El Sistema Programs

The El Sistema movement has swept the American orchestral world, with a considerable number of the almost 120 after-school programs affiliated with a professional symphony orchestra. Polyphonic has written frequently about some of these orchestra-sponsored El Sistema programs. The Baltimore Symphony’s OrchKids program and the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s YOLA program are perhaps the best known, […]

The summer issue of Symphony magazine had an article by Michael Stugrin about the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation’s Education and Community Envestment grants, awarded to 22 orchestras in 2014-15. The grants rage from $13,000 to $27,500, and are granted to orchestras of all budget sizes. Mr. Sturgin’s article focuses on four recipients: The Central […]

Last November, Dr. Geoffrey Baker, a music lecturer at the University of London’s Royal Holloway College, published a book that is quite critical of the founder of the El Sistema movement in Venezuela, Dr. José Abreu, and the El Sistema program itself. Various reviews of Baker’s book, El Sistema: Orchestrating Venezuela’s Youth (Oxford University Press, […]