MHS caught up with Stanford Thompson, one of nine inaugural Abreu Fellows that will spend the year studying Venezuela's highly acclaimed El Sistema program and working to implement their success here in the United States.

El Sistema USA recently launched at the New England Conservatory in Boston, MA, and is an impressive music education program throughout the country of Venezuela that runs hundreds of youth orchestras and choirs that reach over 300,000 of the country's most vulnerable children.

El Sistema's mission is focused on using music as a vehicle for social change and 90% of its children come from the poorest socio-economic backgrounds. A side effect of the program has produced some of the world's most prominent musicians on the international music scene today: Most notably, Gustavo Dudamel, 28, recently began his first season as music director of the Los Angels Philharmonic and the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra, which is arguably one of the world's most exciting and promising orchestras performing today.

Read what the rising star had to say in the FEATURED ARTISTS section.