Yesterday, the inaugural Abreu Fellows attended a simple lunchtime ceremony in Boston to commemorate their graduation. A year has passed since 10 amazing young musicians began the El Sistema USA program at New England Conservatory, learning all the skills they needed to follow in the footsteps of TEDPrize winner Maestro Jose Abreu. Using the example of his groundbreaking program in Venezuela they will be heading to seven different cities in the US to establish nucleos — programs and centers that will teach children to play music, believe in themselves and reach for their dreams. The Q&A that follows is a little bonus they provided the TED Blog at the end of their year.

Tell us about your experience in Venezuela! What was it like to finally meet Maestro Abreu?

Rebecca Levi: I don’t think that I truly understood El Sistema — or what I was working for — until I met Maestro Abreu. When he walks into a room, he sees every individual, turning even the most official meetings into intimate encounters. His emotional intelligence has inspired me to think about leadership in a whole new way.

Daniel Berkowitz: We experienced the impossible 3 times each day: a miracle in each nucleo, a complete society in every orchestra and extraordinary warmth from our nucleo hosts. The energy surrounding this mission was palpable throughout the country — a testament to Maestro Abreu’s empowering leadership. We were incredibly fortunate to experience the Maestro’s presence. I returned from Venezuela energized, honored, inspired, and ultimately humbled to be doing this important work.

Lorrie Heagy: People who had visited Venezuela and its nucleos told us the experience would be life-changing and now I see why. It’s become commonplace to enter a room of a nucleo and be deeply affected by music played in ensemble by hundreds of kids. Each nucleo is living out Dr. Abreu’s conviction that “the culture for the poor cannot be a poor culture.” As we traveled to different nucleos throughout Caracas, we discovered that each site is unique and adapts to meet the needs of its children and community. In fact, Dr. Abreu explained that El Sistema is not a system, but rather a living, breathing program that continues to grow and develop through the collaboration of many generations of teachers.
The process may vary, but the goal set forth by Dr. Abreu is constant: “creating better human beings.” This mission drives the decisions of its teachers and permeates the walls of every nucleo we visit. We hear it in the impassioned voices of the young nucleo directors and teachers (not much older than their students) and see it in the determined faces of children in the orchestra focused so intently on the music that they seem unaware of the crammed spaces and stifling heat.

Dantes Rameau: Meeting Abreu was an interesting experience. There was a mysterious aura around him. He was very thankful for having us in Venezuela for two months. He started by explaining a little bit about how and why he started El Sistema. And then, what started off as a casual get-to-know-you meeting turned into him giving us a 60-minute speech, off the cuff, about the value and righteousness of what El Sistema is about. At that point, I would have run through a brick wall for him.

Where were you and what did you during your internship?

Katie Wyatt: I was in New York City with the Harmony Program, working with young college students who were being trained to be teachers in El Sistema, while they were working with spunky young kinds in Harlem and Brooklyn. We pushed hard for two weeks to prepare these kids for recitals, which blew everyone away. I knew when Treasure, a 3rd grade trumpet player, turned to her teacher and bargained that instead of playing this “boring” exercise for the recital, she should play a piece that she composed instead, that we were making progress!

Jonathan Govias: I spent my internship in Cleveland, working with a Chamber orchestra that is actively redefining the orchestra model for community engagement. They don’t compartmentalize education or outreach but make both the equal pillars of their operation. They’re not big — LA Phil spent three times their annual budget promoting Dudamel alone — but they do some of the most honest, sincere, non-publicity seeking work in the nation, bringing music to underserved areas and fostering a participatory culture.

How has the last year changed you as a person and as an educator?

Christine Witkowski: The first time I ever played music in harmony was in 6th grade band class to “Go Tell Aunt Rhodie.” I have very little doubt that this was a painfully out of tune performance with squeaking clarinets and chipped notes, but to me, it was magical. Later, with years of refinement and the help of my amazing teachers, I became a much better musician — but I also traded much of my wonderment in for critique. This year, I have regained that genuine awe for music because I have experienced it again, playing with children in El Sistema. The skills of my training, the perspective of my kids and the vital purpose of this movement have all made my life in music much fuller. The meaning behind all the music and all the work — tocar y luchar — is quite clear.

