •

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Engaging with the Larger Music Education Ecosystem May 2013 “There’s an elephant in the room of the international El Sistema movement.” At last week’s El Sistema Festival in Gothenburg, Sweden, the final panel discussion—chaired by Marshall Marcus, leader of the Sistema Europe network—was devoted to that proposition. As the festival proceeded in the beautiful city where Dudamel spent six winter seasons leading Sweden’s national orchestra, I noted the provocative name of the last panel and wondered what the elephant in our room might be. Do you have a guess? Marshall’s topic, it turned out, was the undeniable but sometimes unspoken fact that in the U.S. and Canada, in Europe, and elsewhere in the world, El Sistema-inspired programs coexist with a multiplicity of music education programs and traditions—some of which have long aspired to goals and values resonant with those of El Sistema. As the newcomers to the field, we don’t always give adequate acknowledgment to these programs and traditions, or treat them as respected col57

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leagues. The result can be that established players in the music education ecosystem begin to feel resentful of and threatened by El Sistema. In the U.S. and Canada, school music programs are perhaps the most important example. As Dalouge Smith points out in this month’s feature article, most U.S./Canadian El Sistema-inspired initiatives happen as after-school programs in schools. And the relationship between El Sistema programs and in-school programs can be a sensitive and complicated matter. We tend to differentiate ourselves from traditional music educators: they are training adept musicians, while we are creating citizens and communities. But as your memories from your own school music experience probably attest, school music teachers at their best can be inspired agents for creating musical community, equalizing access to musical opportunity, and developing character. Just as we live by the axiom that “every child is an asset,” we need to respect the value in every authentic music education effort. What better message could we give our students than that we are all part of a larger community that cherishes the transformational potential at the heart of music teaching and learning? •

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Musical Genres in El Sistema June 2013 We are proud this month that our eloquent lead article was written by a student in an El Sistema-inspired program, Rodas Hailu of YOLA. Rodas’ descriptions of individual students in programs across the continent are powerful and particular expressions of the transformative quality of music learning in the El Sistema environment. As I reflect on the words of Rodas and her peers, it strikes me that none of them mentions the issue of musical genre. That’s interesting, because as movement leaders and teachers, we are much preoccupied by this issue; many of our liveliest conversations concern questions about the centrality of classical music. How relevant is classical music to our students? How can we bring our kids to love classical music? And if we play pop, jazz, or show tunes, are we still El Sistema? Clearly, Rodas’ interviewees are not similarly preoccupied. This could mean that the classical repertory they play hasn’t made a notable impression. More likely, I think, is that they are experiencing their classical and non-classical pieces as part of a musical continuum in 59

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which genre differences are not so important. What is important is that when they play music—different kinds of music—in orchestral community, they are engaged, stimulated, and immersed in aesthetic feeling. Increasingly, Venezuela’s El Sistema provides a model for this kind of continuum, as it expands repertoire to include more folk and jazz around its classical core. My own experience supports the idea that including other genres reinforces rather than threatens the compelling vitality of classical music. I believe that the expressive power of classical music, and its capacity for aesthetic evocation of feeling, is uniquely wide and deep. And as a longtime piano teacher, I know that most students exposed to different kinds of music will eventually respond to the thrill and emotional power of classical music. Beginners may ask to learn “The Pink Panther” and Taylor Swift songs (and they do), but eventually, and almost inevitably, come the requests for Für Elise, Clair de Lune, and “that Turkish song by Mozart.” All great music of any genre is part of the “gift,” as Rodas says, “that should be given to everyone.” •

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“Just Listening” July 2013 Volunteers provide essential mentoring at the Paterson Music Project in NJ, where 30 second-graders are confident performers after just four months of instruction. In addition, PMP has developed a practice that is unusual for Sistema programs in the U.S. and Canada, and perhaps everywhere: they have made it a priority to help children learn the skills of effective music listening. Their partner in this endeavor is a conductor/educator, George Marriner Maull, who founded The Discovery Orchestra, and whose mission is to “teach listening skills that help people emotionally connect with classical music.” George leads regular listening sessions at PMP. I was there as an observer one day when he brought in the last movement of the Fourth Brandenburg; clearly no one had warned him that second-graders can’t understand Bach. And a good thing, too, because these second-graders were all over it—counting appearances of the theme, yelling “Dah! Dah!” along with the recurring two big chords, guessing correctly the identity of the record61

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er when it came in. Some even noticed when he tried to fool them by playing a different piece of music (by Bach, no less). Watching the children relish Bach reminded me how active an endeavor music listening can be. The kids weren’t playing their instruments; they weren’t dancing around the room or even marching in place. They were simply and totally absorbed in the act of listening: bobbing their heads, tapping their feet, squinting intently as they tried to hear when the theme reemerged. (Okay, some of them were playing—air violins and air cellos.) It’s exceedingly rare in kids’ listening lives these days that a piece of instrumental music doesn’t function as background to something else, but instead takes the foreground, commanding complete attention. The kids of PMP now know they are capable of spending an hour just listening, and that this hour can be exhilarating fun. “When are you coming back, Mr. George?” they always ask. If only our concert halls were filled with audiences like this. El Sistema-inspired programs can take a step in that direction by providing our kids with the opportunity to become ardent listeners, as well as accomplished players and singers. •

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An Orchestra “Wide Open” to El Sistema August 2013 A few months ago I was in Gothenberg, Sweden, home of Sweden’s national symphony orchestra. It has also been a home for Gustavo Dudamel, who spent winter seasons there as principal conductor from 2007 to 2012, and is therefore the center of El Sistema Sweden, one of Europe’s largest national programs, sponsored by the orchestra. “With Dudamel, the great ship that is the Gothenburg Symphony got a necessary push in a new direction,” says Petra Kloo Vik, the orchestra’s director of education. “We started to dare to dream big.” The El Sistema dream bloomed big at an afternoon orchestra side-by-side with the children of Gothenburg Sistema. The audience was filled with excited families; onstage, the full orchestra was surrounded by 150 children, who opened the show—in the space where Dudamel had honed his mastery of Sibelius and Nielson— by singing“Hey-ey-ey! Hey-ey-ey! Babumba, babumba, babumba hey-ey!” It was a robust, decidedly unclassical yodel, each stanza ending with three claps and a shout: “Hey!”

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The concert proceeded to be the most child-centric, joyful Side-by-Side I’ve ever witnessed. The children played with the orchestra when they could, and sang when they couldn’t. “Babumba” returned as the finale, with an orchestral score that turned the song into an unaccountably moving anthem. The family members in the audience, many of whom had never been in the hall before, stayed until after the children were led away to give a cheering, stomping ovation to the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra. The “great ship” of the orchestra is moving on many fronts. Some musicians volunteer to work with the children; the full orchestra makes trips to community centers to play Mozart under the basketball hoops. There are plans for a weekly “Teen Fridays” hangout for the older kids of the Sistema and other music programs, housed inside the Symphony Hall. “We want to open up this house to everybody,” says Helena Westmann, the orchestra’s director. “We want people who have never been here in their lives. We want them to know it’s their home too.” Her words echo those of orchestra leaders here in the U.S. and Canada whose clear priority is to make sure their communities know: the house is wide open. •

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Starting Small, Going Deep: Sistema Scotland September 2013 “Grow without fear.” It is one of Maestro Abreu’s most famous sayings, and as the North American El Sistema movement heads into its second half-decade, it’s an aspiration very much on our minds. Many programs that began by heeding the other half of that famous Abreu maxim—“Start small”—are expanding their activities and opening multiple sites; in this issue, Anne Fitzgibbon and Katie Wyatt bring news of a number of models for expansion. Having spent time this year with some of the leaders of Sistema Scotland, I am reminded of the distinctive expansion model they are in the process of inventing. Unlike most North American programs, which tend to launch in big cities, the Scottish initiative Big Noise began in 2008 in the small community of Raploch, an economically-depressed area that lies in a valley directly beneath historic Stirling Castle. Big Noise remained a single-site program for almost four years, concentrating its efforts on going deep instead of wide; it now includes over 80% of the children of Raploch, 65

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which was described recently by a local newspaper article as “a wee place that now teems with wee musicians.” In 2011, Big Noise underwent a rigorous evaluation by a national social research agency. Evaluators found that the program had “a positive impact on children’s personal and social development, including increased confidence and self-esteem and improved social and teamwork skills.” These findings persuaded the local council to continue backing the program. Then, in June 2012, Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Orchestra arrived to play a side-by-side summer solstice concert with the children of Raploch—and cities around Scotland clamored for Big Noise projects of their own. Thanks to the efforts of community leaders from the impoverished Glasgow neighborhood of Govanhill, a Big Noise center has opened in Glasgow. Starting in a community so small that the orchestra program can include most children and achieving deep and documented excellence there before expanding—it’s a model from which we can draw inspiration. In the words of Sistema Scotland’s visionary founder, Richard Holloway: “It works because children know in their hearts how to play creatively, redemptively, if given half a chance: that is the chance we are giving them.” •

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El Sistema: Remembering the First Flush of Excitement October 2013 Two days after El Sistema leaders from Venezuela met in Cambridge, Mass. with a group of U.S. colleagues involved in national Sistema-related work, a dozen or so local arts and social services leaders attended a series of presentations and workshops at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. The stated purpose of the Cambridge meeting was “building a framework to support the permanence and strengthening” of the U.S. El Sistema movement. In Illinois, ambitions were less lofty: attendees came to find out what, exactly, El Sistema was and what it could possibly have to do with Peoria. I was visiting Bradley to provide information and, if possible, inspiration; but, as it turned out, I received at least as much inspiration from the citizens of Peoria as they did from me. The more they learned about El Sistema, the more excited they became. Faculty members and students from the University’s music department showed up at session after session to ask how they might become involved. The conductor of the local symphony posted an enthusiastic message on his Facebook 67

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page. The director of the local youth symphony began to brainstorm about possible locations for a Peoria núcleo. The head of a social services center was brimming with ideas. “I’ve heard something really important for my organization today,” he said. I felt fortunate to be reminded of how electrifying it can be to hear about El Sistema for the first time. For those of us with years of Sistema-related experience, and especially those involved with the complex issue of how best to mobilize projects at a national level, the electric thrill of first encountering El Sistema can sometimes be difficult to access. But it’s important to stay connected to that galvanizing moment in our own lives—the moment when our deepest convictions about the potency of music were validated with a vividness and on a scale we had never dreamed possible. We all experienced that moment; it’s what brought us together as an authentic movement and what still unites us. We’ll be able to create an effective national network only if we can sustain and refresh the sense of wondrous possibility that first fired our imaginations. In that regard, we need simply notice just how powerfully, how compellingly, El Sistema played in Peoria last week. •

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Sistema Japan: Proof that El Sistema Comes in Many Forms November 2013 When I traveled to Japan in July 2012, I reported back to Ensemble readers my fascination at learning the intention of educators in Soma, Fukushima to use El Sistema in the service of healing children traumatized by the 2011 tsunami. Back in Japan last month, I was able to see the Sistema program that has evolved since then. Distinctive it is. The program meets only once a week, on weekends. About 150 children aged 5 to 17 convene for a full day of choral and instrumental musicmaking. Their instructors are local teachers assisted by college-student volunteers who make the three-hour trip to Soma from Tokyo every week. Conductor Yohei Asaoka makes the same trip every other Saturday to work with both the children and their teachers. Interestingly, the volunteers, while good musicians, are majoring in other subjects or working in business and have been attracted (usually through Facebook) by the social engagement aspect of the work. Yutaka Kikugawa, the programâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s founder and leader, is also not a professional musician; his background is in UNESCO work in Japan and Africa.

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In some ways, then, the profile of the Soma program is unlike that of any other núcleo I’ve known. But, during my experience with it, the Program made clear its strong alignment with Sistema values and ideals. Watching the orchestra perform, I was struck by its dramatically inclusive nature: I saw older children who could already play Vivaldi and Mozart; tiny children only a few weeks into the program, playing downbeats on open strings; even some older adults who were retired teachers. Hearing the stream of lively, loving encouragement from the teachers and the Venezuelan jacket-clad student volunteers, I caught the clear inflection of “relentless positivity”—without understanding a word of Japanese. Maestro Asaoka told me later that the program’s pedagogy is guided by the ideal of peer learning. “I tell them, ‘Teach as I taught you, pass it on,’” he said. “And I always put more skilled kids with less skilled.” Most deeply “Sistema” of all, of course, were the children who lost homes, friends, and family members two years ago—their faces now lit with focus and their heads dipping with every accent. El Sistema Japan is testimony to the extraordinary adaptability of Sistema: even when methods are modified in widely varying ways, the result is El Sistema. •

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Necessity is the Mother of Sistema Creativity December 2013 One day early in the winter of 1975, José Antonio Abreu announced to his newly-formed youth orchestra of 70 or so young music students that they were going to play a public concert on April 30th at the headquarters of Venezuela’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The orchestra was only weeks old and had no real repertoire yet. Some members could read music well; some, not so well. Some could play beautifully…some were only aspiring to that. But their maestro’s call was unequivocal. He would work with them as much as he possibly could— but there were many times he would not be available due to the demands of his government job. How could they possibly succeed in this wildly ambitious endeavor? The more skilled members realized that they had to teach the less skilled. First-rate players understood that they needed to become mentors to the novices among them. And everyone realized that they needed to rehearse and work together many hours a day. On April 30th, the orchestra performed for a large Ministry audience. They played Bach and Vivaldi; 71

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they played the overture to Mozart’s Magic Flute and Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Overture. They were received with overwhelming enthusiasm. Peer learning, ensemble learning, mentoring, immersive intensity: we all know these are touchstones of El Sistema practice. But there is sometimes a tendency to think of them as philosophical mandates that precede practice. In fact, they evolved in the Venezuelan Sistema as imaginative solutions to great challenges. The fundamentals did not appear first as pedagogical ideas; they were invented as ways to scramble towards an improbably high goal. And over time, it’s become clear that they constitute a rich, humanistic pedagogy with unprecedented transformative potential. It’s important to remember that the challenges we encounter are opportunities for creating further “fundamentals” in our own practice. At OrchKids, for example, a problem with managing snack time became an opportunity to make good nutrition a program priority. At a 2012 West Coast seminario that involved bussing children and families long distances, the problem of what to do with parents while their children rehearsed was solved by creating an on-the-spot parent chorus. Necessity is not only the mother of invention, it’s also the wellspring of creative solutions that can guide and inspire us into the future. •

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The Value of Sistema Arrangers January 2014 Arrangers should be compensated when their arrangements are used, right? Right, in the context we have been accustomed to as musicians—a context where musicians are perennially underpaid or unpaid, and it’s often assumed that this is fine, since we love what we do and would probably be doing it anyway. But the world of El Sistema presents a different set of priorities. Valuing the work of musicians is crucial, of course, but equally important is creating a larger interdependent network of programs that support, encourage and aid one another. When staff members at Sistema-inspired programs create arrangements of works in the public domain, it’s wonderful when these works can be shared among all El Sistema-inspired programs. Arrangers are vital to our work. All good youth ensemble programs need musical arrangements that require rigorous practice and also yield abundant rewards of beauty and excitement. The Sistema’s need for imaginative arranging is even greater, given our dedication to creating opportunities for children of widely differing skill levels to perform together. I think every 75

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Sistema-inspired program should include arranging skills in at least one of its job descriptions—that of the conductor, if there is one, or of one or more teaching artists. This ensures that the work of arranging will be compensated. Still, the need for arrangements is too great for each individual program to address separately. That’s why it’s crucial to create a collective trove of arrangements freely available to all. Several initiatives in this direction are already well underway, most significantly the Rep & Resource Project. As our Venezuelan friends and mentors have shown us, sharing arrangements does more than contribute to the flourishing of each núcleo. It also leads to a common core of repertoire so that children in different programs can easily play together. North American programs that have been involved in seminarios have shown us the deep delight children experience when they find they can play fluently with children they’ve never met before. As for the resourceful artists who arrange music for Sistema programs—their work has twofold value: they are writing for their specific programs, but they are also writing for the entire international Sistema community. Fees for use are fine; nourishing an international movement is better. •

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In Memoriam: Bolivia Bottome February 2014 Bolivia Bottome met José Antonio Abreu when she was fifteen years old. At a political campaign event, she heard the young government official lead a workshop on oratorical skills. “I had never in my life heard anyone speak like José Antonio,” she told me once, smiling in awareness of just how many people have uttered that precise sentence. As a student at the University of Caracas, she encountered him at social gatherings where he was the dazzling fellow at the piano. “He could play anything you asked him to, absolutely anything!” In 1981, after she had graduated with a psychology degree and began raising a family, Bolivia happened to meet Abreu on the street, and he asked her to come work with his youth orchestra program. She was surprised and hesitant. “I thought, what could I possibly do for El Sistema? I didn’t feel qualified. I loved music, but I wasn’t a musician.” As I join Sistema colleagues in Venezuela and across the world in mourning Bolivia’s January 21st death, I think often about this particular part of her remarkable story. Bolivia was a superb linguist, a cultivat77

