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Main Menu Home About Us Contact Us MHS eNewsletter Composers Conductors Instrumentalists Vocalists Featured Artists & Groups Reviews Donors Search Site for... Links Newsflash Fun Stuff Hot Topic! Bibliography Events Myrtle on the Web Guestbook Finding the truth is not enough. What we also have to find is justice.                                ~Rigoberta Menchu Stanford Thompson Sunday, 18 October 2009 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:   Photo by David DeBalko Hi Rashida, You've raised some great questions and here are some of my answers from my perspective now. I'm sure these answers will change as I go through this El Sistema fellowship. How do I see the arts connected to social justice?  - I like to think of social change - not social justice, which is about the equality of opportunity and outcome. The arts are more than just a system of performance, expression and education. The arts are the best vehicle for social change that is available to our communities. The arts help kids build a spirit of harmony and brotherhood, develop their self-esteem and promote ethics. Once you put an instrument or a paintbrush in a kids hands, they are a child on their way to a new life; a life that will continue to encourage them to make their lives, families and community better than the way they found it. What do I think the impact will be and how long do I think it will take to make that impact?  - We will see more communities come together to celebrate the talent of their children, neighbors and friends. There is an old phrase that music is the world's universal language. Where else can you see different ethic, religious, racial, and economic groups come together for a common purpose and celebrate positive achievements of youth while nurturing a common sense of culture? Watching kids push each other over a ball is not what comes to mind. I believe an impact can be noticed within a decade of the launch of the El Sistema USA movement. It could take many more years to develop a country-wide movement of using arts as the number one vehicle for social change. Do I think El Sistema will help change that perspective? - Yes! Dudamel is where he is because the LA Phil wanted to stop following the status quo. When they went on their worldwide search for a new music director, they had their pick of perhaps a thousand qualified musicians. There were world-class people who had been tested and proved at doing the work of running an orchestra the traditional way. However, they wanted a leader that could bring the organization to a new audience in a new way. To me, Dudamel represents everything that the typical conductor is not - someone that does not fear change in a profession that has so many "rules" and "expectations". Dudamel is reminding us to forget that fear in our performance and especially in how we teach. How can we talk about music in concrete ways that affect people, since words like "nourishing the soul" typically make music and music-making seem so individualized and intangible? In my opinion, let's not talk about music in concrete ways. Let's make music in concrete ways. However, If we talk about music, let's find relevant connections that exist in each one of us. For example: William Carlos Williams - The Red Wheelbarrow so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens. The typical performer would get up, recite the poem, smile at the audience, bow and leave the stage. I'm sure after you read this, you were thinking, "OK, I don't know what just happened, but they sure can read that poem (or play that instrument)" Or you could type up some program notes about the life of William Carlos Williams and the history of this poem (a.k.a, going to an orchestra concert and reading the playbill) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Carlos_Williams Or you could go to the pre-concert lecture and listen to an analysis of the poem and if you are lucky enough to understand all of the literary devices Williams used, then you're in the club. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Wheelbarrow Or the performer could get up and tell you that Williams was a pediatrician and not a trained "poet". While caring for a very sick child at the child's home, Williams wrote this poem in less than five minutes while observing a red wheelbarrow glazed with rain water besides some white chickens. That's all the poor sick child could see as he spent weeks in the bed. So much depended on that scene for that little sick child. Everybody can relate to that. But everyone can also form their own reasoning behind this poem as well: http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/83.html That's what El Sistema does - allows everyone to relate to music. Kids, parents, friends, communities and the country. Social change is their mission through music and awesome side effects like Gustavo Dudamel and Edicson Ruiz of the Berlin Phil.     Many thanks to Stanford Thompson for his thoughtful response. All the best to him!   < Prev   Next > [ Back ]       © 2012 myrtlehart.org Joomla! is Free Software released under the GNU/GPL License.

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