Katie Wyatt: I discovered that so much more is possible than I ever dreamed of. I will no longer place limits, of any kind, on a child. And the same applies for me, and everyone I work with and care for.

Alvaro Rodas: I have a larger appreciation for what I thought was a flaw: having to be a part-time teacher, administrator and performer was seen in this country as an “incomplete”, segmented professional. Some people call me a sort of Renaissance man, but there was always a condescending tone in that. Now I know that this is a whole profession that has a large important goal and purpose. I feel validated in what I have been doing for some years now.

Stanford Thompson: Until I saw Jose Abreu’s TED Prize wish, I understood my role as a performer and that I needed to achieve the highest level of ability to be accepted as a professional musician. After seeing the video, I dug deep inside to figure out what my purpose as a musician was. The Abreu Fellows program taught me that my role as a musician goes beyond being a performer, but also an administrator, an educator, a social worker, citizen, and a scholar. Now I feel that I have a bigger flame that I can pass along to the entire community.

What are your plans for the year ahead?

Lorrie Heagy: Imagine 60 kindergarteners in Juneau, Alaska, playing violin together during the school day! Thanks to the support of the Association of Alaska School Boards and the Glacier Valley Parent Group, the school’s kindergarten teachers, local Suzuki violin instructor and I will team together to offer group violin lessons to every kindergarten class three times a week, free of charge. This El Sistema-inspired program is called JAMM (Juneau, Alaska Music Matters) and hopes to expand to more grade levels, more Juneau schools and after-school hours in the coming years.

Christine Witkowski: I am moving to LA to become the program director for the newest Youth Orchestra LA (YOLA) El Sistema inspired program at Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA). I will have 80 first graders on strings and 40 fourth graders on winds in the first year!

David Malek: Rebecca Levi and I are co-directing an El Sistema-inspired program in Boston hosted by The Conservatory Lab Charter School. CLCS is a pre-K through 5th grade school that places the idea of learning through music at the center of its charter. In addition to being a co-director at CLCS, Rebecca and I will also be active in connecting and creating other “nucleos” that will be known as El Sistema Boston.

Dantes Rameau: Atlanta is a beautiful city with a great music and arts scene. Alongside that there are several large communities in Atlanta that do not have close access to instrumental and choral music training, but who have the right to experience it. This combination of vibrant arts scene and substantial need are an ideal landscape for an El Sistema program. It is in this vein that I and a team of dedicated Atlantans will launch the “Atlanta Music Project” in late 2010. Inspired by El Sistema, we will target underserved communities in Atlanta and be a safe haven where kids will be able to come after school to grow and play music together.

How can the TED community help to support you/el Sistema in the U.S.?

Rebecca Levi: I hope that the TED community can continue to reach out as individuals to us, especially as David and I start work in a new city. We hope that we can help El Sistema Boston grow, so any support in that endeavor would be greatly appreciated.

Katie Wyatt: Keep the movement alive! Please, read our blogs, tell your friends, and DREAM BIG! As Maestro Abreu has shown us, all you have to do is start — even if it’s with 11 kids in a garage.

David Malek: My hope is that members of the TED community that find resonance with our mission to create a counter-culture or alternative way of learning contribute in some creative way. While money is always a necessity and important to building of any program, what’s even more important is the contribution of ideas and relationships. We are building a community of friends and families that says that creating music and art together is important. Rather than wasting time and resources to convince the world to believe what we already know, we want to spend our time and resources in the doing. We know that this is what TED is all about and I hope to welcome these kindred spirits into our community.

Jonathan Govias: All TED needs to do is to make sure that this idea, along with all the other great ones the organization supports, doesn’t fall out of the consciousness of its membership. The support of TED as an organization has been invaluable, but it’s the membership, the individuals with their passion and commitment for great ideas, who will make it happen locally. There will only be 50 Abreu Fellows, but there’s no limit to the need in America and beyond.

To find out more about all the Abreu Fellows and follow their journey, please visit the El Sistema USA website here >>

Three months ago, the visionary Venezuelan musician Dr. José Antonio Abreu made his TED Prize wish — to create and document a special training program for at least 50 gifted young musicians, passionate for their art and for social justice, and dedicated to developing El Sistema in the US and in other countries.

