A bit about El Sistema

We are inspired by Venezuela’s El Sistema because it’s a program that has been in operation since 1975 and has by now achieved successes so massive that the whole world is watching and borrowing. 

What draws our attention first, of course, is the extravagantly high level of playing shown by children (now 400,000 of them) in Sistema youth orchestras throughout that country. That and the philosophy that drives it all, which is constantly stated and re-stated by founder Jose Antonio Abreu. 

“Music,” he says, “has to be recognized as an agent of social development in the highest sense, because it transmits the highest values—solidarity, harmony, mutual compassion. And it has the ability to unite an entire community and to express sublime feelings.”