As a program that began with a few young musicians playing classical music in a garage in Venezuela in the 1970s, the phenomenon of youth orchestras known as “El Sistema” has captured the hearts and imaginations of renowned artists and arts organizations around the world. Today, over fifty organizations in the US self-identify as “El Sistema-inspired,” presumably because they have some combination of rigorous musical study, a social justice mission, or a community development mission. As these music for social action programs emerge and evolve, they are grappling with questions about how to collectively support this new movement, what informs this type of work in our communities, and what this new hybrid leader of advocate, educator, administrator, and musician looks like.

Organizations around the country are exploring partnerships as a way to achieve greater impact than they alone can accomplish. Bard College and The Longy School of Music saw a need to support musicians in well-rounded careers as extraordinary musicians with strong teaching skills, and recently announced that the two schools are in the process of merging. The Los Angeles Philharmonic saw a need to supply El Sistema programs with high-quality teachers, and has partnered with Longy and Bard to train teachers and host conferences that bring together leaders in the El Sistema movement to discuss the needs of emerging programs. The New England Conservatory continues to support 10 people each year in a rigorous program (Abreu Fellows) that prepares them to start and/or support El Sistema programs in the US.

As a current Abreu Fellow, I’m seeing this connectivity in the spirit of El Sistema first-hand. In September, the Fellows joined about 35 music teachers and El Sistema program leaders from around the country in a professional development workshop called “Enacting a Teaching Practice through El Sistema Philosophy,” a joint initiative of New England Conservatory, the Longy School of Music, and the Conservatory Lab Charter School (CLCS) in Boston, where first-year Abreu Fellows Rebecca Levi and David Malek direct an El Sistema program. This was not your garden-variety conference: we embodied the learning by making music together, singing with the children’s choir at CLCS, playing in the children’s orchestra, and learning how to play in a bucket band. By the end of the workshop, many of us felt so connected that we ended the evening harmonizing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” outside of a restaurant.

Cross-pollination from different fields is happening institutionally, as well. When Harvard University hosted a session at the Kennedy School for Public Policy with El Sistema leaders in the US to discuss possible implications of El Sistema-inspired programs on policy, the Abreu Fellows turned the group of 40 public policy grads and arts education leaders into a choir. This is the change that is happening through the inspiration of El Sistema: creative entryways into experiencing excellence, community-building, performance, and most importantly, fun.

As Doug Borwick says, “As more established arts institutions come to understand the need to establish community relevance as part of their long-term prosperity (or survival) the more necessary it will be to develop models of work with communities that produce impressive results.” The good news is, we’re just at the beginning, and the conversations and rich connections are well on their way to making relevant music for community development programs a reality. Through these connections, we’re establishing an infrastructure for the next step: gathering information to better understand the impact that these programs can have.

Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra (image by gichristof)

El Sistema is a system of youth orchestras in Venezuela designed to save the lives of under-served children through intensive and fun participation in music. Founded in 1975 by a visionary man named Jose Antonio Abreu (the former Venezuelan Advisor of the National Economic Council and the Minister of State for Culture), El Sistema has become a paradigm for social action through quality music-making. Currently, over 350,000 children are making music in orchestras across Venezuela through intensive after-school programs at nucleos (centers). Through immersion in rehearsals, group lessons, private lessons, master classes, and performances, the participants have multiple group and peer-learning opportunities to refine their musical voices while developing important life skills. The program is self-perpetuating and comprehensive in its structure: as children are encouraged to start at a very young age and move sequentially through the program, many of them become El Sistema teachers, creating a culture of educators deeply committed to the social and musical mission of the program. Furthermore, the program works with parents to ensure that the children are supported in their musical studies in the home as well as in the nucleos.