Today we are proud to introduce the Abreu Fellows Program at New England Conservatory of Music. It is a one-year postgraduate certificate program for accomplished young musicians who desire to become ambassadors of El Sistema and who are committed to developing it outside of Venezuela. Abreu Fellows will spend a year studying between Boston and Caracas, and leave with the tools to return to their communities to teach the El Sistema model.

Subject to funds raised, the program is ready to open this fall with spots for the first 18 fellows.

More detailed information on the program, the fellows and funding scholarships is online at a beautiful new website, elSistemaUSA.org.

el Sistema USA is a support and advocacy network for people and organizations inspired by Venezula’s monumental music education program. It will grow to provide comprehensive information on the El Sistema philosophy and methodology, and host a variety of resources that will aid those building, expanding and supporting El Sistema programs in the US and beyond.

Check out the site and be inspired. Help build the program by identifying or supporting a fellow. And if you haven’t already, watch the unforgettable youth orchestra performance from TED.

A huge thanks to Albertson Design, who did an amazing job branding the fellows program and designing and building the website.

And thanks to The Rackspace Cloud for hosting the site.

In a remarkable testimony by Linda Ronstadt to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment & Related Agencies Tuesday, the pop singer made an impassioned plea for government support of the arts. And Gustavo Dudamel, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s soon-to-be music director, was her poster boy.

We quote from her written testimony here:

In the United States we spend millions of dollars on sports because it promotes teamwork, discipline, and the experience of learning to make great progress in small increments. Learning to play music together does all this and more.

José Abreu, the founder of El Sistema, the children’s music curriculum currently considered to be the best in the world, says this: “An orchestra is a community that comes together with the fundamental objective of agreeing with itself. Therefore, the person who plays in an orchestra begins to live the experience of agreement. And what does the agreement of experience mean? Team practice, the practice of a group that recognizes itself as interdependent where one is responsible for others and the others are responsible for oneself. Agree on what? To create beauty.”

… As you may know, there is a conductor of staggering talent who has been hailed as the next Leonard Bernstein. His name is Gustavo Dudamel and he has toured the United States and Europe with the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra to ecstatic reviews. He joins the Los Angeles Philharmonic as their Music Director in the fall. Here’s what matters to us today: this young conductor has a passion for music education because he knows its true power to alter the course of young lives. He was brought up in Venezuela in the extraordinary music education system that I mentioned earlier called El Sistema.

Imagine what can be accomplished if we support the arts, engage ‘at risk’ youth and help them succeed in school and in their lives. For ‘underserved’ families, indeed for all families, participation in music and the arts can help people reclaim and achieve the American Dream.

Read Linda Ronstadt’s full testimony here >>
Learn more about El Sistema >>
Learn how YOU can help spread El Sistema >>

And watch Gustavo Dudamel as he conducts the Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra of Venezuela in a spine-tingling performance:

Hat tip: Phantom Galleries LA
Photo: TED/Asa Mathat

In a basement studio in Caracas, Venezuela, three weeks ago, I had the most powerful musical experience of my life. TED Prize Director Amy Novogratz and I were standing five feet away from the conductor’s stand in front of 200 Venezuelan virtuoso musicians — their average age 16. Many of these kids had been born in the slums of Caracas or the poverty-stricken villages outside. They were part of the astonishing El Sistema program that had provided them instruments from an early age and countless hours of individual rehearsal and orchestral practice: a discipline that — as some of them told us — was transformative for them personally and even for their families.

They were known as the Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra, the pride of Venezuela, and we were hoping that they might be able to do an unannounced live-by-satellite performance for TED2009, which was just 10 days away. We were curious as to what kind of impact they might have. The conductor raised his baton. The first three notes had us leaping out of our skins, overwhelmed by a wall of sound. I had heard Shostakovitch before, but never like this. Passion, brilliance, precision and total commitment shone from every face. They didn’t just play the music, they entered it, bodies swaying and occasionally darting to the rhythm. For 15 minutes, though it could have been a second or a lifetime, we were lost.

