Magic in the Music: El Sistema in the US and Abreu Fellows in Caracas
El Sistema USA Movie sample from ElSistemaUSAmovie on Vimeo.
Jeremy Eichler, The Boston Globe
7/11/2010
First in a series of articles that will continue next Sunday in the Arts & Entertainment section.
CARACAS — In the southern reaches of this city, La Rinconada music center is buzzing with a happy sonic chaos as music spills from rehearsal rooms into the hallways. A circle of 3-year-olds ponders the mysteries of the hand bell, older children pick through Venezuelan folk tunes on guitars, and a cluster of brass players sounds out the theme song from “The Simpsons.’’ In a large, packed rehearsal room, a seasoned Venezuelan choral teacher is warming up young voices.
Suddenly, she hands the floor over to three Boston visitors.
Rebecca Levi, 24, and Lorrie Heagy, 45, swing into action, teaching two songs in Spanish along with some complex hand movements. David Malek, 41, grabs a drum and lays down a beat. In minutes, all 80 children are on their feet, and the room churns with song and dance.
The Venezuelan phenomenon known widely by its nickname — El Sistema, or “The System’’ — attracts many visitors, but none quite like this. Levi, Heagy, and Malek are members of the inaugural class of fellows from El Sistema USA: a handpicked group of young, monastically dedicated American musicians, based at New England Conservatory, and determined to bring this revolution in music education to Boston and other American communities.
They have come to learn the secrets of El Sistema, the almost fairy tale-like way it has turned to music as a vehicle for keeping poor children off the violent streets, giving them self-confidence, discipline, and other practical life skills, and in the process building up urban communities around symphony orchestras made up of children. El Sistema now reaches 400,000 Venezuelan children, with 70 percent living below the poverty line.
Music educators from Scotland to Australia have been scrambling to import El Sistema’s principles to their own countries. Until now, however, there has never been a concerted effort to do so in the United States. That is changing, and Boston is emerging as a national center of these efforts.
With headquarters at the New England Conservatory, the recently established El Sistema USA is trying to jumpstart a national movement dedicated to music education not as extracurricular enrichment but as a vehicle for transforming the lives of children in underserved urban communities.
“Everybody is excited about it,’’ said Mark Churchill, a cellist, conductor, and dean emeritus of the conservatory’s department of preparatory and continuing education, who serves as director of El Sistema USA.
“I’ve been involved in lots of different aspects of music-making and music education over my entire career, and I’ve just never seen anything that has allowed — or demanded — that people rise above their personal and institutional self-limitations and think in an idealistic way that’s full of hope, energy, and this sense of rightness.’’
read the rest of the article here
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