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ed intellect, and a lady of surpassing elegance. But she wasn’t a musician. Those of us who were trained as musicians can forget what a formidable and intimidating club we can seem to be in to those who weren’t. It took courage and a leap of faith on Bolivia’s part to accept Maestro Abreu’s request and to dedicate her life to an artistic world in which she had little expertise. Bolivia’s brave choice was the good fortune of El Sistema. She planned, launched and directed the Sistema’s first institute for higher music education. She hosted a long-running series of television programs about classical music and musicians. She represented El Sistema in a diplomatic capacity in countries across the world. And she translated the words of Maestro Abreu with precision and grace. Maestro Abreu has always understood the fundamental role non-musicians can play in the development of El Sistema; often, as with Bolivia, he has understood this better than the non-musicians themselves. Let us remember that embracing the distinct talents and vision of non-musicians is essential to the flourishing of El Sistema. And let us celebrate the bright spirit of Bolivia Bottome. Describing the series of daunting challenges she took on during her decades of work with El Sistema, she recalled that her response had always been the same. “I have never said no,” she said. •

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Growing Larger Alliances: the Example of Sistema Europe March 2014 Suppose you had the hundred-plus kids of a new international Sistema youth orchestra convening in a major city with no available rehearsal space and a concert in five days. What would you do? If “drain a big municipal indoor swimming pool, and have the rehearsal there” is your answer, you are clearly operating with the kind of flexible, imaginative mindset that characterizes Sistema Europe. This pan-national alliance, as described by its director, Marshall Marcus, in his presentation at last week’s Take A Stand symposium, came together two years ago, when leaders of European Sistema programs decided to form, in Marshall’s words, “a network that is open, flexible, unencumbered, and non-autocratic.” They have done so, with already remarkable results. In less than two years, the 28 countries of Sistema Europe have achieved an agreement on common principles, several kinds of mutual support, some significant collective funding, a Sistema Europe Youth Orchestra, and that innovatively-rehearsed joint concert. 79

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It’s fascinating to me that the continent we like to think of as the Old World, burdened by the constraints of custom and bureaucracy, has managed so beautifully and efficiently to organize on a large scale without— Marshall’s words again—“becoming deadened by process.” My experience over the course of the three-day symposium has me feeling optimistic that we in the U.S. and Canada may also be moving in that direction. There were many familiar faces, but also many new ones, and a general atmosphere of astute, nimble connections being made at a rapid clip. People were energetic and intuitively smart about pursuing the inquiries that felt essential to them, honing in on answers to pressing questions and exchanging greetings that will become online exchanges that will lead to long-term bonds. We may, in fact, be finding our way to the kind of informal but robust networking that will be key to growing the national movement. Case in point: representatives from four small but splendid Sistema-inspired programs in my home state of New Jersey crossed the country to attend the symposium. We all listened and learned together; by the third day we were indisputably a network. Back East, we are already planning our first joint concert. Everyone into the pool! •

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El Sistema Mexico April 2014 In calling The Ensemble “a newsletter for the U.S. and Canadian El Sistema movement,” we are always aware that we can’t yet use the phrase “North American Sistema movement.” We just don’t know the Mexican Sistema well enough, and we don’t have the Spanish-translation resources to serve the vast set of programs that comprise Sistema Mexico. We wish we could. After a trip to Mexico last month, I am newly aware of how much we share with Sistema colleagues on our southern border and how much we have to learn from them. Visiting sites in Léon, Guadalajara, and Puebla last month, my travel companions and I saw programs bursting with musical vitality—often with a distinctly Venezuelan feel. In a barrio in Léon full of boarded-up storefronts, we heard hundreds of children in a great courtyard decorated with strings of red hearts (it was Valentine’s Day) rehearsing the Ode to Joy in German and Spanish. The same ensemble performed the next day in a municipal stadium under a banner proclaiming “Parents and Teachers United For Peace.” At the end, their conductor told the 3,000 public schoolchildren in 81

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attendance to go home and hug their friends, parents and grandparents. (Mexicans manage Valentine’s Day better than we do: they proclaim it “a day of peace and friendship.”) In an open-air plaza rehearsal in Guadalajara, we heard a large ensemble of children ages 7 to 17 tear into the “Pirates of the Caribbean” theme. As in Venezuelan núcleos, there were coaches and assistants moving constantly among the players, parents gathered in the shade to listen, and younger siblings sidling up to ogle the first violins. Mexico’s Sistema history runs deep; its first wave began in the late 1970s, and several incarnations have followed. There are now some 50,000 students in a network of Sistema-inspired programs, many run by the federal government agency Conaculta and some sponsored by the Azteca Foundation, which includes children’s orchestra programs among its many social initiatives. Veronica, who runs the Guadalajara program with her husband Pepetoño, told me that when she was first interviewed to work there, she was asked, “If you need to teach music to a child who is poor and hungry, how will you do it?” She said she knew her answer instantly. “First, just a big smile. And then I will say, ‘There is a place for you here.’” •

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Arturo Marquez: the Quintessential Sistema Composer May 2014 Arturo Márquez, renowned composer of works inflected with the rhythms, harmonies, and timbres of Mexican music, including the rhapsodically beautiful Danzon No. 2, so beloved of Venezuelan youth orchestras that it has become a kind of El Sistema anthem— decided a year or two ago to retire from his teaching obligations. “I was just going to compose and relax,” he told me when I visited him in Mexico recently. Sitting on the porch of his home in a flower-filled village, he elaborated. “My plan was to spend my afternoons here in the sunlight, listening to the birds, writing music.” His plan has met with one problem. Within weeks, he and his wife, music therapist Laura Calderón de la Barca, realized that there were many children in the town who had no place to play music. “My wife and I thought, ‘We need to form a youth band.’ We didn’t mean a strictly traditional folk band—we wanted to teach them to read music and play more ambitious music in different genres.” 83

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With help from Fomento Musical, the government agency responsible for Mexico’s extensive national Sistema-inspired program, Márquez and Calderón started a children’s band. In short order, they were helping with four other regional bands and orchestras. Now their goal is to establish youth ensembles in every district in their province. “In a year, we’ve already got five,” he said. “Why not go for thirty-five?” Márquez often coaches and conducts the ensemble he founded. “Crescer Con Musica—Growing With Music—that is our motto,” he said. “Children working together for three or four hours every day…they will learn to grow emotionally. They will learn a different sense of society.” Laura Calderón encourages the children to keep diaries of their music experiences. “ We can see already how their lives are changing,” she told me. And after many years of winning international accolades for his work, Mexico’s most famous living composer is taking on a new compositional challenge. “I write arrangements for them all the time!” he said. “Learning to write for all those skill levels—I love it. And the most exciting part is to hear those little kids play.” He paused and then added, “I guess I didn’t retire, did I?” •

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Alliances Large and Small: Viva Sistema New Jersey June 2014 In this monthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lead article, Marshall Marcus writes compellingly about imagination and its uses. It seems to me that often, we in the Sistema-inspired movement are abundantly imaginative about how to teach children what eighth notes are, how to find metaphors for proper bow hold, how to include shy children and redirect disruptive ones. We are sometimes less imaginative about how we seek support, which is really a question of how and where we see ourselves within our social environments. Marshall is writing about the very biggest of big-picture thinking. I think the spirit of creative self-invention is equally useful at the other end of the spectrum, where programs are small and just evolving. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been privileged recently to work with one such imaginative experiment in New Jersey, where five small programs that developed independently have decided to create an alliance. No one knows exactly what this alliance could or should look like. We do know that in a state charac85

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terized by fierce extremes of wealth and poverty, students in all our programs struggle with the same acute problems. By coming together, the programs can share precious resources, create a profusion of peer learning opportunities among teachers, and command public attention. And more, they bring their supporters into the alliance. The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, the New Jersey Youth Orchestra, the Wharton Community Music School, the school district of Orange, the municipal dignitaries of Union City, and the Geraldine Dodge Foundation—suddenly all are partners in this common endeavor. Our first common project culminates this month with a joint concert by the students of all five programs. The performance will feature Dave Rimelis’s spirited mash-up of the Ode To Joy and Bob Marley’s “ Three Little Birds” (I have to think that both Bob and Ludwig would have approved). Of course, many U.S./Canadian programs have created such seminarios, to joyful and often transformative effect. What’s distinctive about this one is that the five programs are not only collaborating on a common concert; they are committed to building a new entity of affiliation. It’s not developmental thinking on the grand Venezuelan scale. But it’s a step in that direction. Viva Sistema New Jersey! •

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The Many Languages of Song July 2014 In the town of Sfantu Gheorghe, deep in the Transylvanian mountains of Romania, children were singing last week. “I’ve got music in my soul!” they sang. And: “Henehene ko ‘aka…” (it’s Hawaiian, about the contagious laughter of friendship). And: “Al shlosha d’varim...” (Hebrew, about justice and peace). The children of El Sistema Romania, which is actually called ((superar))—the name of the pan-national association of Sistema-inspired programs in Central and Eastern Europe is always punctuated with those sound-wave parentheses—sing in many languages. They sing with vigorous gestures and evident pleasure in the sounds, even if not with quite perfect comprehension of the meaning of the words. When I visited ((superar)) Romania in the course of a recent tour of European Sistema programs, I asked why the children don’t sing much in their own language. Director Elana Andrews told me, “Some of the children in this region speak Romanian; others speak Hungarian; others are Romany. There have been literally centuries of hostility between these ethnic groups.” The children 87

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have learned to distrust those who speak the language of the “other,” she said. To help them learn mutual trust, it’s best to develop new, shared languages of song. Two days later, I was in the mountains of Bosnia visiting Srebenica, the site of the 1995 genocide of Bosnian Muslims by Serbian military and paramilitary forces, during which 10,000 people died in two days. In this town, in the desolate schoolroom that is the site of ((superar)) Bosnia, we heard Bosnian Muslim children singing side by side with the children of Bosnian Serbs. Unimaginable. But they were trying to help us with that. “Imagine all the people...,” they sang. Here, too, I was told that the children’s ethnic languages are avoided. Here, too, they sing “Hene hene ko ‘aka”. And they sing “Un poquito le-lo-la,” even adding some timid hand gestures. Observing programs in Central Europe, I didn’t usually encounter vastnesses of ethnic hostility so great that the children’s very languages were tripwires for trouble. But in every city, I did hear children as young as five singing in seven or eight or ten languages. It was a powerful reminder that Sistema choruses can literally expand children’s communicative universes by helping them come to know and love the manifold musics of the languages of the world. •

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Com1petition and Collaboration: a Sistema Inquiry August 2014 Traveling in Europe in recent weeks, I found World Cup-mania everywhere. And I saw its undeniable power: to unite antagonistic ethnicities (Bosnian Muslims and Serbs said they felt like countrymen for the very first time as they rooted together for the Bosnian team); to lift smaller countriesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; self-esteem (Costa Rica, Belgium, Rwanda); to focus the attention of millions upon teams playing together with breathtaking skill. The World Cup seemed to be a kind of lingua franca. This is interesting for us in the El Sistema-inspired movement. After all, we dare to dream of El Sistema as a potential lingua franca, transcending ethnic enmities, lifting the self-esteem of communities and countries, and focusing attention upon ensembles who play together with breathtaking artistry around the world. Formulating this similarity between the two phenomena has me thinking about the fundamental difference between them. The World Cup is about winning and losing. It is a series of variations on a single themeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the drama of victory and defeat.

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The El Sistema vision is exactly not about winning and losing; it’s about mutual success. The goal of an orchestra is never to defeat another orchestra. The goal of an orchestra is to create beauty together, as brilliantly and collaboratively as possible. So the question arises: how does competition— which seems an inescapable part of the human condition—live comfortably within El Sistema? We all know that the words “Can you do it better than they did it?” tend to infuse a group of young players with an extra jolt of energy. And Sistema kids routinely compete hard to get into a núcleo’s top orchestra, or a regional ensemble, or a national orchestra. But El Sistema’s kind of competitiveness seems closer to the word’s etymology—literally, “striving in common with”—than to the “striving against,” win/ lose model of team sports. Cultivating a competitive spirit that drives aspiration but co-exists easily with cooperative effort and celebration of others’ achievements—is this actually possible? I don’t know the answer. But it’s an important question. I remember asking a 15-year-old percussionist in the Sistema program in Guadalajara, Mexico, “What message could I take from you to El Sistema kids in the U.S. and Canada?” He answered, “That we are the best.” With no hesitation, he added, “And that you can be too.” In the World Cup, that’s an utter contradiction in terms. In El Sistema—possible. 90

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Awakening Sensibility, Cultivating Artistry September 2014 During a visit last month to “Orquestrando a Vida,” a venerable Sistema-inspired núcleo in Campos, Brazil, I repeatedly heard teachers and students quoting Roberto Zambrano, the Venezuelan núcleo director who has been a master teacher and guide for the work in Campos. “What is the main thing you have learned from Roberto?” I asked Marcos, a young conductor in the program. He thought for a moment and then said: “When he conducts the orchestra, our pianissimo is better!” I had expected him to say something like “We play more skillfully” or “We work harder together”—something related to the social or technical dimensions of Sistema training. But Marcos went straight to a dimension that I think of as fundamentally aesthetic. An orchestra can play fortissimo simply by increasing its collective vigor. But it can play a truly beautiful pianissimo only if its members are attending to artistic expressiveness. This has me thinking about aesthetic experience in Sistema-inspired programs in general. The experience

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of responding expressively to great music is something many of us spent our formative years cultivating. But now, in our El Sistema work, we are deeply occupied with immersive ensemble training in the service of two goals: imparting the musical skills that will give children self-confidence and developing the social skills they will need to succeed in collaborative endeavor. I wonder if, in the press of this mission for transformation, we sometimes forget to cultivate the aesthetic aspect of our students’ learning. It’s easy to do because the social mission is so urgent and the issue of technique so immediate. But I think it is also vital, in this work, to reach again and again toward that particular realm of human experience we call aesthetic—a realm of being in expressive, personal, emotional relation to art. We want our children to become citizens. An essential part of that process is nurturing and educating the human inclination towards artistry—what Maestro Abreu has called “the awakening of sensibility.” The Sistema inquiry includes not only the electrifying vitality of the fortissimo that comes of leaning into musical energy together and the thrill of the presto that comes of technical accomplishment but also the personal aesthetic awakening into the poignancy, mystery and grace that lies waiting in a pianissimo. •

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A Profusion of Pedagogies October 2014 In this issue, our guest writers explore the question of adapting Suzuki and Dalcroze methods for El Sistema-inspired programs. Sistemaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s compatibility with various pedagogies is a much-discussed issue among music educators, who sometimes see Sistema as a pedagogy in competition with others. But the fact is that El Sistema has proven to be capacious in this regard: it can absorb many pedagogical approaches because it is a set of principles, of fundamental assumptions and understandings, rather than a strict pedagogy. In traveling widely to observe El Sistema programs in different countries, I have had the occasion to see children playing Orff instruments in Sistema Denmark; children dancing with Dalcroze-esque movements in Sistema Italy; in many places, children playing Suzuki repertoire; and even, in Sistema Bosnia, a child having an almost-individual piano lesson while another child played accordion and seven fascinated children watched and listened. (This lastâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;very simply, because those were the only instruments around. Most of this young Sistema programâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work is choral.) In ev93

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ery case, the particular pedagogy in play seemed to synchronize naturally with a Sistema learning environment and ethos of inclusion and group activity. The intersection of El Sistema with Suzuki is especially interesting because the Suzuki method has its origins in the quest of Shin’ishi Suzuki to transform the lives of Japanese children devastated by the Second World War. Suzuki’s writings are sometimes strikingly resonant with those of Maestro Abreu. “I want to make good citizens,” he wrote. “If a child hears fine music from the day of his birth, and learns to play it himself, he acquires a beautiful heart.” Suzuki believed strongly that music has the power to expand people’s emotional sensibilities, and he saw comprehensive musical education as a way to restore Japanese children’s sense of wholeness, self-confidence, and connection with others. Including Suzuki methods within Sistema teaching, therefore, is really honoring a long-standing resonance. In general, I think that teaching artists who adapt Suzuki, Dalcroze or other pedagogies to Sistema environments are examples of the flexibility that characterizes the best Sistema-inspired teaching. We’re making small and large adaptations all the time, searching for what works best in specific situations, and adapting accordingly. By absorbing the best of many pedagogies, we’re giving them new vitality as part of the inclusive, vigorous, and joyful learning environment that is El Sistema. 94

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Seminarios Are For Teachers Too November 2014 “Peer-to-peer learning,” that staple of every El Sistema Fundamentals list and powerful ambient energy in every El Sistema learning environment, is not just for kids. Teachers who work together or in similar endeavors can be uniquely effective teachers for one another. This issue of The Ensemble arrives just as Sistema colleagues around the world are heading home from a particularly immersive peer-to-peer learning experience: the International Sistema Teachers’ Conference hosted by Sistema Scotland. The conference was described as “shaped for teachers by teachers,” and I can’t imagine such a project unfolding in a more appropriate place; Sistema Scotland’s “Big Noise” program is seasoned in peer-to-peer learning. During its early stages, founder/director Nicola Killean and her staff sought counsel from Venezuelan Sistema leaders, and in recent years they have been generous in turn, lending their insights to beginning programs around the world. Our great model for collegial generosity is El Sistema Venezuela, where teachers’ zeal to learn from one 95

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another propels them across cities, regions and even the country on a regular basis to congregate, exchange experiences, and provide mutual infusions of support. The exceptional camaraderie among Sistema teachers in Venezuela is a key source of their exceptional stamina. Even in El Sistema’s most academic institution, the Simon Bolivar Conservatory, the spirit of camaraderie often trumps the competitive energy that tends to arise in such places. Valdemar Rodriguez has spoken of the conscious decision by Conservatory teachers to minimize competitiveness about methods. “In that way,” he says, “we grow as people. And our students play more beautifully.” I think that teachers and administrators in the North American Sistema movement are actually hungry for peer learning—witness the increasing number of regional seminarios that are flourishing as a result of informal partnerships between programs. Almost always, the impulse to create a seminario stems from teachers’ desires to come together for peer learning, as well as to bring their students together for the same purpose. But sometimes the logistical challenges of making it work for the kids are so great that teachers aren’t able to make it work equally well for themselves. It’s a challenge worth attending to. No one can help a Sistema teacher quite as much, or in quite the same way, as another Sistema teacher. •

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Organizational Inclusion December 2014 In this issue, we highlight El Sistema’s manifold vitality in Brazil and consider two different ways that programs interpret and exemplify the goal of “social inclusion.” There is a third way to think about social inclusion: in terms of organizations rather than people, joining forces with other music education projects to serve an entire community. Issues of inclusion and exclusion can make the difference between success and failure for organizations as well as for individuals. For a model of ambitious organizational inclusion, we need look no further than Venezuela’s neighbor Colombia, where the Sistema program, Batuta (“baton”), has, from its inception, coexisted with a number of music education initiatives. Batuta’s leaders decided early on to cast a wide net of partnership. “What I would emphasize about Batuta, and Colombian music education in general, is that it’s all about collaboration and networks,” says Juan Felipe Molano, the former director of Batuta’s top youth orchestra and now the conductor of YOLA. “There’s room for the different approaches of different organizations to meet various specific needs.”