At the end of the performance, we got to tell them that they were soon to perform to a global audience connected by satellite — and that their conductor that night would be the international phenomenon Gustavo Dudamel, El Sistema’s most famous graduate. The performance was to celebrate the TED Prize being granted to the revered founder of El Sistema, Jose Antonio Abreu. The air crackled with excitement. We got to film some of the kids playing individually and sharing some of their stories and views (and you can see some of them in Maestro Abreu’s TED Prize acceptance speech).

10 days later, standing on the TED stage after Abreu’s inspirational talk, shaking with anxiety about whether the technology would work, and whether the experience could possibly be shared this way, I announced the surprise performance. Unbelievably, it happened again. Electricity down the spine like never before. The a/v team in Caracas live-edited the talk to a quality level that boggled the mind. Dudamel entrancing, magnetic, the children sharing their souls through music in a way that few of us had experienced. And at the end, the longest standing ovation in TED’s history.

And now here it is on TED.com. The same piece, exactly as we saw it … no new editing. If you care about music, I urge you … no I beg you … set aside 20 minutes, connect to your computer the best speakers you own, gather your family or friends or colleagues around, turn up the volume, and accept this astonishing gift from a bunch of kids in another country who might have lived lives of futility … but instead discovered the transformative power of music.

Watch Gustavo Dudamel and the Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra — and then watch Jose Antonio Abreu’s TED Prize wish to bring this musical program to the world. On TED.com, you can download these TEDTalks, rate them, comment on them and find other talks and performances from our archive of 375+ TEDTalks — including many more TED Prize wishes.

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We’ve transcribed Jose Antonio Abreu’s TED Prize wish to use music to transform kids’ lives and posted the full text below the fold. Here’s a snippet:

The idea is that the families join with pride and joy in the activities of the orchestras and the choirs their children belong to. The huge spiritual world that music produces in itself, which also lies within itself, ends up overcoming material poverty. From the minute a child is taught how to play an instrument, he’s no longer poor. He becomes a child in progress heading for a professional level, who’ll later become a full citizen.

Read the full transcript of Jose Antonio Abreu’s TED Prize wish to use music to transform kids’ lives >>

+ Watch Jose Antonio Abreu’s talk on TED.com
+ Read Jose Antonio Abreu’s bio on TED.com

Jose Antonio Abreu’s TED Prize wish (2/1/09) transcript:

Chris Anderson: Let’s now see the extraordinary speech that we captured a couple weeks ago.

(Music)

Jose Antonio Abreu: My dear friends, ladies and gentlemen, I am overjoyed today at being awarded the TED Prize on behalf of all the distinguished music teachers, artists and educators from Venezuela who have selflessly and loyally accompanied me for 35 years in founding, growing and developing in Venezuela the National System of Youth and Children’s Orchestras and Choirs.

Since I was a boy, in my early childhood, I always wanted to be a musician, and, thank God, I made it. From my teachers, my family and my community, I had all the necessary support to become a musician. All my life I’ve dreamed that all Venezuelan children have the same opportunity that I had. From that desire and from my heart stemmed the idea to make music a deep and global reality for my country.

From the very first rehearsal, I saw the bright future ahead. because the rehearsal meant a great challenge to me. I had received a donation of 50 music stands to be used by 100 boys in that rehearsal. When I arrived at the rehearsal, only 11 kids had shown up, and I said to myself, “Do I close the program or multiply these kids?” I decided to face the challenge, and on that same night, I promised those 11 children I’d turn our orchestra into one of the leading orchestras in the world. Two months ago, I remembered that promise I made, when a distinguished English critic published an article in the London Times, asking who could be the winner of the Orchestra World Cup. He mentioned four great world orchestras, and the fifth one was Venezuela’s Youth Symphony Orchestra. Today we can say that art in Latin America is no longer a monopoly of elites and that it has become a social right, a right for all the people.

Child: There is no difference here between classes, nor white or black, if you have money or not. Simply, if you are talented, if you have the vocation and the will to be here you get in, you share with us and make music.