Over the last five years, the El Sistema “model” has become a sensation around the world as more musicians and arts leaders have visited Venezuela and felt inspired to adapt the program within their communities. Others have learned about El Sistema on programs like 60 Minutes and through the popularity of Los Angeles Philharmonic conductor Gustavo Dudamel. I had the opportunity to visit El Sistema in Venezuela in 2007, and everything about it was intoxicating: the enthusiasm of the teachers and administrators to save disadvantaged children through music, the level of the musicianship, the camaraderie of the students and teachers, the music-festival spirit of the program (it felt like my experiences at summer music festivals, only this program is all year long), the concert hall designed specifically to advance the education and performance opportunities of El Sistema participants, the participatory nature of every rehearsal and performance. Not to mention that the El Sistema folks know how to have a really good time, and don’t seem to blur the lines between working hard at their music and partying (a motto of El Sistema is “To Play and To Fight.”)

This spirit, coupled with the enormous breadth of the program, has captured the attention of the rest of the world. From the Americas to Europe, from Asia to Africa, from New Zealand to the Middle East, El Sistema programs seem to be springing up everywhere, spurring major strategic conversations about how to reach children from economically under-served backgrounds using this daily after-school, fun, orchestra-based model of music education. El Sistema has had a particularly powerful influence in this country in the last five years. Large to small organizations have found themselves asking, “What is this El Sistema thing all about? Should we consider starting an El Sistema-inspired program? If so, what does it look like for our community?”

In the U.S., the El Sistema movement has manifested itself in multiple ways, and nearly forty El Sistema-inspired programs have emerged around the country to reach needy communities in recent years (check the map to see some of the programs). In 2009, after ten years of building a strong relationship between El Sistema and the New England Conservatory of Music, Mark Churchill, a former dean at NEC, launched the El Sistema USA center along with its first major initiative, the Abreu Fellows program, to support the El Sistema movement in the U.S. The awarding of the TED Prize to José Antonio Abreu greatly assisted the effort. The Abreu Fellows program trains musicians in developing the El Sistema model (disclaimer: I’ll be joining the 2011-2012 class of Fellows). While NEC and El Sistema USA decided to part ways in 2010 so that El Sistema USA could develop into a robust networking organization for El Sistema programs around the U.S., NEC will continue to host the Abreu Fellows program.

Symposia and conferences about El Sistema have taken place in various cities (such as Los Angeles, Texas, Boston, New York, and Baltimore), and the League of American Orchestras provides resources on its website such as written material from conferences, videos of El Sistema workshops, and articles by prominent arts education leaders like Eric Booth. Even filmmakers are excited about capturing the programs in the U.S.: filmmaker Pedro Carvajal is making a documentary on Anne Fitzgibbon’s Harmony Program, and Jamie Bernstein (Leonard Bernstein’s daughter) is making a documentary film about Abreu Fellow Stanford Thompson’s Tune Up Philly program.

Not surprisingly, major orchestras have pondered their role in regard to El Sistema. The LA Philharmonic swept in with the first major U.S. El Sistema initiative in 2008 to “build youth orchestras in communities throughout Los Angeles,” as Gustavo Dudamel prepared to become its conductor. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra followed with its OrchKids program, which provides in- and after-school music appreciation and instrumental learning opportunities to Baltimore City children. Other orchestras have opted out of starting El Sistema for various reasons. As Cayenne Harris, Director of Learning and Access Initiatives at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra explained, the CSO orchestra management spent numerous hours discussing what the CSO’s role might be in offering El Sistema, but ultimately decided that the CSO was not the right host for an El Sistema program. Instead, they looked to other ways that they could be more helpful in supporting the movement: for example, by hosting a Festival of Youth in Music that brings together multiple organizations who may never have had the opportunity to collaborate around the theme of music for social change. For more information on the CSO response to El Sistema, download the PowerPoint presentation entitled “A Distinct Approach” here. Other orchestras have developed partnerships to support the movement, such as the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s collaboration with The Atlanta Music Project.

It will be interesting to see the measurable (and non-measurable) impact that El Sistema in the U.S. is having on the children who are participating in its programs. For now, though, it’s pretty exciting to see how one man’s vision to create an after-school orchestral music education program in Venezuela back in 1975 has inspired many of our cultural organizations and artists to take action and innovate in music education for social change.