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In Medellín, the mostly federally-funded Batuta coexists with a venerable municipal program, La Red. The programs share the basic goal of socially-oriented music education, but there’s general agreement that Batuta’s work is especially effective among the city’s poorest, most dispossessed populations. And in Cali, there are at least ten organizations bringing ensemble music to underserved children. “Of course they fight sometimes; that’s human nature,” says Juan Felipe. “But they are always trying to connect—with each other and with the kids.” In Cali, that determination yielded dramatic results in 2009, when, to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the national Air Force, all the organizations in the city produced a joint concert of seven hundred children and young people in an airplane hangar. In the words of Juan Antonio Cuellar, a former director of Batuta: “No one institution knows the whole truth. We need to keep building coalitions among all the public and private entities that are working for the protection of children through music.” And Abreu consistently tells us: “In North America, you already have so much!” Clearly, strength lies in practicing effective organizational inclusion. •

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Geoff Baker’s Book January 2015 The publication of the book Orchestrating Venezuela’s Youth, by Geoffrey Baker, has caused a stir in the El Sistema world. We have a few thoughts to add about this public attack on Venezuela’s El Sistema. Baker presents his views as objective research. But he quotes only people who have negative views of El Sistema, and most of his sources are anonymous, making them unverifiable—and verifiability is a hallmark of objective research. Further, he chooses not to present the other side of any of his arguments against El Sistema. He has refused to speak to Maestro Abreu or to any Sistema leaders. He condemns orchestras in general as oppressive and symphonic art music in Latin America as colonialist. Baker dedicates a good deal of his book to a character attack on Maestro Abreu, accusing him of multiple evils. We are not surprised that in the volatile and hyper-political environment of Venezuela, Abreu has made enemies—and we are not surprised that these enemies were happy to air their grudges for anonymous publication. We are surprised that an author would present them as objective research.

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Baker calls his book a critique, but we see it as 330 pages of unrelenting denunciation. A true critique offers context and has a constructive intent, even when it reports what isn’t working. Fundamusical Executive Director Eduardo Mendez says that balanced critiques of El Sistema are welcome contributions to the field. Any forty-year-old organization involving half a million children is bound to have made mistakes along the way and to have problems that need to be thoughtfully addressed. It’s a shame that this book’s potential usefulness is lost in a fire-hose spray of negativity. We recommend that colleagues in the field not give this hectoring, accusatory book more energy than it deserves. We have included links to published reviews of and responses to the book. New York Times: http://tinyurl.com/mvjd4yc Los Angeles Times: http://tinyurl.com/magwg5 Blogpost by Reynaldo Trombetta (from Venezuela), Communications Director of In Harmony England: http://tinyurl. com/lu3td9t Tricia’s review in Classical Music Magazine UK: http://tinyurl. com/mv6ruzx Blogpost by Jonathan Govias: http://tinyurl.com/ lbob5r3 •

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Tapping Our Studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Cultural Heritages February 2015 Our lead article this month highlights the challenges and opportunities, for Sistema-inspired programs, of serving communities with rich and vital ethnic music traditions of their own. Embracing those traditions wherever they exist, and helping students develop musical skills inside them, is an essential part of Sistema work. In Brazil, we heard kids in Sistema-inspired programs move effortlessly from Mozart to samba. In Colombia, we saw written Sistema arrangements of music in the folkloric traditions of various regions. In Mexico and California, some nĂşcleos include mariachi in their repertoires. In Venezuela, we heard cuatro ensembles alongside orchestras and choirs singing both joropo music and Latin motets. All of which leads me to wonder, where are our communitiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; ethnic musical traditions? Of course, with our melting pot populations, we encompass students from literally hundreds of ethnic traditions. But most of them grow up with only a dim idea, if any, of their musical heritages; these traditions 103

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tend to be obscured by the avalanche of commercial pop music that blankets our students’ daily lives. The blues, jazz and gospel of African-American traditions; the many forms of Latin American traditional dance music; instrumental and choral traditions such as bluegrass, zydeco, and Appalachian folk, the Great American Songbook of classic musical theater and jazz standards—these are all background, at best, in the audio universe of our students, replaced by a ubiquitous soundtrack of hip hop, top forties pop, and Disney songs. This is not to say that this music is without musical merit, but it does mean that with the important exception of gospel-oriented church music, there are few ways for children to make personal connections to the music of their ethnic heritages. I think that whenever possible, it’s important for Sistema programs to bridge this gap and include in their repertoires music from one or more of their students’ ethnic heritages. Just as classical music enriches children’s expressive and emotional experience, so can the classic music of other traditions enrich a child’s palette of sounds and feelings. And if, in the process, her sense of the value in her own musical lineage is strengthened, that’s a benefit that goes to the heart of the Sistema project. •

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Celebrating 40 Years of El Sistema Venezuela March 2015 Dear Readers of The Ensemble, We wished you were there! We felt honored to be present at El Sistema’s 40th anniversary concert in Caracas on February 8th. It was highly celebratory—we had expected that—but also profoundly moving in ways we never anticipated. The 2200-seat Teresa Carreño theater was filled to capacity, and on the stage, which had been extended to football-field proportions, were 1500 musicians. (No, that’s not a misprint.) The official program consisted of works by two revered Venezuelan composers, Inocente Carreño and Antonio Estévez, and the 4th movement of Beethoven’s Ninth with “Ode to Joy” finale. But the concert was not only about size and sound. The most extraordinary thing about it was the actual composition of the orchestra. This became noticeable as early as the orchestra members’ entrances, after the choristers had taken their places on the risers in the back. The first players to appear were tiny, maybe 8 years old; their feet swung freely 105

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when they sat down. Then the oldest players entered, people in their sixties who were the founders, with Maestro Abreu, of the original youth orchestra in 1975. Each of them sat down next to a small child. And then came everyone else, players and conductors and directors and even office workers from the second and third and fourth Sistema generations, from all across the country. It seemed that just by watching these entrances, we were seeing the story of El Sistema unfold across time and space. The encores brought this symbolic messaging to new heights, with the venerable núcleo director Gregory Carreño, handicapped from a decades-ago car accident, on the podium, and Dudamel playing violin—sitting next to an 8-year-old concertmaster. It was as though El Sistema were saying, “If you want to know our ‘ basic principles,’ just look how we have put this orchestra together. Every decision we have made is a message about who we are.” The clear and potent message was inclusion: people of all ages, from all regions, playing together, mentoring and helping one another, honoring experience and celebrating youth. Thank you, El Sistema, for this 40th birthday reminder to us all. •

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Pursuing Group Creativity April 2015 Etienne Abelin’s column about Soundpainting in this month’s issue has me thinking about the question of creative self-expression in relation to musical performance—and particularly in relation to El Sistema. Soundpainting offers instrumentalists and singers the opportunity to imagine and realize their own musical ideas on the spot. This adds a powerful dimension to the experience of young musicians-in-process, and I can easily imagine that Soundpainting sessions in Sistema-inspired programs could provide children with a lively way to exercise their musical imaginations. The idea will resonate with many teaching artists in the U.S. and Canada who have been experimenting with various ways of introducing improvisation and composition into the Sistema curriculum to encourage individual creative expression. El Sistema introduces another dimension of creativity: the possibility of group creative expression. There’s not much research about this phenomenon, but Sistema is perfectly positioned to explore it, since the ensemble, rather than the soloist, is the core artistic agent. Group creative expression can occur in improvi-

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satory settings like Soundpaintings, but it is also central to the work of interpreting the worldwide repertoire of ensemble masterworks. The Venezuelan Sistema has shown us that group creativity within interpretive performance is possible; we need look no further than the Simón Bolívar Orchestra for proof. That ensemble did not suddenly find its exuberant, no-holds-barred identity at the London Proms in 2007; the orchestra members had been creating it together for years. David Walters, a recording engineer for the Dorian label who worked on the first SBYOV recordings in the 1990’s, told me, “ They loved to laugh and dance, and that was the way they played.” The group’s ebullient expressivity developed naturally through the process of rehearsing and performing in a context of close personal connection. How does group creativity develop? How can we nurture it? And can the personal and social connections between members of Sistema ensembles help to produce collective creative expression? El Sistema is the perfect laboratory for the exploration of these questions. I’m convinced that U.S. and Canadian Sistema ensembles can develop expressive identities as whole-hearted and distinctive as those of our Venezuelan mentors. •

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Defining “Community” May 2015 “Community ” can be a blurry word in our day and age. Politicians from the far right to the far left routinely trot it out to support their positions. As a noun, the word can be appended to anything—from your neighborhood playground community to “the Star Alliance community”—to lend it a non-specific warm glow. As an adjective, it’s automatically likable: who could argue against the value of community playgrounds, or input, or leaders? In the world of El Sistema, the idea of community is deeply embedded in our primary mission—not only because the musical ensemble is a metaphor for a harmonious community, but also because the communities of our students are essential to our transformational goals. Across the world, Sistema programs prioritize “community involvement” in mission statements. It’s important, therefore, to insist on specificity about what we mean. Both articles in this month’s Ensemble are instructively specific in this regard. In Diane Kline’s column on El Sistema Somerville, Massachusetts, the focus is a single ensemble that has evolved since the program

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on began; in Karen Zorn’s piece about Elkhart County, Indiana, it’s on a coalition of interests gathering to shape and launch a program. But it’s clear that in both places, program leaders and organizers have a clear understanding of what they mean by “community” in relation to El Sistema. There’s no one right answer about how El Sistema involvement with community should look; it can develop in as many ways as there are programs. It can mean parent potluck dinners or regular neighborhood performances, steps-of-the-statehouse rallies or institutional partnerships. It’s important for us to be both bold and specific about what it means. We need to be specific about whom we’re trying to reach; is it simply our students’ parents and neighbors, or is it also their schools, churches, grocery stores and clinics, maybe even the jails where they may have relatives? Engagement is real only when it’s specific. And we need to be bold in how we understand what engagement means. At its best, El Sistema engagement with community means the slow and patient process of hearing what feels urgent in the lives of those communities and integrating that understanding into our work. El Sistema is a great laboratory for experimenting with how to take “community involvement ” from intentional glow to specific and vivid reality. •

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Corporate Social Responsibility, in Action in the Philippines June 2015 On a corridor wall of the corporate building in Pasig City, Manila, where the Philippine El Sistema center is located, there is a large plaque with a portrait of Eugenio Lopez. Lopez was a prominent 20th-century industrialist and founder of one of the largest conglomerates in the Philippines, the Lopez Group of Companies. The plaque is engraved with this quote from Eugenio: â&#x20AC;&#x153;A commercial firm which can hardly make both ends meet, but which gives service and real satisfaction to the community, is in my estimation more successful than a multi-million dollar corporation which reaps huge profits and then keeps them to itself, completely neglecting the community which sustains its life.â&#x20AC;? Can you imagine a U.S. corporation signing onto this remarkably progressive credo? As noted in our News section this month, the concept of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) is evolving among U.S. businesses. But itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s far from being a clear vision. In contrast, generations of Lopez leaders have been absolutely clear about their community obligations and 111

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social mission. The current generation supports an array of social causes including truancy reduction, educational reform, child welfare, and environmentalism and sustains a robust commitment to the Sistema program, Ang Misyon. I had the opportunity last month to experience Ang Misyon firsthand on an observation-cum-advocacy trip with Jamie Bernstein. Founded by Federico “Piki” Lopez (grandson of Eugenio) and pianist Jovianney Emmanuel Cruz, it’s grown quickly to include hundreds of children in eleven satellites across the country; we heard children playing symphonic and band music in a provincial ghetto, a squatters’ colony, and a convent orphanage (we didn’t make it to the newest site, on Talim Island in Laguna de Bay, which takes two hours to reach by motorboat…if the weather is good). There is a “Prep Club” training orchestra and a national Sistema orchestra that plays with the verve and ambition of a Venezuelan youth orchestra. “You can feel the strength of this idea,” Piki Lopez told me. “It touches the heart. Our impoverished communities need this kind of transformation.” It’s a social commitment of a whole different order from burnishing a corporate image or building a brand—which are our business leaders’ accustomed ways of imagining community connection. We need to help them imagine bigger and to feel “the strength of this idea.” 112

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Side By Side By Side, in Sweden July 2015 “Vi är här….here we are…singing side by side”...These words are from an anthem celebrating the “Side By Side Summer Camp” in Gothenburg, Sweden, convened by El Sistema Sweden in June. In the world of El Sistema, we hear the “side by side” rallying cry just about everywhere. In Sweden we found the familiar joyful, ambitious feel: several thousand children and several hundred teachers accomplishing energetic high-speed learning. But we found some surprises, too. This gathering took the word “inclusion” to more and deeper levels than any seminario we’ve experienced. First: the children’s camp included not only Sistema kids from across Sweden and from other countries but also some non-Sistema Swedish children and young people who study music within Sweden’s long-established system of Culture Schools. So kids from very different learning contexts were rehearsing and performing side by side every day. Second, the advanced orchestra performed side by side with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, under Venezuelan maestro Josh dos Santos’ baton.