JA: During the recent tour by the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela of U.S. and Europe we saw how our music moved young audiences to the bottom of their souls, how children and adolescents rushed up to the stage to receive the jackets from our musicians, how the standing ovations, sometimes 30 minutes long, seemed to last forever, and how the public, after the concert was over, went out into the street to greet our young people in triumph. This meant not only an artistic triumph, but also a profound emotional sympathy between the public of the most advanced nations of the world and the musical youth of Latin America, as seen in Venezuela, giving these audiences a message of music, vitality, energy, enthusiasm and strength.

In its essence, the orchestra and the choir are much more than artistic structures. They are examples and schools of social life, because to sing and to play together means to intimately coexist toward perfection and excellence, following a strict discipline of organization and coordination in order to seek the harmonic interdependence of voices and instruments. That’s how they build a spirit of solidarity and fraternity among them, develop their self-esteem and foster the ethical and aesthetical values related to the music in all its senses. This is why music is immensely important in the awakening of sensibility, in the forging of values and in the training of youngsters to teach other kids.

Child: After all this time here, music is life. Nothing else. Music is life.

JA: Each teenager and child in El Sistema has his own story, and they are all important and of great significance to me. Let me mention the case of Edicson Ruiz. He is a boy from a parish in Caracas who passionately attended to his double bass lessons at the San Agustin’s Junior Orchestra. With his effort, and the support of his mother, his family and his community, he became a principal member in the double bass segment of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. We have another well-known case — Gustavo Dudamel. He started as a boy member of the children’s orchestra in his hometown, Barquisimeto. There, he grew as a violinist and as a conductor. He became the conductor of Venezuela’s junior orchestras, and today conducts the world’s greatest orchestras. He is the musical director of Los Angeles Philharmonic, and is still the overall leader of Venezuela’s junior orchestras. He was the conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, and he’s an unbeatable example for young musicians in Latin America and the world.

The structure of El Sistema is based on a new and flexible managing style adapted to the features of each community and region, and today attends to 300,000 children of the lower and middle class all over Venezuela. It’s a program of social rescue and deep cultural transformation designed to the whole Venezuelan society with absolutely no distinctions whatsoever, but emphasizing on the vulnerable and endangered social groups.

The effect of El Sistema is felt in three fundamental circles — in the personal/social circle, in the family circle and in the community. In the personal/social circle, the children in the orchestras and choirs develop their intellectual and emotional side. The music becomes a source for developing the dimensions of the human being, thus elevating the spirit and leading man to a full development of his personality. So, the emotional and intellectual profits are huge — the acquisition of leadership, teaching and training principles, the sense of commitment, responsibility, generosity and dedication to others, and the individual contribution to achieve great collective goals. All this leads to the development of self-esteem and confidence.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta insisted on something that always impressed me — the most miserable and tragic thing about poverty is not the lack of bread or roof, but the feeling of being no-one, the feeling of not being anyone, the lack of identification, the lack of public esteem. That’s why the child’s development in the orchestra and the choir provides him with a noble identity and makes him a role model for his family and community. It makes him a better student at school because it inspires in him a sense of responsibility, perseverance and punctuality that will greatly help him at school.

Within the family, the parents’ support is unconditional. The child becomes a role model for both his parents, and this is very important for a poor child. Once the child discovers he is important for his family, he begins to seek new ways of improving himself and hopes better for himself and his community. Also, he hopes for social and economic improvements for his own family. All this makes up a constructive and ascending social dynamic. The large majority of our children belong, as I already mentioned, to the most vulnerable strata of the Venezuelan population. That encourages them to embrace new dreams, new goals, and progress in the various opportunities that music has to offer.

Finally, in the circle of the community, the orchestras prove to be the creative spaces of culture and sources of exchange and new meanings. The spontaneity music has excludes it as a luxury item and makes it a patrimony of society. It’s what makes a child play a violin at home, while his father works in his carpentry. It’s what makes a little girl play the clarinet at home, while her mother does the housework. The idea is that the families join with pride and joy in the activities of the orchestras and the choirs their children belong to. The huge spiritual world that music produces in itself, which also lies within itself, ends up overcoming material poverty. From the minute a child’s taught how to play an instrument, he’s no longer poor. He becomes a child in progress heading for a professional level, who’ll later become a full citizen. Needless to say that music is the number one prevention against prostitution, violence, bad habits, and everything degrading in the life of a child.

