Expanding the “We” of El Sistema in North America
By Eric Booth, cofounder of The Ensemble and The World Ensemble Ever since El Sistema came to North America over a decade ago, spawning over 150 separate programs, there has been discussion about how El Sistema programs should connect with... Read More →
Antigua and Barbuda Youth Symphony Orchestra: Opening Global Doors for Local Teacher Development
By Hazel Ross, violinist, teaching artist, education consultant and coach In July 2020, I was scheduled to deliver workshops for the local teachers of the Antigua and Barbuda Youth Symphony Orchestra (ABYSO), the first youth symphony orchestra in the Leeward... Read More →
The EmcArts Project Develops a New Model of Social Change through Teaching Artistry
By Richard Evans, President Emeritus, EmcArts, and Liz Dreyer, Lead Facilitator, EmcArts Social systems are invariably complex and do not yield to lasting change through traditional advocacy or planning efforts. Why is this? In part, because humans are at once... Read More →
Lessons in Listening
By Yuki Numata Resnick, Cofounder and Executive Director, Buffalo String Works Buffalo Public School #45 is the go-to public school for newly arrived refugees in Buffalo, NY. Speaking dozens of different languages and dialects, many of the school’s students are... Read More →
Creating the COVID-19 Community Response Fund
By Dalouge Smith, CEO of The Lewis Prize for Music The Lewis Prize for Music, a philanthropic foundation established in the United States in 2018, is guided by the mission of partnering with leaders who create positive change by investing... Read More →
The Amani Project Partners with U.S. El Sistema Teachers-in-Training
by Akhil Gopal and Ziyad Marcus, students in the MAT Program of Longy School of Music of Bard College As students in Longy School of Music’s El Sistema-inspired Masters of Arts in Teaching program, we have recently partnered with the... Read More →
OrKidstra’s Youth Group Gives Students Space to Be Themselves
By Andrew Gesing, Program Coordinator, OrKidstra, Ottawa, Canada “From pizza parties and Frisbee games to movie-watching and intense card matches, Fridays have been something to look even more forward to!” For Noah Linson-Hudson and almost 30 other OrKidstra students, Friday... Read More →
U.S. Sistema Programs Respond to Pandemic
by Eric Booth, co-founder of The Ensemble Newsletters In the U.S., Sistema programs shut down in early March—first one, then a few, and within a week, all of them. As safety issues were clear, there was little energy wasted on... Read More →
Inside SphinxConnect 2020
By Joanna Borowski, Director of Education, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra The Sphinx Organization is dedicated to transforming lives through the power of diversity in the arts. The distinctive mission of Sphinx, within that context, is to address the underrepresentation of... Read More →
U.S.A. National Sistema Orchestra Members Visit the Barbican
by Gerdlie Jean Louis, student, Kids4Harmony | 18 Degrees, in Pittsfield, MA, U.S.A. Since last July, I have had the distinct pleasure of participating in the inaugural cohort of the YOLA National Institute (YNI). YNI, an initiative launched last year... Read More →