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The choral group took inclusion to a third step, with special-needs children singing side by side. And more: the professional Swedish Chamber Choir was embedded with the kids, absolutely side by side in every song. By adding these fine singers’ harmonic depth and dynamism, the kids could hear themselves as part of a powerful sound and feel indelibly included in their city’s musical life. Inclusion went farther still. Multiple threads throughout the proceedings included a “Young Leaders” seminar and a Teaching Artists Forum, which brought together Swedish Sistema and non- Sistema teachers. Side by side, they discussed what they might learn from one another. When Sistema programs in the U.S. and Canada create seminarios, we tend to bring Sistema programs together. There’s a real need for such gatherings: they create solidarity, cohesion and invigorated purpose for students and teachers alike. But I’m thinking it could also be powerful for our Sistema programs to convene more inclusive gatherings now and then—where kids and teachers from varying musical environments can explore their differences and similarities. Extending the spirit of “Side By Side” to include those outside of Sistema but resonant with its ideals could create valuable widening circles of teaching and learning. •

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Are We Really Teaching Artistry? August 2015 “In our Sistema-inspired programs, how often do we prioritize accessing our students’ sense of wonder about a particular piece of music?” This provocative question was put to me last week by Xochitl Tafoya, director of the iCAN Music Program in Santa Barbara, CA. Xochitl was in New York as one of fourteen participants—the only Sistema-affiliated one—attending an intensive Advanced Teaching Artists’ Training sponsored by Lincoln Center Education. She was struck by what she sees as the unexplored potential of teaching artistry for Sistema-inspired programs in the U.S. and Canada. Many teachers in our programs use the term “teaching artist” to capture their professional identities as both performing artists and educators. But the definition of teaching artistry, as the field has developed over several decades, is considerably richer and more complex than that. From the powerful vantage point of their dual identities, teaching artists work in many ways to help students make personally meaningful connections with 115

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works of art. In a word (or two), teaching artists engage in aesthetic education. In the world of El Sistema, we tend to focus on other goals—specifically, the development of musical skills in a way that also develops social and psychological skills. Of course we care tremendously that our students engage in music with passion and expressivity. But that’s not quite the same thing as helping each student explore the personal resonance of a musical work of art. Xochitl’s insights seem a valuable reminder to our field about what teaching artistry could add to Sistema-inspired work. In particular, she suggested making a priority of helping kids develop meaningful relationships with the pieces they play. “Can we make time and space for kids to simply experience a piece first, maybe through listening creatively and kinesthetically and reflecting?” she asked. “To say: ‘What is magical about this piece, for you?’” She also focused on the importance of student-based inquiry, citing her background in Montessori and Orff pedagogies. “On a day-to-day, week-toweek basis,” she said, “do we really encourage kids to ask questions? Can we do more to let our students’ curiosity drive their learning? Yes, I think we can.” The field of teaching artistry is flourishing these days. I agree that it has much to teach us about how to help our students develop, in the Maestro’s words, “the aesthetic fiber of their humanity.” 116 •

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Challenging Comfort Zones at Summer Camp September 2015 “Do we have to rehearse again?” This question was posed one evening by a few campers at the El Sistema New Jersey Alliance summer camp, which had its inaugural session this summer. The 80-plus campers, who hailed from five different Sistema programs in cities across New Jersey, were nearing the end of the second day of the three-day camp. They had already had two vigorous three-hour rehearsals for the end-of-camp concert— and they had also enjoyed the splendors of the locale by swimming, boating, and hiking. Rehearse again? They wanted to hang out by the lake. But rehearse they did. Some of the teachers later wondered whether it would have been better to simply let them relax in nature, an experience their urban environments don’t often allow. But camp orchestra conductor Samuel Marchan, a Union City Music Project teacher who grew up in El Sistema Venezuela, gently offered a different perspective. “The nature setting was great, and I’m so glad we could give it to them,” he said, “but the main thing here is for them to set a high mu117

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sical goal and find out that through working really hard together, they can achieve something they never knew they could.” After all, he reminded us, the kids weren’t familiar with the new expectations. “It’s okay to ask kids to stretch outside of their comfort zones,” he said, “as long as we do it with kindness and care.” On the last camp day, I watched Alysia Lee, the founder/director of Sister Cities Girlchoir in Camden, end her campers’ final rehearsal by asking, “ When did you learn this music?” “Yesterday!” they answered. “And when are you performing it?” responded Alysia. “Today!” “Are you proud of yourselves?” “Yesssss!!” they shouted. Our guest columnist this month writes of how students from New York City Sistema programs, on a recent trip to Caracas, rehearsed many hours a day with their Venezuelan peers—and found it exciting. Our Venezuelan exemplars consistently remind us that challenging comfort zones and raising expectations is sometimes essential to our project. I’m imagining that next year at the ESNJA camp, the “Do we have to...?” question might be answered by fellow campers, instead of by teachers, as follows: “Yesssss!!” •

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Wanderlust, El Sistema Style October 2015 Summer 2015 was a peripatetic season for Sistema programs: kids were crossing cities, states, and even oceans to make music with each other. As our feature article makes clear, these “seminarios” or “encuentros,” as Venezuelans call them, are more than fun holiday excursions; they are seminal experiences of musical intensity and social bonding. Milan, Italy was the scene this past August of perhaps the most ambitious such gathering ever—ambitious not in total number of participants (200), but in the sheer number of countries they came from (26!). The occasion was the Sistema Europe Youth Orchestra summer camp, which coincided for a week with a historic La Scala residency of six top ensembles from El Sistema Venezuela. At the summer camp, young musicians from all corners of Europe dove into long, rigorous rehearsals of no fewer than eleven masterworks, ranging from Shostakovich’s Festival Overture and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony to Marquez’s Danzon No. 2 and Bernstein’s Mambo. The rigor of this repertoire set the bar of musical ambition almost inconceivably high—but they 119

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reached it. Their week ended with a final concert in a famous hall, a rehearsal with Gustavo Dudamel, and a side-by-side performance at La Scala with the Youth Orchestra of Caracas. International youth orchestras have long been a way for young musicians to join forces and create bonds across cultures. But an international Sistema ensemble is something new: children and young people who are there not by virtue of family status, private lessons or conservatory training but because they have gathered musical strength and social skills through ensemble learning. These young people come together already practiced in the inclusive, empathic habits of heart and mind nurtured in Sistema learning environments. They create a sonic grandeur of which they never knew they were capable. And they discover that the El Sistema project extends far beyond their núcleos. Travel is expensive. It’s a challenge to find funding for taking kids on trips to play with peers else-where. But I would suggest that when it’s doable, it’s worth the effort. It doesn’t have to be international; uniting programs across a state or even a city can be just as effective. Seminarios of every scope and size can powerfully boost the learning that goes on in Sistema programs the rest of the year. •

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Virtuosity of the Heart November 2015 Marshall Marcus, the President of Sistema Europe, once said to us that there are two kinds of orchestral virtuosity. The one we’re most familiar with is virtuosity of technique, long the highest standard of the orchestra world. “But the Simón Bolívar and other great orchestras of the Venezuelan Sistema,” he said, “have taught us about another kind: virtuosity of communication. They specialize in a truly virtuosic ability to communicate emotionally and passionately through music.” As I reflect on the conversations about Take A Stand’s initiative to form a national Sistema youth orchestra, I’m thinking about Marshall’s insight. Conference participants discussed how the process of forming the orchestra should balance Sistema’s core goals of excellence and inclusion with alternatives that ranged from prioritizing children with the most dramatic life-difficulty stories to prioritizing musical technique and creating a knock-their-socks-off ensemble. Neither extreme seems right for us. To lead with social development drama would detract from the musical focus of the endeavor. On the other hand, we can’t aim for sheer 121

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technical brilliance, since in our young field, most programs’ oldest students are middle-schoolers. But we don’t have to abandon the idea of virtuosity entirely. Our students are already learning that performing is about reaching audiences with expressivity and passion. So what we can do, even at this early developmental stage, is to prioritize our kids’ creative capacity for musical communication. I vividly recall a performance by the Youth Orchestra of Colombia in which the kids arrived onstage with a speedy, choreographed precision and launched into their first piece immediately, before they sat down—as though they just couldn’t wait to play for us. I don’t remember whether they played perfectly; what I remember is being exhilarated by the hit of their feeling about the music. The process of creating a national orchestra represents an important step for the U.S./Canadian Sistema movement; it’s a key moment in defining our identity as a national field. Suppose we were to adopt the goal of creating an orchestra that is about the virtuosity of communication—making that a guiding priority for choices about selection, preparation, repertoire, and the nature of the performance events? Building a National Sistema Orchestra of the United States that is virtuosic in communication: we could do that. •

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El Sistema: Practice Anchored in Beauty December 2015 I am haunted this week by a phrase from an Op Ed piece in the November 21st New York Times by columnist Roger Cohen. “Paris has placed its chips on beauty,” he writes, “a gamble of course, because beauty invites destruction from those who would subjugate rather than uplift the human spirit.” He goes on to evoke, in moving detail, the particular symbolic significance of Paris for all who care about enlightenment, both aesthetic and philosophical. Paris has placed its chips on beauty. For many centuries, it has been a beacon of the tangible and spiritual loveliness humans are capable of creating through art, music, architecture, fashion, cuisine. And one consequence of that is vulnerability. “Beauty invites destruction,” in Mr. Cohen’s words. The metaphor haunts, because El Sistema, more than any educational enterprise I’ve ever known, places its chips on beauty. Beauty is not simply a by-product of the ensemble music learning that is El Sistema’s most fundamental practice. It is a crucial aspect of the learn123

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ing experience itself because within the very language of musical art lies the potential for emotional growth. Playing beautiful music can be a transformative exercise in the life of feeling, expanding our capacity to express deep feelings and even to feel deeply. We experience all of our human emotions transmuted into the forms of beauty. To play beautiful music together is to intensify feelings of human connection. In El Sistema, children and young people are continually engaged in turning feeling into beauty through an endeavor that involves continuous connection with others. They grow up within that place of shared connection, and it nourishes the growth of their habits of mind and heart, day after day and year after year. So in placing our chips on beauty, we are also placing our chips on empathy. We are placing our chips on compassion. Certainly, we’re vulnerable to the cynicism of pessimists. The research tool may never be invented that provides conclusive proof for a correlation between the experience of musical beauty and the capacity for empathic feeling. Still, we know what we know—not only through our own experience, but also through watching the children of El Sistema discover new ways of feeling through making music together. Beauty may not save the world, but it means the world to each child we save. That’s all we’ve got. It’s enough. 124

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El Sistema and “Community Music” January 2016 I attended a conference last month in Bressanone, Italy, and here are a few of the phrases I heard from various speakers and attendees over the course of two days: “claiming artistic citizenship”…“through music, helping to solve pressing social problems”…“teaching music for serious social change”…“empowering people through music.” You’re thinking, perhaps, that this was an El Sistema conference? It was not—although El Sistema was given considerable attention. It was a conference on community music. The mostly-European participants provided a bracing reminder that the understanding of music education as a potential force for social change is not a concept unique to El Sistema but an ideal that grounds many diverse initiatives for music and arts education. In particular, it helps to ground the field of community music, which in Europe, as in the U.S. and Canada, has long been focused on bringing music learning and participation opportunities to communities with lim127

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ited or no access to these activities. Community music programs provide music lessons and sometimes ensemble opportunities to children, adults, and senior citizens. Their aim is to provide an inclusive alternative to what one conference speaker called “the sorting machine” of conservatories and some school music programs—the mechanisms that draw distinctions between “talented” and “untalented” students, and that concentrate on nurturing the former. At the Bressanone conference, it was clear that longtime “CM” practitioners in Europe view El Sistema with interest but also with wariness. Some are concerned about competition for scarce philanthropic dollars. And some question how a classical-based model developed in Latin America can be relevant to European contexts. But as the conference proceeded, what was most striking was how much we all had in common. I came away surer than ever that El Sistema is a form of community music. It’s one that concentrates on the most radically underserved populations and is grounded in the particular practices of immersive ensemble and peer learning. But its fundamental assumptions and goals are deeply shared with community music endeavors of many models, in many places. Possible New Year’s resolution: let’s make, or strengthen, connections with local community music programs. Surely, there is powerful potential synergy here. •

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Ethnic Traditions: An Inquiry February 2016 Our lead article this month highlights the challenges and opportunities, for Sistema-inspired programs, of serving communities with rich and vital ethnic music traditions of their own. Embracing those traditions wherever they exist, and helping students develop musical skills inside them, is an essential part of Sistema work. In Brazil, we heard kids in Sistema-inspired programs move effortlessly from Mozart to samba. In Colombia, we saw written Sistema arrangements of music in the folkloric traditions of various regions. In Mexico and California, some nĂşcleos include mariachi in their repertoires. In Venezuela, we heard cuatro ensembles alongside orchestras and choirs singing both joropo music and Latin motets. All of which leads me to wonder: where are our communitiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; ethnic musical traditions? Of course, with our melting pot populations, we encompass students from literally hundreds of ethnic traditions. But most of them grow up with only a dim idea, if any, of their musical heritages; these traditions tend to be obscured by the avalanche of commercial 129

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pop music that blankets our students’ daily lives. The blues, jazz and gospel of African- American traditions; the many forms of Latin American traditional dance music; instrumental and choral traditions such as bluegrass, zydeco, and Appalachian folk, the Great American Songbook of classic musical theater and jazz standards—these are all background, at best, in the audio universe of our students replaced by a ubiquitous soundtrack of hip hop, top forties pop, and Disney songs. This is not to say that this music is without musical merit, but it does mean that with the important exception of gospel-oriented church music, there are few ways for children to make personal connections to the music of their ethnic heritages. I think that whenever possible, it’s important for Sistema programs to bridge this gap and include in their repertoires music from one or more of their students’ ethnic heritages. Just as classical music enriches children’s expressive and emotional experience, so can the classic music of other traditions enrich a child’s palette of sounds and feelings. And if, in the process, her sense of the value in her own musical lineage is strengthened, that’s a benefit that goes to the heart of the Sistema project. •

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El Sistema at the Superbowl March 2016 When the YOLA kids performed at the Superbowl Halftime Show, what did you see? I ask, because I’m struck by how differently people saw things during those thirteen globally watched minutes. Some saw an exhilarating, first-time-in-history conjunction of El Sistema students with pop mega-stars onstage before the largest television audience on earth. Others saw a disappointingly missed opportunity for the world to learn about El Sistema, since the kids and Gustavo Dudamel were never identified during the show. Some were delighted to see classical instruments and musicians included in a pop extravaganza. Others were upset that they weren’t playing classical music. So much for what viewers experienced. There’s another story here—a more important one, I think— about what the kids experienced. “The twelve televised minutes were the least important moments of the entire process, from an educational standpoint,” said Rebecca Sigel of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Education Department. “There was so much learning and growth beyond the glitz and glamor.” She cited the rehearsals 131

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and recording sessions in which the kids often had to summon both focus and flexibility to learn new parts instantaneously. “Our students were treated as professional artists throughout, and this upped their game,” said Rebecca’s colleague Gretchen Nielsen. Leni Boorstin, Director of Community Affairs, added, “Think of the challenges and life lessons of bringing all this back to their own community and orchestra!” So perhaps what the 116 million viewers saw is not as important as what the 41 young musicians learned. This perspective is especially important for those in the Sistema field (i.e., most of us) who don’t have the capacity to put students on primetime TV with superstars. Similar learning can be found in any experience that involves working with professional artists, focusing and adapting under pressure, and stretching beyond comfort zones to new genres and new kinds of expressivity. One recent example of such high-octane learning was the OrchKids’ participation in the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s Centennial concert; they joined for the finale of Ravel’s Bolero. The mass media will always want stories about hugging Beyoncé. But the real learning lies in stretching toward new levels of excellence and new levels of comradeship. Bravo YOLA, for keeping your eyes on the prize. •

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El Sistema and In-School Music Education April 2016 From zero to more than 70 arts teachers in the district in less than five years, the arts ed success story of the Chula Vista school district is mind-boggling. We are so used to seeing those numbers go in the opposite direction! The transformation of the district from arts-starved to arts-abundant was fueled by the unmistakable success of the El Sistema-inspired Community Opus Project and the vision of its leaders. The San Diego Youth Symphony (SDYS), which founded Opus and helped lead the district transformation, has set out to create a model for intensive partnership with the public school district. “For fullest impact,” says SDYS leader Dalouge Smith, “in-school and after-school music programs must work in complement.” For me, one of the most interesting questions about this model is how it’s possible to create “Sistemainflected” learning environments in an in-school framework. I talked about this with Dalouge and with Lauren Shelton, the district’s elementary coordinator for visual 133

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and performing arts. “When we created the pilot for the in-school program,” said Lauren, “the teachers were Opus teachers. So Sistema values were infused into the classroom from the very beginning.” She added that these values are also woven into the professional development for in-school music teachers. Intensity is one of those important Sistema values. “We think of intensity here as a multi-platform experience,” said Dalouge. “There is the in-school experience, plus the Opus experience, and for the most advanced kids, there’s the youth symphony. The intensity is in the compounded experience.” Parent and community involvement, they stressed, is one of the most important elements of Sistema practice, one that is infused throughout the district. “The Opus teachers are the leaders in showing how you as a music teacher can bring your community inside your classroom,” said Lauren. At the core is the ideal of access and equity. Lauren said that younger teachers often come fired up with the spirit of making social outcomes happen from music learning. “They say that here, they can actually do what they set out to do as teachers!” “We are on the brink of an arts education renaissance,” Dalouge added. “And arts educators are derelict if we are not engaged in the larger conversation about widening access. It’s big. And it’s happening.” •

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Developing Student Leaders May 2016 What does “maturity” in an El Sistema-inspired program look like? A first answer to this question might describe what it sounds like: in an ES-i program that has been around for a number of years, kids are likely to play and sing with far greater skill levels than do kids in more recently-formed programs. But maturity can also manifest itself in the breadth and depth of the way programs support the development of their students’ social skills. We saw a dramatic example of this on a recent visit to Baltimore’s OrchKids, founded in 2007. We were struck by the poise and confidence with which students spoke to us—and to large roomfuls of people. “We prioritize helping kids develop leadership skills and a feeling of empowerment,” said OrchKids Artistic Director Dan Trahey. “It starts in small ways, like learning to say ‘Thank you for coming to our concert’ or to shake adults’ hands and make strong eye contact. As they grow, we build on those experiences by giving them more and more ways to contribute to what happens here.” 135

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OrchKids students contribute to what happens there in a variety of ways. As in many programs, older kids are encouraged to mentor younger ones, both musically and socially. In addition, they’re also included in public advocacy and fundraising activities. When OrchKids leaders go to speak about the program to funders or politicians they often bring students with them and the kids are part of the pitch. “They learn about the reality of advocating for their art—that it’s hard, and also that it’s vital,” said Dan. In addition, more advanced students take on playing and teaching gigs as well as public speaking engagements. On the OrchKids website, there’s a “BOOK US!” tab: click on it, and you see a range of OrchKids ensembles you can hire to play for your event or to give workshops at your school. OrchKids’ gigs have included a TedX conference, pop star concerts, government events, and a Ravens game. While the income from these events helps to support program initiatives, Dan stressed that their most important aspect is that they give OrchKids students opportunities to develop the capacity for leadership and responsibility. “It’s really about having a voice,” he said. “The voice doesn’t have to come only through the instruments. It also comes through feeling empowered to have an impact, and to make a difference.” •

