A better life can be child's playSOME people know Venezuela as a country that produces oil and coffee, and for the anti-US rantings of its President, Hugo Chavez. But many of those involved in classical music also know the South American nation as the originator of a music-education program that is the envy of the world.
El Sistema, founded in 1975 by economist and musician Jose Antonio Abreu, is a national system of musical instruction, based on the collaborative enterprise of playing in orchestras.
The project is musical and social: music-making as an alternative to the hopelessness of poverty and crime. There are some high-profile graduates from El Sistema, but its greatest success may be the joy it has given to more than 310,000 children.
The model has been adopted around the world, with about 60 similar programs in the US, four in Britain and others elsewhere in Europe. The seeds of El Sistema have been planted in Australia, too, and with encouragement it may take root.
At Laverton College, in a disadvantaged area of Melbourne's western suburbs, 30 primary-age children are part of a pilot program organised by Sistema Australia. Last week they were rehearsing for a concert at their school later this month, playing pieces such as Shark Attack and Sad Movie on junior-size string instruments and percussion.
And, in a separate development, local enthusiasts for El Sistema have gained a high-profile ambassador. The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra's new principal guest conductor, Diego Matheuz -- a spunky 28-year-old Venezuelan -- is a graduate of his country's famed music program.
"With El Sistema, you give the opportunity to the children to develop," he says from Venice, where he is music director of the city's La Fenice opera house. "We use the music like a channel to create a better society."
Sistema Australia is the labour of love of a Canberra man, Chris Nicholls, who three years ago quit his six-figure-salary job in information technology to set it up. When he was a boy Nicholls spent four years in Caracas, where his father was the consul general. Many years later he heard about El Sistema and got hold of a DVD documentary about it. He saw the way the Venezuelan system was working for disadvantaged children there and was inspired to set up the pilot program at Laverton.
As with so many other people who become passionate advocates for music education, Nicholls saw evidence of its benefit very close to home.
His son Alex grew up with learning difficulties and the family tried every kind of specialist and treatment to help him do better at school. Alex was a bright kid, Nicholls says, but his lack of confidence was holding him back.
Alex's life changed when he went to a school in Canberra with compulsory music lessons for Year 7 students. He was handed a cello to play: an instrument that gives him a challenge and potential to succeed. Nicholls says the change in the boy was astonishing.
"He started to do better at his schoolwork, he was able to read complex books," he says. "It was all coming out of this music thing."
The music thing stuck: Alex is now completing his fourth year in cello performance at the University of Western Australia.
Nicholls established the Sistema Australia program at Laverton in collaboration with the local Hobsons Bay City Council, Victoria Police and Laverton College, and with support from Jonathon Welch (of Choir of Hard Knocks fame) and violinist Richard Tognetti. There have been some private donors -- Nicholls has put in $200,000 of his own money -- but so far not a substantial corporate backer.
Nicholls bought the musical instruments, and about 30 children enrolled in Laverton's Crashendo orchestra in May last year. They meet after school hours three days a week for instrumental lessons and orchestra rehearsal.
The children started by playing easy pieces in unison -- that is, the same melody -- but have progressed to playing different instrumental lines in harmony.
Several principles underscore the Sistema system. First, it is voluntary: the kids aren't forced to do it. Second, there are no auditions, unlike some other youth orchestras, so children of all abilities can play. Third, it is a group-learning environment, where older students mentor the younger ones.
"The focus is on the children, they are treated as musicians," Nicholls says. "They are immediately adopted as members of the orchestra. They belong to a special group of people, a gang."
Results at Laverton have been encouraging. A survey of parents reported that their children were happier, more confident and better behaved since they joined the Crashendo orchestra.
Laverton is far from the barrios of Venezuela, however. In that country, El Sistema is a national program built around 280 teaching locations or nucleos. And it has substantial government backing, to the tune of 540 million bolivares ($121m) annually, according to The New York Times.
El Sistema is also an intensive program in which children participate every day.
Matheuz says he would spend all his afternoons at the conservatorium in Barquisimeto, having lessons in violin and harmony and going to orchestra rehearsals.
"I loved it," he says. "When I finished school at 1pm, I go home, I take a shower, eat, and I say to my father, 'Please bring me to the conservatory.' I spend four, five, six hours in the conservatory, every day, the whole afternoon there."
Matheuz played in the same orchestra as a slightly older boy who would become El Sistema's best-known graduate: Gustavo Dudamel, the 31-year-old music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Matheuz was the concertmaster in the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra in Caracas where Dudamel was conducting.
In time, "Maestro Abreu" -- as Matheuz calls El Sistema's founder -- asked whether he would consider becoming a conductor, too. He made his international conducting debut with the Simon Bolivar orchestra in 2008 in Puerto Rico; the same year he conducted Claudio Abbado's Orchestra Mozart in Bologna, later becoming its principal guest conductor. Last September, La Fenice made him its principal conductor.
The Melbourne appointment follows a concert he gave with the MSO at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl, where he wowed the crowd on a sultry summer night. Within a week, MSO management was making overtures about making him a more frequent visitor.
His first official duties in Melbourne are next August when he conducts a series of Stravinsky concerts.
He says he is looking forward to returning to Melbourne and to finding out more about the Sistema project at Laverton.
"I would love to become involved," he says. "I am waiting (for) the moment to go there, to see the children and everything."
Sistema Australia is among several projects that aim to instil a love of music in children. For example, there's businessman Graeme Wood's WotOpera workshops for school-age children; Don Spencer's Australian Children's Music Foundation; and the music program my godmother Robin Thompson instigated at the Police Citizens Youth Club in Orange, NSW.
But the name El Sistema resonates among music lovers. As well as the Laverton pilot scheme, there are plans to roll out similar projects in Adelaide and at three locations in Western Australia.
El Sistema has a strong flavour of social democracy about it: its motto is "To play and to fight". But it is not a panacea for social ills. "Of course, El Sistema helps, but you cannot stop everything, that is impossible," Matheuz says.
Nicholls puts the success of El Sistema down to the effect of children, parents and community being involved in the co-operative business of making music.
"It's not rocket science," he says. "It's a matter of putting good things together."
There is no magic about it, only the wonder of seeing children transform themselves through music.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/a- ... 6471351109