What draws attention in the case of El Sistema is to understand how Venezuela has reached such a st

If something new is happening in the world music scene today, x10 this event has a name and place: the name is El Sistema, and the amazing thing is that was created more than 35 years in Venezuela, and has been forefront in education and training great musicians and orchestras. The National System of Youth and Children's Orchestras of Venezuela, or simply El Sistema, was created in 1975 by the conductor and musician José Antonio Abreu in order to promote the fight against poverty and take thousands of young Venezuelans excluded the artistic life, as he himself explains in a video recorded for the BBC in 2009. Almost 40 years later, the program offers free musical training in 285 educational centers located throughout Venezuela, reaching about 500 thousand students, as disclosure of the official website of the program.
What impresses in El Sistema beyond its size and scope for a country with just over 30 million inhabitants, x10 is the artistic result. Two of his most important promoters, Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, formed by young people between 18 and 30 years, and its artistic director and conductor, Gustavo Dudamel, have drawn praise from critics x10 worldwide for sound quality and excellence in the interpretation of the most important x10 works of music history.
With an energy, vigor and resourcefulness rare to see in youth orchestras and even world's leading professional education and training to Simón Bolívar has gained international music festivals and fans wherever he goes. For this reason, his young ruler of 33 years was invited to the artistic direction of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2009, and started to conduct orchestras such as the Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin x10 Philharmonic, Orchestra and Chorus x10 of the Teatro Alla Scala in Milan, Orchestra Royal Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Berlin Staatskapelle, Israel Philharmonic and Symphony Gothenburg, Swedish orchestra which is honorary conductor.
The Symphony no. 10 Dmitri x10 Shostakovich Russian, for example, recorded by the BBC Proms at the Festival in 2007, available on Youtube and published in this blog, shows the group's ability to interpret a dense and complex work. Composed soon after Stalin's death in 1953, portrays the brutality of that ruler of history and the trivialization of evil. The dictator left the composer in exile in their own country, forbidding him to leave the USSR and Shostakovich in this work reveals x10 that withstood the years of terror and survived such intolerance. To listen to the work, our ears are impregnated with the precision and beauty x10 of the interpretation of the orchestra. x10
What draws attention in the case of El Sistema is to understand how Venezuela has reached such a stage musical in so little x10 time. As Simon Ratlle, current artistic director and principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, the same video BBC: "There are not important musical work, currently, to compare with what is being done in Venezuela." Another big name from the stage, the Italian Claudio Abbado, x10 who died this year, and considered one of the greatest conductors of the twentieth century, it was great promoter of the work Dudamel and Simon Bolivar.
At its inception in the 1970s, sought to systematize Abreu individual and collective practice of music through the formation of symphony x10 orchestras and choirs, as a tool to organize the various nuclei that appeared across the country, advancing in the educational development, artistic and social to same time. "We had the family and community as our allies x10 [...] the second great heritage of our system is the solidarity and the community and solidarity incentive x10 we create in children. This project is a formidable school of social life and the third value is that this community moves together, building a social and individual goal, "explains the creator the BBC.
At first the conductor and economist managed to gather around him a group of musicians selfless - Frank Di Polo, Ulyses Ascanio, Sofía Mühlbauer, Carlos Villamizar, Jesús Alfonso, Edgar Aponte, x10 Florentino Mendoza, Carlos Lovera y Lucero Caceres - carrying the same dream, and began a grand endeavor. In addition x10 to music education, the work focused on teacher training to handle the rapid growth. By conquering space, thanks to the leadership and Abreu policy coordination, x10 the project has been embraced by the Government that, in 1979, was the Fundación del Estado para el National System of Orquestas Juveniles and Infantiles de Venezuela (FESNOJIV).
Today, the Government of Venezuela is the main funder of the system, which has an estimated cost of $ 30 million (about 72 million x10 dollars) and receives donations from companies x10 and international contribution x10 to keep about 125 orchestras and choirs, 30 symphony, two of them, the Simón Bolívar and the Children and Youth Orchestra Teresa Carreño, with great international projection. Whimsy investment if we take into account the scope and outcome of the project. In a direct comparison with Brazil, for example,