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Your Students: An Important Gift June 2016 A string octet from the Philippine Sistema-inspired program Ang Misyon is visiting the U.S. this month for its first “International Awareness and Education Tour.” Performing along with them is the program’s founder/ director, pianist Jovianney Emmanuel Cruz. I met these dedicated young musicians, and their colleagues in the Orchestra of Filipino Youth, in the Philippines last year. One of my most vivid memories is of standing with them in the wings of a cavernous theater watching Jovianney solo at the piano between orchestral numbers. They played Leonard Bernstein’s piano transcription of Aaron Copland’s Rodeo. At the end of the piece, Jovianney played the final low octave-crash so hard that he propelled himself off the bench—and I could feel the kids around me collectively jumping along with him. It was as though they were inhabiting the music by virtually inhabiting their teacher. This memory leads me to another one, of a recent Skype conversation I had with vocal teacher Daniel Soren at the Sistema-inspired program “Orquestrando 137

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a Vida” in Campos, Brazil. Daniel told me that every other year faculty members and guest professionals sing the lead roles in the annual opera production; in alternate years, the students sing the leads. He explained that while it’s important for kids to sing those roles, it’s equally important for them to hear professionals sing them. “The kids form the chorus, and so they stand onstage with the pros, experiencing our work, ” Daniel told me. “They hear the sound up close, and they feel it in their bodies. It gives them sonic models to emulate.” So here’s my question to teaching artists in the U.S. and Canada: do your students hear you perform often enough? I don’t mean the D scales and the “Go Tell Aunt Rhody’s” you play along with them—although those are certainly crucial in developing their sonic awareness. I mean the experience of hearing you play the music you play professionally and passionately, alone or with your colleagues. I think this sharing of your own sounds and skills is an essential element of teaching artistry, one that can contribute immensely to your students’ musical growth. But very often it gets skipped in the interest of maximum playing time for the children. We like to encourage our students to think of performing as an act of generosity, of sharing. Don’t forget to be generous with your own artistry. Your students are hungry to absorb, emulate, and internalize the music you love to make. 138

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Teaching Artistry: Teaching “Aliveness” July 2016 Many Sistema-inspired programs in the U.S., Canada, and elsewhere use the term “teaching artist” to describe their staff members. Even in the programs that don’t use this specific term, many teachers describe themselves as teaching artists, but I sense some fuzziness around the term. How, exactly, is a teaching artist different from an arts teacher? The question is particularly timely, because here in New York, the annual Teaching Artist Development Lab of Lincoln Center Education (LCE) is about to begin. The concept of teaching artistry was born at LCE forty-one years ago (coincidentally, it’s exactly as old as El Sistema). What skills will teaching artists be honing at Lincoln Center this July? Let’s start with the definition of teaching artistry offered by Eric Booth: “A teaching artist is a practicing artist who develops the skills, curiosities, and habits of mind of an educator, in order to achieve a wide variety of learning goals in, through, and about the arts, with a wide variety of learners.” A nicely capacious definition, 139

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if a little short on specificity. More specific definitions are provided by the seven “Purpose Threads” that will structure the learning of the LCE participants. One of these threads, about “skills development,” seems especially relevant to Sistema practitioners: “Going beyond technical, mechanical, and copycat learning, teaching artistry aspires to produce artistically alive people.” Artistic aliveness!—isn’t that the quality we value most in good Sistema ensembles? In the process of teaching skill mastery, good Sistema teachers prioritize awakening aliveness of many kinds. They model and evoke the excitement and richness of music-making for every aspect of experience—artistic, intellectual, emotional, and communal. That multi-dimensionality is what places Sistema teaching squarely in the tradition of teaching artistry. It’s an ambitious mission. Explaining the correct bow grip, drilling the E flat scale, refining the embouchure—these vital skill-building tasks do not always burst with opportunities to conjure artistic aliveness. But teaching artistry is an ongoing experiment in connecting art and aliveness. The beauty of the Sistema learning environment is that it, too, is capacious. There is time and space enough to both teach skills and explore ways that students can feel empowered to use these skills for their own expressive purposes. Sistema is an ideal arena for exploring the aliveness of music in students’ lives. 140

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Diversity and Inclusion: Orchestras Sound the Call August 2016 Diversity and Inclusion in Classical Music. Is it just a coincidence that this summer has seen gatherings devoted to this topic, on both sides of the Atlantic? In June, the League of American Orchestras made diversity the theme of its annual conference and convened a national “Diversity Forum” as part of it, dedicated to “Increasing Participation by Musicians from Underrepresented Communities.” In July, the Sphinx Organization sponsored a “Global Symposium on Diversity and Inclusion in Classical Music ” at the Southbank Centre in London. Coincidence, maybe. But also a sign that the classical music field has arrived at a new level of awareness about the stubborn lack of diversity and inclusion within its ranks. And they concur that the problem is urgent. Speakers at Southbank stressed that if the classical music world doesn’t take immediate steps to diversify its artists, audiences, and repertoire, it is doomed to irrelevance. “We need to disrupt every single thing about our basic assumptions,” said Claire Mera-Nelson, Director 141

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of Music at the Trinity-Laban Conservatory. The symposium ended with collective commitment to several action steps. Orchestras represented there will establish a fellowship for minority musicians; concerts will include at least one piece by women or minority composers; the goals of inclusion and excellence will no longer be seen as an either/or choice. The League forum also had an action agenda, launching five national projects that will help build a supportive, sustainable pipeline from school music programs through audition support and mentoring into orchestra jobs, and even from those into higher-paying orchestral jobs. For Sistema-inspired programs, it’s very good news that leaders in the classical field are becoming activists and agitators for inclusion. We need to make sure we have a strong presence in these conversations, a strong voice advocating for change. Our oldest students are now teenagers, and some are choosing to pursue a life in music. Let ’s make sure their voices are heard in the international conversation about diversity. In this movement toward a new, more capacious understanding of classical music—reimagining who plays it, who listens to it, and how it’s defined—our students can help to lead the way. •

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Ensembles of Ensembles September 2016 On August 18th, in an open-air pavilion in the woods of western New Jersey, I watched fifty children from Sistema-inspired programs rehearsing together at the El Sistema New Jersey Alliance-sponsored summer music camp. Arrangements of Beethoven, Bob Marley, and Katy Perry’s “Firework” were on the music stands. The kids were young, and many were not used to rehearsing in an ensemble that big. “The beauty of an orchestra is that we can affect each other,” their conductor Samuel Marchan told them. “Feel your friends’ energy! Adjust your sound!” It was a crash course in Ensemble Playing 101. When the viola section had trouble observing a rest, he said, “Feel that rest! Count it! Smell it! But don’t play it!” He also gave them a vigorous primer in performance behavior: bowing, smiling, posture. “You have to honor your audience,” he said. The next day I watched eighty young people from Sistema-inspired programs across the eastern U.S. rehearsing together at Bard College in New York’s Hudson Valley—the first-ever Sistema U.S. Youth Orches143

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tra of the East, sponsored by the National Take A Stand Festival. These kids were older than the New Jersey kids, and their musical skills more advanced; they were performing Saint-Saens and John Williams, Brahms, and Piazzolla. They could easily have ended their week together sounding like any pretty good youth orchestra. But that wasn’t what their teaching artist leaders had in mind. These T.A.s were going for transformative experience. And for me, the following day’s concert was a crash course in Experimenting With Orchestral Learning to Achieve Maximal Impact, Sistema-style. Every piece had a different concertmaster. Between pieces, kids read excerpts from the poetry they had collectively written that week. Conductor Juan Felipe Molano had the whole orchestra sing themes from Brahms’ Festival Overture, in three-part harmony, before they played the work. The Piazzolla piece opened up into an interlude of student-composed music and lyrics, and at the end, a tuba player and a percussionist broke into a riff that galvanized the whole stage-full of young musicians into celebratory improvisation. It was exciting to see the young musicians learning to play into a bigger collective sound. And even more exciting to see that there is a regional field, and eventually a national field, evolving—a field robust with both musical and social ambition. I can’t say it or write it too many times: Keep convening! •

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Social Crisis in El Sistema’s Birthplace October 2016 “If El Sistema is so great, why is Venezuela failing?” I don’t know about you, but I have heard this question from well-meaning friends more than a few times recently. Reading about Venezuela’s political and economic crises, and then hearing that Carnegie Hall is opening its season with Gustavo Dudamel and the Simon Bolívar Orchestra of Venezuela, they’re confused. We need to have some useful answers to offer. Here’s a start. First, despite the vast reach and scope of El Sistema Venezuela, its students and graduates still comprise only about 5% of Venezuela’s 30 million people. That’s not enough to produce any kind of tipping point in the country’s fortunes. Second, it’s important to recognize that significant cultural ideas often develop in turbulent places. The emergence of a major new understanding about human development doesn’t mean that the country where it emerged will be automatically transformed by that understanding. The Montessori educational philosophy 145

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didn’t reduce mob violence in Italy. Freudian psychology didn’t make pre-World War I Austria immune to the social instabilities that helped lead to war. Great ideas make their way across the world, lifting levels of collective understanding and offering possibilities for civic progress. But they don’t magically cure the problems of the places where they arise. We need to remember that although El Sistema can’t rescue Venezuela from its current difficulties, it can and does rescue children across the world. It’s a vision that has inspired and galvanized people in over 65 countries. One life at a time, it’s changing lives everywhere. Eventually, perhaps, enough changed lives can lead to changed nations. In addition, El Sistema is a deeply Latin American vision. Sistema-inspired programs began in Latin American countries decades before the idea spread elsewhere, and they can be found in nearly every Latin nation. Sistema thrives in these countries because their cultures embrace a core conviction that music and the arts are essential to social wellbeing. It’s high time we begin to think of Latin America not as politically and economically volatile, but instead as capable of global cultural leadership. •

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Inclusion: That Means School Music Teachers Too November 2016 Our guest columnist this month, Patrick Hudson of the Kipp Adelante Preparatory Academy, emphasizes one of the most appealing aspects of teaching in Sistema-inspired programs: the collegiality of working with other teaching artists in contrast to the standard situation of the in-school music teacher, who is frequently the only musician in the school. This has me thinking about a more general issue: how should Sistema-inspired programs connect and interact with in-school music teachers? Eric Booth sometimes describes Sistema-inspired programs as â&#x20AC;&#x153;generous laboratories.â&#x20AC;? Sistema teachers have more time, more pedagogical autonomy, more access to studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; families, and more staff reflection time than the brief weekly slot available to most in-school music teachers. These advantages make the Sistema classroom a potent laboratory for experimenting with the musical and social dimensions of various pedagogies, curricula, and repertoire. 147

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It can be difficult to figure out how such experiments can relate to the conventional music classroom setting. Still, we feel certain that some of the findings of the “generous lab” of Sistema can be valuable for inschool teachers—and that the boots-on-the-ground experience of in-school teachers can be valuable to our teaching artists. If you are a teaching artist in a Sistema-inspired program at a venue where there’s also an in-school music teacher, it’s important to think about how you and that teacher can connect. You need to be as relentlessly positive and generous with these fellow teachers as you are with students who are wary beginners in your program. Can you reach out to them as colleagues who share a mission and some students? Invite them to your students’ performances? Can you attend theirs? Even invite them to jam with you and your colleagues? I see these relationships as crucial, because I believe the Sistema movement in the U.S. and Canada will flourish only if it is widely connected to school districts and in-school arts initiatives. We need to frame our movement not as a special, insular pedagogy, but as a flexible model that supports and augments in-school arts efforts, and that adds important dimensions of access, inclusion, and intensity. For other music educators, as well as for students: it’s about inclusion! •

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U.S. Presidential Election, 2016 December 2016 On Nov. 8, the U.S. voted in a way that shocked and dismayed many people engaged in Sistema-inspired work here and across the world. Donald Trump’s campaign had a complex appeal that we are struggling to understand. What we do know is that this country elected a man who, during his campaign, expressed misogyny, xenophobia, and exhibited racist and authoritarian tendencies. His character stands at odds with the bedrock values of our movement. What does this mean for us? We are all immersed in work that represents the exact inverse of Trump’s message, work that prioritizes inclusion and compassionate connection. It’s essential that we maintain positive, joyful learning environments. However, our students of color are experiencing new levels of uncertainty and fear. And the changes intended by the new administration will affect them and their families directly. We do not serve them well if we simply carry on as though nothing has changed. It can’t be business as usual. If we are a movement, we have the capacity to move—and to move together in intentional and concerted ways to push back against 149

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this political tide. What can we do? In the coming months, we’ll be proposing a specific action in each issue that we think could be useful, both for our movement and for our country. And here are some general ideas: 1. Build more active alliances with our programs’ extended families and with community leaders. Our programs are more important than ever within our communities as embodiments of their strengths and assets blooming in celebratory ways. 2. Strengthen our collective movement. This is the moment to reactivate our “5% rule,” with every one of us dedicating 5% of our work time to advancing the collective endeavor, always referencing the larger movement and articulating how our mission aligns with a more general vision of social justice. 3. Sharpen awareness about racial issues within our own programs. We feel this issue is important, and will devote next month’s editorial to it. We’ve always been more comfortable with the “tocar” part of our mission than the “luchar”—and that has felt okay. But this national moment requires more. We need to galvanize our movement toward collective action—AND we need to keep making music. •

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El Sistema, Race, and Social Justice January 2017 Any time the vast majority of a program’s leaders are white and the vast majority of participants are people of color, issues of race are in the mix, at least in today’s U.S. and Canada. There may be no specific troubling incidents; there may be good will all around; but racial awareness is inevitably part of the learning environment. The few occasions when racially-charged incidents have arisen in U.S. Sistema programs should serve as a reminder about how race exists in the hearts, minds, and daily lives of students, faculty, and families—even if these feelings and thoughts are not overtly articulated. Although we have elected an African-American president twice, issues of race are lodge deep in the national psyche. The recent election dials up the intensity of the issue for most students and, thus, for all of us. It is essential, therefore, for program leaders and teachers to address these issues directly—and hopefully before they erupt into painful situations. We know this is not easy, and we aren’t in a position to recommend exactly how to do it; responsible solutions will look some153

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what different in each program. We can only affirm that the process will be most successful if it exemplifies the honesty, compassion, and inclusion that we want ourselves and our students to practice in all areas of life. It’s not enough to decide to make some shifts in language and behavior, although such shifts will almost certainly be involved. The necessary changes run deeper, and require sometimes-inconvenient commitments of time, energy, and openness. This above all: we must listen more, and listen harder, to our students, to their families, and to each other. We must open more fully to the realities of the communities we serve. Sometimes we may seek the help of skilled facilitators to achieve the balance of honesty and empathy we need. Over time, if our movement grows well, many students of color will become the faculty and administrators of programs, embodying the transformative aspirations of our work. In order for that to happen, we must expand our social justice competency just as we continue to expand our pedagogical competency. Only in this way can we truly be nurturing social change through musical accomplishment. •

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Actions Speak Louder…. February 2017 “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”—Aristotle Psychologists suggest that it takes 45 days to break an old habit and establish a new one. This takes a great deal of determination but brings a world of positive change, since habits determine so much of who we are, no matter what we say we believe. We certainly know this in music learning: the habits learners establish become the foundation for their next accomplishments. Which brings us to the “Action for the Month.” (See page 2 of every issue of The Ensemble.) We are trying to give our movement a broader reach of visibility and impact by establishing a new habit that everyone in the movement adopts together. We all have firmly established habits of working hard in our own communities to change life possibilities for students and families. This work requires huge attention and care, and it is generally going well. However, we are not growing strong as a national movement, perhaps because of our habits of exclusively local focus. Movements require collective action to become visible, 155

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to gain national supporters, and to grow into their larger potential. That’s why we’ve initiated the Action for the Month: to help us form a new habit. We know you are crazy busy—we are too. That’s why our Actions are designed to take only a few minutes. Let’s break the habit of not bothering. The payoff is even more than an acceleration of our movement’s impact; it is “walking our talk” for our students and families. By engaging in every Action, we model the kind of personal and interpersonal responsibility we wish our students to learn. The two of us are old enough to have come of age in a time of large-scale national movements—for civil rights, for women’s equality, against the Vietnam War. While there was a great deal of vigorous local action, these movements were only able to make permanent change because we undertook common actions with others around the country. (Even without the help of the Internet!) Our whole movement needs to join in collective actions. For just a few minutes a month. Every month. Every one of us. To grow powerful. If you have ideas for Actions you think might be effective, please let us know. We would love to hear from you. •

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Wanted: New Symphonic Works Tuned to the Vernacular March 2017 “Classical music or pop music, in U.S. Sistema programs?” I read an essay recently that blows that perennial question out of the water. The essay is by Venezuelan composer Paul Desenne, longtime El Sistema resident composer, and it reveals something essential about repertoire in El Sistema Venezuela: that from the very beginning, the Sistema put great emphasis on creating new orchestral music infused with the lifeblood of native folk and popular music. Did you know that? One such piece is Desenne’s Hipnosis Mariposa, based on a popular Venezuelan folk tune, which dazzled the audience with its bright, vigorous beauty when Dudamel and the Bolivars played it at Carnegie Hall last October. In his essay, Desenne explains that the back story of this piece is thirteen million mouse clicks: “The millions of mouse clicks were a fraction of those required to create all kinds of works for El Sistema over several decades…children’s symphonies, adolescent symphonies, large tropical and Mahlerian adult ones, Caribbe157

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an overtures, frog-and-mosquito bagatelles, Anacondas, Afro-pizzicato puzzles… A long story.” So El Sistema was never simply about teaching kids to play Western classics. Much more ambitiously, it was also about adapting the instruments and conventions of the Western symphony orchestra to Latin American culture. Desenne writes of his decades learning the skills of “transposing intimate Venezuelan music, designed for the little four-string guitar—the cuatro—to a symphonic medium, keeping the freshness of morning dew on the leaves.” I think this offers North Americans a way to rethink the whole “classical vs. popular” dichotomy. It underscores the importance of commissioning new orchestral works from composers who can do for us what Desenne and his colleagues have done for Venezuela, weaving our vernacular musics into orchestral textures for student ensembles. Of course, composers often use such procedures in scores for film and TV. And in the concert realm as well: I think of Joel Thompson’s recently premiered Seven Last Words of the Unarmed, a powerful work that uses classical choral textures and orchestral instruments but is laced with elements of spirituals and hiphop. Let’s find ways to support the composition of such works for Sistema ensembles, perhaps through joint commissions, and begin to build our own repertoire of orchestral works fresh with the “morning dew” of vernacular musical energy. 158

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Part of A Day’s Work: Educating Our Public April 2017 I was recently at dinner with a group of orchestral emissaries from Europe who are interested in music education for underserved children. “We don’t really consider the El Sistema model relevant to us,” said the woman sitting next to me, a music education administrator. I asked her why. “Well, because it’s such a strict pedagogical formula,” she said. “And because our cultural circumstances are so different from Venezuela. What works there wouldn’t work elsewhere.” My first reaction was amazement that this cosmopolitan person had such a misunderstanding of the many ways El Sistema is growing around the world. “Strict pedagogical formula”? Would that include the Chinese folk songs that Roma children in Transylvania are learning to sing? The Orff ensembles in Medellin, Colombia? Freewheeling group improvisation in Baltimore, and “sound painting” in Zurich? But the unfortunate fact is that in most places around the world, there is a persistent awareness gap about the richness, flexibility, and diversity of practices among programs inspired by the Sistema idea.