A few years ago, historian Arnold Toynbee said that the world was suffering a huge spiritual crisis. Not an economic or social crisis, but a spiritual one. I believe that to confront such a crisis, only art and religion can give proper answers to humanity, to mankind’s deepest aspirations, and to the historic demands of our times. Education being the synthesis of wisdom and knowledge, it’s the means to strive for a more perfect, more aware more noble and more just society.

With passion and enthusiasm we pay profound respects to TED for its outstanding humanism, the scope of its principles, for its open and generous promotion of young values. We hope that TED can contribute in a full and fundamental way to the building of this new era in the teaching of music, in which the social, communal, spiritual and vindicatory aims of the child and the adolescent become a beacon and a goal for a vast social mission. No longer putting society at the service of art, and much less at the services of monopolies of the elite, but instead art at the service of society, at the service of the weakest, at the service of the children, at the service of the sick, at the service of the vulnerable, and at the service of all those who cry for vindication through the spirit of their human condition and the raising up of their dignity.

(Music)

(Applause)

CA: We are going live now to Caracas. We are going live to Caracas to hear Maestro Abreu’s TED Prize wish.

JA: Here is my TED Prize wish — I wish that you help to create and document a special training program for 50 gifted young musicians passionate about their art and social justice and dedicated to bringing El Sistema to the United States and other countries. Thank you very much.

Credit: TED.com
Watch Jose Antonio Abreu’s talk on TED.com >>

Watch Jose Antonio Abreu’s talk from TED2009 on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 375+ TEDTalks — including many more TED Prize wishes.

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+ “It was incredible. His wish for El Sistema in the United States is incredibly inspiring for any of us who love music, for those of us who are raised around music, for those who just appreciate music. I think it’s something everybody can relate to. I’m totally on fire with it. I think it’s awesome.”

+ “This year in particular had more unusual types of wishes and prize winners with very different backgrounds. I think it will be difficult. But I think it’s also inspiring.”

+ “The concepts are really striking and engaging. I was really impressed with Sylvia Earle’s wish. It was really backed up with a lot of great visuals. Literally her cadence and the way that she gave it was really powerful. As with a lot of the TED presentations, that really gave it a lot of impact, even though all three of them had really compelling concepts behind them.”

+ “I think SETI is a massively worthy project. We all ought to be getting inspired about that. It’s underappreciated and needs to be over-funded.”

+ “The ocean project is so eloquently presented. I hope they can work the film into a massive public campaign to present this. Writing to your senators and congressmen might be a part of this. Writing to them and saying, ‘Go and watch this.’ It’s totally essential and not expensive.”

+ “We’re canceling the programs in our public schools. That might be something to bring up. Just showing the inspired fascination of these kids to a school board — sending a copy of the DVD — and saying, ‘Look, what possibilities you are missing.’”

Above: Maestro José Antonio Abreu, founder of Venezuela’s El Sistema, a plan for involving kids in classical music, makes this wish:

I wish you would help create and document a special training program for at least 50 gifted young musicians, passionate for their art and for social justice, and dedicated to developing El Sistema in the US and in other countries.

Learn more, and help grant this wish >>

Photo: TED / Asa Mathat

Gustavo Dudamel conducts El Sistema orchestra Photo: TED/Asa Mathat

However, huge movements like El Sistema create ripples, and it is these ripples of inspiration that take effect in ways we might never consider. It is one of these tiny waves that came through my television, when I was a little girl in Trinidad and Tobago watching El Sistema in concert.

I remember my parents being very excited, and not understanding why, until my mother explained the mission and the vision of this particular orchestra. I remember thinking, “What a wonderful man, to help little kids like me to do things that other people said they couldn’t.” (People were always telling me all the things I could not do.)

As I get older, I can see how moments like this one have also given me direction and purpose. It is experiences such as these that allow me to have continuous optimism for humanity. It is this attitude that attracted me to TED. And tonight, I am a small part of helping to reward and recognize one of my earliest role models.

By Shanna Carpenter