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Having seen such programs in action in more than two dozen countries on many continents, I know firsthand that one of the most remarkable aspects of the global Sistema movement is its fusion of shared central principles with multiple methodologies. Sistema programs can look and sound remarkably different, even as they hew to the same basic vision of using ensemble music learning toward goals of transformative change. It’s clear that even as we hone our variations on the Sistema theme, we need to be communicating better and more fully about them, not only among ourselves but also with everyone else. This means speaking with other music educators, arts educators, all kinds of educators…inviting wider audiences to performances, and talking to them about the many ways we work with our students…and, as The Ensemble has been urging lately, reaching out to thought leaders and elected officials to advocate for the efficacy of El Sistema programs. I don’t say this with any illusions about how hard it is to add these priorities to already heavy work-loads. But I do know that each time we educate the public about what we do we contribute to the evolution of a civic consensus around the vital importance of arts education for underserved children, and for all children. •

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To students in U.S. and Canadian El Sistema programs May 2017 “ You don’t get an education, you claim your education.” —Adrienne Rich, poet Greetings from The Ensemble! We publish this newsletter every month because we feel strongly that these programs give young people powerful tools for enjoying and succeeding in life. Did you know that there are Sistema-inspired programs all over the world? Kids your age in Mexico, Sweden, Japan, Scotland, Korea, Australia, Brazil, and about 60 more countries are spending many hours a week making music together and helping each other get better. We visit and study El Sistema programs around the world, and we can tell you this: you would feel at home in all of them. Your El Sistema-inspired music program doesn’t “give you a music education.” It gives you the opportunity to take ownership of the music education that we believe all people deserve. Music education is a universal human right. And good music education opens the opportunity for you to create your own musical life. 161

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Taking ownership of your musical life doesn’t necessarily mean you decide to become a professional musician. Maybe you will want to do that. But it can mean many other things, too. Maybe it means you enjoy singing more, alone and with friends. Maybe it means you listen to more varied music than you used to. Your career interests may go in many directions—health care, robotics, engineering, teaching, who knows? But you will carry your love of music with you, whatever path your life takes. You may also carry with you some other things you’ve learned in your music program—like the confidence that you can accomplish really tough things if you try hard over time, and the certainty that if you work well with a community of others you can accomplish remarkable and delightful things together. To take ownership of your music education, join in the music-making with your friends and teachers. We also urge you to experiment as a musical artist. Try composing. Try improvising. Form a small ensemble with friends and practice making the music that excites you. Take ownership of your learning; that’s what artists do. Ask for the help you want and need; your teachers want to help you follow your interests, whatever they are. And write to us: theensemblenl@gmail.com. We would love to hear from you and learn from you. And let us know if you would like to get regular monthly issues! 162

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A Space for Sistema Reflection July 2017 Here’s a question. When your program is in high gear and the teaching is strenuous, the leadership challenges are complex, and the students’ needs seem to be changing constantly (i.e., all the time), is your first impulse to spend an entire Sunday in a room with your colleagues, talking? I’m going to guess not. But the reason I ask is that a few months ago, I was privileged to be part of just such a counter-intuitive endeavor, and it was one of the best days of Sistema in practice I’ve ever witnessed. The El Sistema New Jersey Alliance, a statewide consortium of Sistema-inspired programs, held a day-long retreat to discuss overarching goals, strategic priorities, and collaborative practices. The Alliance, now in its fourth year, holds regular meetings, but we had realized that because of the press of immediate decision-making in those meetings the big-picture elements were never fully discussed. Planning the retreat wasn’t easy; there was never a time that was just right for everyone. But the event itself, on a gray Sunday in February, was flat-out exhilarating. People spoke frankly about 163

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what was most important to them and what they found troubling; again and again, they surprised one another with the depth and thoughtfulness of their commitment to the overall mission. We couldn’t have done it without the help of a skilled facilitator who did the prep work of detailed phone interviews beforehand and, during the retreat, guided us gently and relentlessly to stay on task, think large, and include all voices. And a lot of actual work—decision-making, priority-setting, date-choosing—was accomplished. I came away convinced that for individual programs as well as networks like our Alliance, it’s imperative to make time and space for this kind of reflection and frank sharing. The daily life of a Sistema program is rich and intense, but it rarely allows for fully collaborative reflection about what’s most important and how best to work together. Devoting time to that reflection is vital. It will feel convenient to exactly no one, and it will require a leap of faith by all. But that one day of the year, if carefully planned and executed, will vastly increase your program’s effectiveness, collegiality, and even joy on the other 364. •

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The First U.S. Sistema National Orchestra August 2017 On Saturday night, July 22, there were 101 young musicians on the stage of the Walt Disney Concert Hall: the first-ever national Sistema orchestra of the United States. One hundred and one—there is something lovely about that number. It suggests that the organizers set out to recruit a hundred student musicians—but then there was that one more vivid, luminous youngster they couldn’t leave out. They were all vivid and luminous, every one of them, avid to play and work. As Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed wrote: “Music poured out of them.” They played Berlioz and Coleridge-Taylor and Tchaikovsky, with fire and flare. They began Elgar’s “Nimrod,” from the Enigma Variations, with a pianissimo worthy of any seasoned orchestra. Their finale was Bernstein’s “Mambo,” a Sistema favorite. And their encore was an improvisatory onstage jam, which gave the audience—on their feet, and equally on fire—a chance to fill Disney Hall with some serious dancing and clapping. 165

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In the days before the concert, the two renowned conductors who were taking turns leading the orchestra gave informal speeches on that same stage; in the front rows each time were the kids, but we participants in the Take a Stand Symposium had the lucky chance to eavesdrop. Maestro Thomas Wilkins told the students that the true calling of musicians is to change the lives of their listeners. “You are giving them a great gift,” he said, “an invitation to yearn.” Maestro Gustavo Dudamel, asked by a student what motivates him, leapt out of his seat and said, “It is the music!” He added that if he were to take a vacation, “Very soon I’d be saying, ‘Where is the orchestra? I need an orchestra!’” Like everyone else in the hall on Saturday night, I was tremendously moved by the impassioned music pouring out of our first national orchestra. But I was also thinking about the rest of our kids, who weren’t on that stage—the ten thousand (maybe 10,001?) students in the Sistema-inspired ensembles growing all across our continent. Their ability levels vary widely; their motivation levels do too. Most of them will never play at Disney Hall; and really, that’s not the goal of our larger endeavor. But how great it would be if many of them grow up to be doctors or salespeople or Fed Ex drivers who periodically throughout their lives lift their heads, look around, and say, “I need an orchestra!” •

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A Summer of Sistema Festival Orchestras September 2017 In my column last month, I wrote about the 101 young musicians at the iconic Walt Disney Concert Hall in Julyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the Take A Stand Festival Orchestra, the first national Sistema orchestra in the United States. It was a milestone not only for those young musicians but also for the whole U.S. El Sistema-inspired movement. This month, I bring you news of nearly twice that many young Sistema musicians on a stage together, just a few days after the Los Angeles festivalâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;this time for an audience of 4,400 at a different kind of architectural icon, the Odeon of Herodes Atticus in Athens, Greece. It was the fourth summer camp of the Sistema Europe Youth Orchestra (SEYO), which brings together members of Sistema programs in over 20 European countries for a week of rigorous rehearsals and a culminating concert. I felt profoundly lucky to be able to attend both gatherings and to savor the many resonances between them! The SEYO kids, like our Take A Stand Festival kids, were coached by teachers and conductors 167

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from many of the participating programs. The energy between coaches and students was similarly combustible—the coaches endlessly energetic, the kids lit with full-out ebullience and mutual support, plus a kind of mad ambition. The SEYO concert, like the L.A. concert, was vigorously played and jubilantly received. And in Athens, as in L.A., improvisatory jams broke out during encores. (This may well grow to be a regular feature of Sistema performances. If so, should our programs include more learning about how to improvise well, so that this distinctive feature grows as strong and joyful as the prepared pieces?) The SEYO camp this year featured new kinds of inclusion that we in the U.S. and Canada might learn from. For one thing, there were two ensembles, a junior and a senior orchestra; they played separately and joined together for the finale. For another, SEYO invited the children of El Sistema Greece, some of whom are Syrian and Afghani refugees in a camp near Athens, to join them on the choral parts of several pieces. And those kids—they were very small; some looked as young as five or six—were a core of sweetness, vitality, and hope at the very heart of the concert. Perhaps the learning is simply this: every Sistema performance gathers exponential power when it reaches for radical inclusion. •

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Our First Nationwide Research Results October 2017 The independent research firm WolfBrown Associates, in collaboration with the Longy School of Music, has recently announced results of the first nationwide research about El Sistema-inspired programs in the United States. Are we paying enough attention to this? Rigorous research at 12 sites across the country, with hundreds of students involved: this is a big deal. It gives us new ways to understand and reflect on what weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve accomplished and where we need to go from here. The researchers themselves are ideal partners; WolfBrown is respected for its meticulous standards and its commitment to the arts, and the Longy School is a leader among conservatories in its tenacious emphasis on community-based arts teaching and learning. Our lead article this month describes some of the major findings of the study and some of the questions they raise. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reason for optimism here, and grist for reflection. But what I want to focus on is the set of measures developed and honed in the course of the study. Click on the link in the article, and youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll have 169

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this toolkit of measures. They’re yours. They’re ours. And they give us the capacity to evaluate ourselves not only program by program but also as a national field, a countrywide movement. If every Sistema program in the U.S. adopted and implemented these measures, we would have a vast trove of information about our collective impact. We would know what our strongest achievements are, and could make the case for Sistema-inspired programs with a clarity and force we’ve never been capable of before. We would know what our weaknesses are, and could address those as a field rather than in scattershot isolation. I understand that as individual programs, each of us wants to measure ourselves against the goals most relevant to our kids and communities. But I strongly feel that along with such evaluation efforts, programs should also adopt these common measures. As long as we keep measuring ourselves separately, fundraising separately, and advocating separately, we will keep ourselves separate, small, fortunate, and powerless on a national level. In effect, we’re saying: We fervently want our program for our community, but when it comes to arts education and social justice as matters of national policy…we just don’t have time. So please, click on that link. It’s a step toward potency as a national field. •

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Sistema Europe: A Model for Collaborative Democracy November 2017 Our issue this month features collaborative initiatives between programs that are Sistema-inspired or similarly oriented. The U.S./Canadian Sistema ecosystem is beginning to see more such collaborations of varying degrees of formality and longevity. Often, the first impulse toward collaboration comes easily; itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s later that questions can arise. How are decisions made? Do programs need to agree on everything? How much can they diverge and still be part of the joint enterprise? As we reflect locally, it may also be helpful to look abroad at a particularly effective example of long-term program collaboration. Sistema Europe began in 2012 with an impromptu meeting of a handful of people in London. Five years later, it includes programs in nearly 30 countries, and is best known for creating summer camp/residency events that have enabled hundreds of young people from all over Europe to gather annually in one or another fabled city for ten days of intense music-making together. These festivals have indelible effects on the teachers who lead them, the kids who 171

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participate in them, and the many more kids back home who decide to practice harder so they can become good enough to attend the next one. We’ve been fortunate to sit in on some of Sistema Europe’s general meetings, to witness a quieter aspect of its valuable work—its ability to sustain a vigilantly democratic process and a generous spirit. Very large programs collaborate with very small ones, with every program feeling included and supported. In 2015, the members decided to become a legal entity. Yet even with the extra layers of bureaucracy and expense, general membership meetings continue to be small miracles of good humor and collective democracy. How do they manage it? Here are a few key practices. One, they keep their priorities simple and clear, limited mostly to summer camp and joint fundraising. Two, each program has equal voting representation. Three, time is set aside at every meeting for programs to announce their own news and they are tenaciously non-parochial. “I’m a Finnish person,” we once heard a participant say, “sitting in Austria at a Korean restaurant, speaking in English, talking to people from 20 countries. This is how we live. This is who we are.” •

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YOLA and the Rest of Us December 2017 A U.S. El Sistema program made some national headlines this month: YOLA, the youth orchestra program of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, will be getting a new music center designed by Frank Gehry. Gehry is the celebrity architect responsible for Walt Disney Hall, the L.A. Phil’s famously fantastical concert hall. The YOLA center, at 17,000 square feet, will allow the program to double its participants within the next five years. There are two ways I’ve heard Sistema folks respond to this announcement. “How great that YOLA is getting added capacity to make a difference for kids in L.A.!”—that’s one genuine reaction. But envy is another, and it’s understandable; there’s a huge gap between YOLA’s level of support and the more modest resources of most of the other Sistema-inspired programs across the U.S. and Canada. Most program leaders don’t have the luxury of doubling their capacity in a glorious new space designed by a luminary. So I’ve been thinking: how do we, as a field dedicated to equity and shared access, deal with a big success for one program, a success that doesn’t, on the face of 173

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it, redound to all programs? Does one program’s large profile simply dramatize the limited means of other programs? I’d suggest there’s another paradigm we can adopt. Let ’s look at how we teach our young people to respond to their peers’ successes. If one of our kids wins an audition or a scholarship and stays connected in some way to her program, her success can mean a boost that lifts everyone—by inspiring other kids, by providing a role model, and by drawing public attention to the program. Similarly, good fortune for one program can spark inspiration and support around other programs. “This is how much Los Angeles values its Sistema program,” we can say to funders, to civic leaders, and to the media. “This is how much we matter.” Further, publicity for one program can mean greater exposure for all. When one program has a big win, there needs to be increased intentionality on everyone’s part about publicizing and reinforcing the nationwide and continent-wide scope of our movement. Such thinking doesn’t come naturally in our zerosum-game culture. It’s up to us to model it. So bravo, YOLA. And bravi, tutti. •

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The Problem With Praise January 2018 “Good job!” As teachers—especially as teachers with a central goal of helping students develop self-esteem—how many times a day do we say that to kids? In my private teaching practice, I too say it often. When a child works hard, plays well, and looks expectantly at me, it’s almost reflexive. But “Good Job!” is the name of Chapter 4 in the new book Opening Minds: Using Language to Change Lives by Peter Johnston—and it’s an example of what NOT to say. It’s got me thinking. Praise, says Johnston, can often be counterproductive for children’s healthy development. It fixes a child ’s attention on whether her product is “good” or bad,” which implies defining her as a success or a failure. “Praise distracts [kids] from simply doing what they are doing,” he writes, “and turns their attention towards pleasing us.” In my own teaching this week, I experimented with finding alternatives to praise. I came up with “I like the way you…(created a crescendo in that phrase, etc).” But 177

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I quickly realized that this didn’t solve the problem; it was still about what I liked. According to Johnston, “saying ‘I’m proud of you’ has the same effect as saying ‘I’m disappointed in you.’” The message of both statements is that what’s important is your judgment of the child. Johnston emphasizes the importance of positive feedback, but he redefines “positive” as process-oriented observations instead of person-oriented praise. A helpful response, he says, might be to ask, “How did you do that?” In answering the question, the child will experience herself as a person who acts and makes choices that have positive consequences—she will internalize what Johnston calls “an agentive narrative.” He suggests “causal process statements” as another element of positive feedback: “You created a crescendo in that phrase, and that gave the music a sense of excitement.” The child learns that he has made choices that have powerful effects. This is why Johnston’s message, which resonates with that of Carol Dweck and other current thought leaders, is so important for teachers in Sistema-inspired programs. “Good job!” is easy. But “How did you do that?” is what will help our kids become self-confident artists. •

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Creative Composition, SistemaStyle February 2018 Every gathering of music educators gets amped up when, at long last, the kids play. The El Sistema USA symposium last weekend was no exception. After two days of talks and workshops, we gathered in a concert hall to hear actual students—from Durham’s Kidznotes, Baltimore’s OrchKids, and Chicago’s ChiMOP—actually make music. The concert began with a series of chamber groups that displayed the kids’ musical and expressive skills in a variety of styles. And then something different began: a group composition they had all created together in the Creative Composition workshop run by Dan Trahey, Calida Jones, Emily Smith, and Joe Hamm, with help from many local musicians and Sistema teachers. Group composition! The idea is hugely appealing to most Sistema teachers because it fuses two of our most core values, ensemble and creativity. But most of us don’t have a clue about how to do it. In his brief intro, Dan told us, “We are all about AND, not OR. Classical AND popular. Orchestra AND composing.” 179

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He described their creative process: “We began by asking, ‘What’s on your minds?’ And some kids mentioned their fears about DACA. So—D-A-C-A. We had a start. Then we agreed on the theme ‘Now is the time.’ And then we asked, the time for what? Many kids contributed words and images. All of that—images, rhythms, melodic shapes—went into the composition.” Thanks to skill and trust on the part of the teachers and spirited inventiveness on the part of the students, the result was music. Those four seminal notes make for haunting minor-key motives, and the students clearly felt a musical as well as a real-life urgency. There were episodes of robust body percussion, fragments of solo song, coloristic textures; there was a seven-beat melody stretched across a four-four meter. Perhaps most striking was the fact that all the students, from the smallest beginners to the most accomplished teenagers, seemed secure both in their specific roles and in their value to the whole ensemble. Even a tiny bystander lifted onto the stage was given a precise musical job and gently mentored throughout. There was a sense that each student felt both ownership and fellowship. Ownership AND fellowship. As the U.S./Canadian Sistema movement heads into our second decade, let’s make “AND” our watchword. •

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The Creative Spaces of Culture March 2018 Many of us know by heart this quote from José Antonio Abreu’s televised TED talk in 2009: “Orchestra and chorus are much more than artistic structures; they are schools of social life, because to play and sing together means to intimately coexist toward perfection and excellence.” That last phrase was exceptionally startling and beautiful to me, as it may have been to you—if you, like me, had never considered that intimate coexistence could be channeled toward something…and that the something could be art. The trouble with this Eureka moment has been that, in practice, it’s very hard to get a student orchestra to look or act anything like peaceful, intimate coexistence toward perfection. There are days when we count ourselves lucky if the second violins are playing the same notes at the same time. When the notes are hard, the music is unfamiliar, and it’s almost dinnertime, rehearsal can feel less like a school of social life than like a supervised recess. 181

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And yet. Those of us who have been lucky enough to observe Latin American Sistema orchestras know that they often do, in fact, look like successful schools for social life. Pairs of kids at music stands taking turns with the single available instrument...older kids mentoring younger ones…young kids swaying like their mentors...how is it possible that the structures of cooperation are more easily achieved in those cultures than in our own? Perhaps it’s because, in Latin American cultures, “the orchestra” still stands for privilege, so it’s more likely to be valued than in our culture, where kids tend to think of orchestras as old-fashioned rather than as icons of prestige. Here’s something else Maestro Abreu said in that TED talk: “The orchestras prove to be the creative spaces of culture—the spaces of exchanges and new meanings.” This quote is less familiar to us but perhaps more relevant. If our students can experience their orchestras as the creative spaces of their culture, where new meanings are explored and shared, they will be highly motivated to try for coexistence toward excellence in those spaces. Many U.S./Canadian Sistema programs are already experimenting in this direction, making changes in repertoire, rehearsal process, and performances to give kids a greater sense of meaning-making. Moving in this direction isn’t “un-Sistema.” You heard it from the Maestro. •

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“Trust the Young” April 2018 On March 24th, as I worked on putting this issue together, I listened to a live stream of the rally in Washington, D.C. I heard young person after young person speaking truth to power about their lived experiences of gun violence. And another voice was suddenly present in my head, more seasoned but still resonating with the urgent aspiration of the young people’s voices. “Put a violin in the hands of a child,” said that voice, “and the child will not pick up a gun.” In one of those unlikely coincidences that afterwards feel inevitable, it was at this moment that I got an email telling me that José Antonio Abreu had died. This great visionary of our time, who could imagine a cultural outburst of music so powerful as to silence guns, had died just as a million children marched for the same purpose. Abreu would have been utterly certain that the young people marching in D.C. and elsewhere would win their fight. He trusted young people simply and wholeheartedly. I once asked him in an interview why he had always believed that a national Sistema could 183

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be achieved. “I knew it would happen because of the young people,” he said. At every step in the process, he entrusted very young people with leadership positions. As it happens, that’s what our April issue is about: empowering our students to lead. Karen Cueva writes about the PlayUSA initiative “Empowering Students to Lead.” Sharniece Adams, a student who has become a program leader, urges us to train our students to lead as well as to play music. In forming our 130+ programs, we have created rich incubators for focused learning, cooperative learning, and music learning. Now, those of us with older students need to take the next step and begin to learn from them. We need to listen to them, to hear how they themselves experience the intersection of music and social justice. Sometimes, we need to get out of their way, give them agency, and follow their lead. As we mourn the passing of our great Maestro, we can honor him by following his example of empowering young people. “ Trust the young,” he said. “They are always stronger and braver than we are. If we give them the tools, they will create a future more beautiful than we can imagine.” •

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Mourning Draylen Mason May 2018 In this issue, we are taking the unprecedented (for us) step of adding a third page. We decided that a third page was necessary to honor and to mourn Draylen Mason, a young bass player and student leader in the Austin Soundwaves program who was killed in March. We also decided that the Action for the Month should be a symbolic action of mourning by all programs. Your first thought may be: “It’s terrible and tragic, but what does a tragedy in Texas have to do with my program?” For the most part, U.S./Canadian Sistema programs are in the habit of functioning as non-connected entities. This action requires us to commit to our interconnectedness—to move into symbolic alliance with one another. Can we do it? I hope so. I feel strongly that as long as we are programs that function independently, within separate local orbits and occupied by always-urgent local concerns, we will be doing considerable good within our particular communities but absolutely nothing to effect change on a regional or national level. We can’t accrue the collective power of a true national movement about music 185

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education for social impact unless we reach out, communicate with, and identify with one another—and, for that matter, with the many non-Sistema-inspired organizations that are also dedicated to music education for social impact. Until every one of us believes—and truly feels— that a violent death in Austin is a loss for our program as well and that a triumph in Tulsa (see our news section) is our triumph too, we will remain localized and incapable of change on a national level. We will not, despite our rhetoric, be a movement. One unusual thing about this particular Action of the Month is that it will involve your students; a white rose on an empty stool in the bass section is not likely to go unnoticed. So it will mean talking with your students and their families about Draylen’s death, and that can feel sad and awkward. Fortunately, young people have a great capacity to reach out emphatically across distances; just look at the #Enough movement. Many of our students live with the threat of violence in their everyday lives; they are likely to understand viscerally that Draylen’s death is their loss. Let’s listen to them. They have a lot to teach us. •

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Self-Regulation and Music Learning May 2018 A recent article in the academic journal JAMA Pediatrics on the subject of teaching students self-regulation bears the subtitle “A Systematic Review and Metaanalysis”—a phrase so densely academic that I almost stopped reading right there. But I’m glad I didn’t. There’s some important good news here for Sistema programs. “Self-regulation” refers to a set of competencies that includes the capacity for controlling emotions, the ability to have positive social interactions, and the ability to self-direct one’s learning. The JAMA article cites growing evidence that these competencies play “an important foundational role” in children’s wellbeing. The article reviews the results of 50 “interventions” intended to increase children’s capacity for self-regulation. Some of the interventions happened in classroom settings, others in family settings. Still others involved physical exercise or yoga and mindfulness. Finally, there were six studies about interventions that focused on social or personal skills in group settings. This kind of intervention proved “highly effective.” 187

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That’s why the study is good news for us: focusing on social and personal skills in group settings is precisely what Sistema programs do. And we have an advantage none of those six studies had: we do it through music, which is a particularly elegant, efficient, and pleasurable way to learn. So we can take heart from this research. It affirms with academic rigor what we already observe and intuit: social interaction through music is a great way for kids to learn the skills of self-regulation. But there’s something else we intuit—something we know—about self-regulation, and it doesn’t appear anywhere in the JAMA report. Because art is our medium, we know that self-regulation isn’t just about self-control. Yes, we want our kids to learn behavioral control and self-discipline. But we also want our students to be capable of creative spontaneity. The philosopher Eric Fromm wrote that artists can be defined as individuals who can express themselves spontaneously. So we teach kids the skills of self-regulation in order to more fully free up their capacities for expressivity. It sounds like a paradox, but it’s one of the truths of our practice: self-regulation is one of the skills that make true spontaneity possible. •

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The Vanishing Skill and Art of Concentration July 2018 “Cell phones and social media.” That was the succinct answer I got from a Sistema teacher I spoke with recently, when I asked her why she said her job is getting harder instead of easier. She added, “And this year, it’s really ramped up; the problem is worse than it’s ever been.” We’ve heard similar comments from other Sistema teachers—and not about kids trying to sneak screen time during orchestra rehearsals. The real problem is the way kids’ minds—their brains, to be exact—are being shaped by their extensive screen time experience outside of school and music programs. It’s no secret that social media is designed to fragment attention and engineered to be addictive. As a New York Times Op Ed article recently put it, when you “use social media in the way it’s designed to be used…it becomes hard to give difficult tasks the unbroken concentration they require, because your brain simply won’t tolerate such a long period without a fix.” Learning to play the William Tell Overture tune189

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fully, playfully, and together requires a lot of unbroken concentration. As does learning to play a fluent B-flat scale on a clarinet, or counting the beats of the rests in a percussion part, or working with peers to create a collective composition. But during their non-student hours, more and more of our kids are systematically unlearning the skill of unbroken concentration. And it’s not just our kids. As a friend who teaches middle school English told me, “Cell phones and social media are the worst things that ever happened to teaching and learning.” She says she can no longer get her 8th graders immersed in books that completely captivated 8th graders ten years ago. “They just can’t focus,” she said. How can we help kids learn to focus? Modeling is key; if teachers themselves are dynamically focused, children can catch and internalize that energy. Intrinsic motivation is also key. When kids are solving problems and making things they care about, their ability to concentrate blooms. These things we know. But we are up against greater odds than we’ve known. More than ever before, Sistema programs need to be crucibles for ongoing inquiry about concentration in the age of social media. I believe we must—because we can—become leaders in this inquiry. •

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Reaching Double Digits August 2018 Happy birthday to the El Sistema movement in the U.S. and Canada: we’re ten years old! 2008 saw the beginning of most of our oldest programs, including OrchKids in Baltimore, the Harmony Program in New York City, and Orchestrating Diversity in St. Louis. YOLA in Los Angeles began in 2007...as did Orkidstra in Ottawa, Canada—but those were the rare pioneers. I think we can consider this year the tenth anniversary of our emergence as a national movement. In the Sistema spirit of continual inquiry, I’d like to celebrate this anniversary by focusing on questions. Movements, like people, are most vividly defined by the questions they ask. What were the main questions we were asking ten years ago? And what are the main questions we are asking now? According to my notes and my memory, the main question people were asking ten years ago, hands down, was: How does El Sistema work in Venezuela? Usually followed quickly by: How can we make it work like that here? And then, in short order: How do we find funding? 191

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Where do we find instruments? And where, oh where, is the pedagogy handbook? We were immersed in the “how-to” of beginning. Fast-forward ten years…and our collective inquiry has undergone a sea change. As our lead article notes, the overarching question at the recent Take A Stand conference was: How do we support student voice and empower students to become leaders? This question seems to be top of mind everywhere; at the January El Sistema USA Symposium, there were sessions on student-led learning and collaborative composition. Instead of focusing only on how we teach our kids, we’re now asking how we can let them lead. And there are other urgent questions now, involving how to address structural racism…how to appropriately transfigure our repertoire….how to attain longterm sustainability…and how to form coalitions in our field for collective impact. The inquiry seems more mature now—more responsible, more self-interrogating, more ambitious. In the words of Bravo Waterbury ’s Calida Jones, we are “getting comfortable with being uncomfortable.” We are beginning to grow up. •

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Sistema Europe Youth Orchestra: The Future of Europe September 2018 When does the percussion player in a symphony orchestra ever stand right by the principal clarinetist’s shoulder? The answer is: when the Sistema Europe Youth Orchestra (SEYO) is rehearsing Danzon Number 2 by Arturo Marquez, which begins with a sensuous hush, a solo clarinet melody over woodblock beats. “It’s just a few of you starting this beautiful piece,” said Maestro Sascha Goetzel, who was leading the rehearsal. “So let’s put you physically together so that you can play fully together.” In a nutshell, that’s the purpose of the entire SEYO Festival: bringing young musicians from Sistema programs all across Europe together for ten days, to play fully together. I was lucky enough to be at SEYO 2018, which was held this summer at the Birmingham Conservatoire in England (the venue changes each year) and involved 191 students from 17 countries, along with dozens of teachers and conductors (many from Latin America). 193

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The languages and cultures represented were not only those of each country’s majority but also those of many immigrant communities who came from countries outside of Europe. Even by the high standards of Sistema, it was an extraordinary celebration of social integration. “You,” conductor Samuel Matus told them, “are the future of Europe.” The Festival was also a powerful celebration of youth voice. A cadre of Young Leaders chosen by the students themselves provided many kinds of leadership. Youth voice also emerged in the numerous Creative Composition workshops that happened every day between rehearsals. We spoke with Simi Ambass, a Young Leader from London; he told us that he and his fellow Leaders began to encourage attendees to connect on social media even before the festival began. “And starting a week before, we did a countdown,” he said. “Five days to SEYO! Four days to SEYO! That’s why the energy you feel here is so high. Everybody was already really engaged when they got here. So when we feel tired or the music feels too hard, we still feel—I’m going into this rehearsal with my buddies.” At the final concerts, audiences were thrilled by the brilliance of their playing and the intensity of their listening to one another. In fact, they had been playing and listening brilliantly all week long—and, in the process, coming more and more fully together. 194

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Artists as Instigators October 2018 Do you think of yourself as a teaching artist? Many teachers in the global Sistema use that term to describe what they do. Sometimes, though, there can be a lack of clarity about what it means and also a lack of awareness that there is, in fact, a powerful and growing global movement for Teaching Artistry, just as there is for El Sistema. That global teaching artist movement was out in full force in New York last month, when Carnegie Hall hosted the 4th International Teaching Artist Conference (ITAC4) with 305 delegates from 28 countries. I was at the conference both to presentâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;I co-led a session on El Sistema with Jeehye Suh of Korea and Aristides Rivas of Venezuelaâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and to learn more about what teaching artistry looks like and aspires to, around the world. For years now, I have been thinking about these two kindred global movements, trying to understand exactly where and how they intersect. Being at ITAC4 helped me understand that the intersection is vast. 195

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Just look at ITAC4’s official theme: THE ARTIST AS INSTIGATOR: The Role, Responsibility, and Impact of Artists in Global Communities. The conference was brimming with teaching artists of many genres and contexts, but all shared a common goal: to instigate social change through activating the artistry of the people and communities they work with. Does that sound familiar? ITAC4 also convinced me that the practices and inquiries of teaching artistry are crucial tools for all teachers in the El Sistema world. T.A.s are at the frontier of discovery around active, engaged arts learning. In almost every conference session, presenters were constantly and expertly tugging us into creative action and interaction. One conference room was devoted to creating a huge ITAC flag, with attendees bringing small pieces of cloth that represented something about their programs and sewing them all together. This new “flag” will travel the world for the next two years, with T.A.s adding to it at every stop, and will land in Seoul, Korea in 2020 for ITAC5. Are you an “artist as instigator?” Do you aspire to be? Then you’re a teaching artist. Find out more about teaching artistry wherever and however you can. The more we can align our global movements, the more formidable our instigations will be. •

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Forging Partnerships: Part of the Job November 2018 More than the sum of our parts. We tell our students thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s what an orchestra is. Violins plus clarinets, trombones plus marimbas plus cellosâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;all those disparate musical essences combined create something that is unimaginable when hearing each of them separately. The whole is of a different order. Helen Eaton, in her lead article this month, writes about how the Philadelphia Music Alliance for Youth exemplifies this idea. The 20 music education providers who constitute the parts of PMAY are disparate indeed, from symphonies and conservatories to public and community music schools, along with many other less easily-classifiable programs. What do these very different entities gain by joining together in PMAY? Helenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s answers are eloquent, and they all point toward the idea of institutions uniting around a common goal. Sistema-inspired programs across the country are beginning to see the benefit in coming together with one another around joint concerts and other projects. But I think we are still slow to see the fundamental ad197

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vantages in coming together with other kinds of music education organizations. We have a distinctive learning model, and it’s a brilliant one. But we also have an ambitious vision: we are dedicated to achieving full and equitable access to music education for all the kids of our communities. Consider the sheer magnitude of that goal. And consider how partnering with the other music education programs in an ecosystem could make that goal something actually within reach, rather than a matter of wishful thinking. By coordinating and aligning resources with other organizations, we can create more opportunities, more resources, more pathways for more children and young people. We can magnify our capacity for transformative impact. And Sistema programs can be the ones who take the lead in forging partnerships. In most places, Sistema programs are the younger cousins in the music ed family, the newest ones serving the fewest kids. In spite of that—maybe because of that—it’s good for us to take the lead sometimes. Taking the lead means reaching out, having lunch meetings, planting seeds and tending any sprouts. If not us, who? If not now, when? This is not an “extra” responsibility to be tackled when everything else is running smoothly. It is the only way we achieve our fullest ambitions for Sistema students. •

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The Myth of the “Solo Artist” December 2018 I’ve been thinking lately about the problematic nature of the relationship between Sistema and pop music. I don’t mean the genre issue. I am a fan of many pop artists and much pop music. And I think it’s absolutely essential that Sistema programs embrace ensemble arrangements of pop music that is meaningful to our kids. So this is not about “classical” versus “pop.” Rather, it’s about the collaborative ethos at the heart of Sistema versus the cult of individual celebrity that dominates pop culture. The learning culture of Sistema-inspired programs is all about the seminal power and joy of group music making. For the eight to fourteen hours a week that our students are with us, they inhabit a world that celebrates the many kinds of beauty to be found in musical collaboration. But when they—and we—leave that world, we step into a media culture with a ubiquitous pop soundtrack saturated with the sound of Rihanna or Lil Wayne, Bruno Mars or Taylor Swift, Marshmello or Nicki Minaj or Khalid. These are powerful artists; what troubles me from 199

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a Sistema point of view is that kids tend to perceive all of them as celebrity soloists. Even though the reality is that collaboration is involved in every pop music track, with producers, writers, and artists often teaming up, that reality is frequently not perceivable in the end product. There are not many “celebrity ensembles” on our kids’ radar. I think this is truer now than it’s ever been. Of course, there have been individual pop stars as long as there has been pop music. But their prominence used to be balanced by many beloved groups and bands. When we went to their concerts, we saw collaborators working together onstage. When our students watch YouTube, more often than not, they see “the artist”—a single person, often portrayed through an outsized single persona. We can’t change what our students encounter and absorb in our celebrity-fixated culture. But we can talk with them about the particular richness of ensemble music-making. We can point out to them that a lot of the pop music they listen to is not as soloistic in its inception as it may seem. Most important of all, we can “be the thing,” showing by example how it’s possible to love Rihanna and also love the excitement and camaraderie that flows from playing music together. •

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New Year’s Evolutions and Resolutions January 2019 In the time-honored tradition of pausing on the cusp of a new year to look both forward and back, I’ve been reflecting this week on two questions. How has our Sistema-inspired movement made progress, and what areas are most in need of improvement? Here are my thoughts. Where have we made progress? 1. Support for our developing programs. In particular, the PRESTO Grants offered through El Sistema USA have begun to provide funding for a number of programs less than five years old, and Carnegie Hall’s PlayUSA supports experimentation to advance practice. 2. Expanding opportunities for advanced players. These include expansion of the Take A Stand national orchestra to two ensembles instead of one, scholarships for some students to top music camps, and local program initiatives that help students prepare for professional music tracks. 3. Sustained inquiry around the issue of student voice. At Take A Stand, at the El Sistema USA sympo203

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sium, and in local programs around the country, there has been a collective realization that for Sistema success, there are no elements more important than student-led learning, student leadership, and student-created music. What areas most urgently need improvement? 1. Partnerships with other like-minded organizations. Sistema-inspired programs still tend toward insularity. Important exceptions like the Philadelphia Music Alliance for Youth can serve as our models for aligning and working with other arts education/social engagement programs. 2. Research. Most programs are doing some kind of in-house evaluation of their impact on students, but as yet there’s very little partnering with independent academic or research entities to produce thorough, rigorous results that can impact social, economic, and funding policies. 3. Social justice issues. I make this point last, not because it’s least important but because it’s the one I most want you to remember. As a movement, we need to prioritize ongoing constructive discussion about how our field can actively combat issues of social justice and structural racism. We’ve begun this inquiry, bit by bit and here and there, but it’s time, right now, to make it front and center. Happy New Year! •

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Encounter With a Maestro February 2019 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 and a world away from their daily lives. They were jittery with excitement as they filed into a classroom in the Universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Woolworth Music Building, took out their instruments, and began to tune. It wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;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. Gustavo Dudamel is Artist in Residence this year at Princeton, which means he comes to the campus a number of times for musical performances and dialogue around issues of art, education, and social change. It also means heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s able to have several encounters with East Coast, and particularly Princeton-area, Sistema programs. When Maestro Dudamel walked into that packed classroom, the kids fell silent for a moment. Then several greeted him in English and Spanish, and the group played three pieces with their music director, Lydia 205

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Veilleux, conducting. They played well, concentrating ferociously. “Wonderful!” said Dudamel, when they finished. “Did you enjoy it? Isn’t it fun?” The students looked a little surprised; in the pressure of the moment, they may well have forgotten that this was fun. Then Dudamel added: “So—play more!” The students had only prepared three pieces for this occasion. But one student raised his hand: “Maestro! We can play “’Babumba’!” To the delight of everyone—including the Maestro, who for six years was music director of the symphony orchestra in Gothenburg, Sweden, where the song was composed by a Sistema Sweden founder—”Babumba” it was. They played and sang with gusto, and we attempted the obligatory arm motions. And then it was the kids who wanted more. They played a song from Moana, and they were not only playing well; they were, in fact, having fun. At the end, Dudamel chatted for a while and shook hands with as many kids as he could. They may not have realized it in that exhilarating moment, but it was clear that the single most motivating word the Maestro had said to them was not “ Wonderful.” It was “More!” •

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Venezuelaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Generous Master Teachers March 2019 I am lucky enough to have been able to go to Venezuela and see El Sistema in action during those golden years when the Sistema threw its doors open wide to an international multitude of visiting musicians, and Maestro Abreu dreamed of Caracas becoming the Vienna of the 21st century. Sadly, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hard to visit Venezuela at all now, and El Sistema struggles with the same desperate economic and political crisis that grips everyone in that beautiful and beleaguered country. For the global Sistema community, the poignant silver lining of the crisis is the evolution of a kind of Sistema diaspora, with many Venezeulan master teachers, teaching artists, and conductors working with programs around the world. One of the most venerated of these master teachers is Roberto Zambrano, who came to the El Sistema USA Symposium in Detroit last month. I helped Roberto put together a session at the symposium in which he and his longtime mentee Aristides Rivas worked with a childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s string ensemble in front of a group of attendees. The players were very young; their 207

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piece, by Vivaldi, was hard. Roberto and Aristides dove into the work. After 40 minutes of their sunny, tenacious energy, the Vivaldi sounded noticeably better, and I asked the attendees to distill some core elements of teaching excellence on the basis of what they had just seen the Venezuelan maestros do. With the help of Roberto and Aristides—and the kids—we came up with a list. No, I haven’t forgotten what our Venezuelan friends always said when we asked them for a list. “Maybe someday we’ll write down how we do things,” they told us, “but as soon as we do, we have to change it. Sistema never stands still.” But we make lists anyway. It’s how we endeavor to get our minds around the complex, elusive task of effective music teaching in the context of social engagement. Here’s the list we made on a frozen day in Detroit, in January 2019. I offer it in the hope that you will be inspired by it, utilize it—and maybe change it, too. 1. High expectations of young people. 2. Insistence on musical excellence. 3. Balance between individual and ensemble work. 4. Attention to the physicality of playing. 5. Prioritizing musical understanding. 6. High energy, high engagement. 7. Collegiality and teamwork between teachers. 8. Play without fear! •

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Revisiting “Excellence” April 2019 Here’s a challenge for you: define “excellence.” How did that go? Did the perfectly satisfying definition pop right up? Or are you doing some backing and filling? If you are, I think you’re in good company. This is a time when longstanding assumptions about excellence in music, and in all the arts, are being unsettled. Last week, at a meeting of the El Sistema New Jersey Alliance, leaders of my state’s Sistema-inspired programs were discussing how to articulate the fundamental values our programs share. We were pretty much in sync until we began to talk about excellence as a primary goal. Some members were not entirely comfortable with the word, saying that when used in a music education context, it can represent a kind of coded language that evokes a traditionally elitist ideal of refined technique in classical music. No one at our conference table suggested that this tradition should simply be jettisoned. But everyone felt that other crucial priorities also guide our programs. Creativity, cooperation, peer learning, community, stu209

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dent voice—all these goals inform the work of shaping our music learning environments. Does the word “excellence,” we wondered, have too much connotative baggage to serve as the right term for these goals? We experimented with other words we might substitute. Rigor? Intensity? We’re still at it and would love to hear what language works for you. But perhaps we can keep using the term to mean intensive effort toward bold aspiration—an aspect of Sistema learning we all value deeply—if we agree that there are many kinds of excellence, not just the conservatory-honed one. Howard Gardner posited that there are multiple kinds of intelligence; let ’s conjecture that there are multiple kinds of excellence. In specific learning situations, we need to be clear about whether we’re prioritizing excellence in social communication, in creative energy, or in technical finesse. Our students, I think, are abundantly capable of multiple excellences. It’s a mistake to assume that we have to teach one kind to the exclusion of others. Can our students achieve excellence of musical technique AND excellence of collaborative creativity? I believe the answer is yes. I also believe that for the global Sistema-inspired movement, there’s no more important question. •

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A Lens of Engagement May 2019 This issue focuses on engagement—of students, parents, and families. In our lead article, leaders of Carnegie Hall’s PlayUSA initiative describe how their grantee organizations this year are experimenting with many engagement-fostering activities. In the personal column, a parent of two students in a U.S. Sistema program describes how the life of her family has been changed by her daughters’ engagement with the program. Of course, the strongest engagement tool of all in Sistema programs is the music itself. From the beginning of human time, music has been a key motivator of involvement, one of the simplest and most primal ways to get people to engage together in non-musical activities like working, playing, or celebrating. A lot of creative thought in the U.S. Sistema field is currently being devoted to helping students increase musical engagement by finding their own musical voices and learning to improvise and compose by themselves and with others. It’s an essential inquiry; there’s no pursuit more engaging than developing and claiming one’s own expressive voice. At the same time, we need to help 211

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students to engage more fully with music written by others. And the right repertoire, played with combustible energy, will also be highly engaging for their family members in the audience. Juan Felipe Molano, conductor of YOLA and former artistic director of Batuta, the Colombian Sistema, once told us that in order to really engage audiences, programs must include the following four things in every concert: • a piece that knocks people’s socks off. (This usually means a musically complex piece, preferably loud and definitely fast.) • a piece that creates a surge of emotion in people. (Sadness, happiness, transcendence… often, tears are involved.) • a piece that makes people feel patriotic. (This is not necessarily about national patriotism; it’s more about a feeling of pride in belonging to a shared place, whether that place is a neighborhood, a city, a state, or a program.) • a piece that makes them dance. (Always best if the players are dancing too.) Wishing you all highly engaged spring concerts— lots of socks knocked off, tears flowing, hearts touched. Lots of dancing! •

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Encounter With a Maestro, Part 2 June 2019 When a famous conductor finishes an artist residency at a storied Ivy League university, he should be given a proper send-off, right? The members of the El Sistema New Jersey Alliance, which includes all of the Sistema-inspired programs in the state, thought so. They brought in a 250-piece orchestra to do the job. Early on April 29th, the very last day of Gustavo Dudamelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s season-long residency at Princeton, Sistema students from six cities across New Jersey (along with a few comrades from New York and Philadelphia) climbed out of buses and converged upon the Universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s student center, replacing the hush of a Sunday morning college campus with the purposeful clamor of several hundred Sistema kids on a mission to serenade the maestro. They rehearsed all morning in tuttis and sectionals. Then they sat, palpably nervous, waiting for the great manâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and then he came, and the kids got their first lesson in musical super-stardom, El Sistema style. He made his way to the front of the immense rehearsal 213

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hall by ignoring the aisle cleared for him and instead threading his way between the cellos and basses, the bassoons and trombones and percussionists, shaking hands with every single kid he passed. It took him a good five minutes. Before the students played, they were given time to ask him some prepared questions. Dudamel’s responses, like his entrance, were a study in anti-celebrity. “How does it feel to be a leader of El Sistema?” asked one child. “You are leaders of El Sistema, too,” he said. “Look at you here at Princeton, doing something new!” Another student asked if he was happy to have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. “That star,” he responded instantly, “it’s yours too. That’s an El Sistema star; it belongs to all of us.” With every question, Dudamel found a way to avoid what would have been the stock replies of most famous musicians, even the most gracious. He bypassed “I” completely and went straight to “we” with a consistency that perhaps only a longtime student of José Antonio Abreu could muster. When the kids played for him, he simply clapped and smiled. Their learning that day was more than musical; it was the clear message that at the heart of El Sistema is the indelible power of “we.” •

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Sida Vid Sida: Revisiting Sweden July 2019 I went last week to Side By Side By El Sistema Sweden, an intensive international music camp sponsored by the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra in partnership with the city and El Sistema Sweden. Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s start with the statistics. The five-day camp was attended by 2,500 (not a typo) students aged 7-17. They comprised no fewer than 13 ensemblesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;six orchestras, four choirs, early music and folk groups, and a special needs ensemble. Add to all that the presence of many members of the professional orchestra. Over 100 volunteers assisted the paid staff. Over 10,000 bananas were consumed at snack time. The full-camp concert took place in a municipal hockey arena. All quite wonderful, you may be thinking, but not relevant to those of us who canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t serve 2,500 children or commandeer hockey arenas. For me, however, some of the most impressive aspects of the camp had nothing to do with big numbers; they were the kind of small but potent leaps of imagination that revitalized El Sistema principles in practice. 215

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Consider, for example, the many meanings given to the phrase “Side By Side” (in Swedish, “Sida Vid Sida”). Yes, it often meant professional players alongside students. But it also meant experienced student groups alongside beginner student groups. It meant mixing up conventional programming: Berlioz and Billy Joel and folk tunes. It meant that volunteer teachers, experienced T.A.s, and renowned conductors worked together in rehearsal and performance. Kids from Sistema programs and kids from non-Sistema programs couldn’t tell who was who. In general, there was a consistent and resolute equal valuing of experienced and novice, skilled and unskilled players. In the big concert, all the ensembles were literally arrayed side by side across the arena floor. As they played and sang Bernstein’s “Somewhere,” the area microphone nearest the special needs choir picked up some voices singing discordant but emotionally charged notes. No one turned off the microphone, resulting in the most moving rendition of the words “There’s a place for us” that I have ever heard. Side by Side was huge. But it was also inventive, playful, and virtuosically inclusive. These are takeaways to inspire all of our programs, large or small. •

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A Transition in Our Network September 2019 On November 1, 2011, Eric Booth and I published the first issue of The Ensemble newsletter. In my inaugural editorial column, I quoted our Venezuelan friend Rodrigo Guerrero, who had said at the first gathering of U.S. Sistema practitioners: “Look around you. Look to your right. Look to your left. These are the people who are going to help you. Networking is incredibly important.” Throughout eight years of Ensemble publishing, Eric and I have been deeply engaged in the opportunity to look left, right, and center at the many extraordinary people in the U.S./Canadian El Sistema field and to provide a forum for sharing ideas, questions, reflections, inspirations—the conversations that create community. As of next month, a new team will lead these conversations. We are transferring leadership of The Ensemble and The World Ensemble to the Longy School of Music of Bard College, an organization with proven dedication to the Sistema mission and with greater capacity than we ourselves have been able to provide. Under Karen Zorn’s visionary leadership, it is unique 217

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among conservatories in its consistent engagement with El Sistema. With the guidance of Dean Wayman Chin and COO Ann Welch, and led by Chrissie D’Alexander as editor, The Ensemble will flourish and grow. Since 2011, our field has made real progress in fulfilling Rodrigo’s mandate to strengthen intra-Sistema connections through things like El Sistema USA, national symposia, and regional gatherings. However, we remain almost completely insulated from the rest of the music education ecosystem and the wider public. In the past month, I’ve heard radio and TV interviews with three different U.S. Sistema program leaders. All described the great work happening in their own programs. Not one even mentioned that there are close to 200 programs driven by the same vision and mission in the U.S. and Canada. We like to call ourselves a movement. But this is not how a movement operates. It’s why we remain impotent as a force for systemic change, no matter how much we help specific kids and families in specific places. So my last advice as editor is this: Look outward. Connect to other music education programs, to elected officials, to thought leaders. Make our wider vision known to a wider public. We’ve become a field. Now let’s become a movement. •

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