José Antonio Abreu is the world's most important person you have never heard of. He ranks high when compared to those whose names you do know, too. Abreu, 69 (above right), is the modest and abstemious music enthusiast and former petroleum economist from the Venezuelan interior who in 1975 founded a student orchestra named for the Caracas-born South American hero Simón Bolívar. Over the past 34 years he has expanded this to a national system of classical music training in his homeland that now involves close to 300,000 children and young people in almost 200 orchestras throughout Venezuela. You read those figures right. And 75 percent of these children come from families that live below the poverty line. Through these programs, known collectively as El Sistema, Abreu not only has launched the tremendous career of his major individual discovery, the insanely precocious and charismatic conductor Gustavo Dudamel (above left), he is changing the course of music education internationally and just may be on the cusp of changing the way that the world looks at young people. In three days of events hosted by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, local music educators and students, youth advocates, musicians and general music lovers were able to partake in the gospel according to Abreu. They also saw it in practice when Dudamel, just 28, led what is now the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela in a rigorous open rehearsal Thursday; a sold-out, roof-raising concert in Orchestra Hall on Friday night; and, with 70 of its members, an astonishing "Side by Side" showcase of more than 90 Chicago area pre-college musicians playing together for the first time and playing at a level that would make many an adult, professional orchestra sound banal. Dudamel, who starts as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the fall, has become a known quantity with the CSO over the past two years. But he still amazes. Seeing him in these varied contexts here and over the years one observes his absolute commitment to each moment, his treatment of every orchestra as equal, his unholy wedding of technique and interpretive insight. Friday night a cheering crowd saw how Dudamel and his colleagues, many of them once his own teachers, have drilled 180 young Venezuelans who might never even have heard of classical music into a passionate assembly whose members can claim Ravel and Mahler, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky as their own. What really makes this system tick -- and what the CSO's new Institute for Learning, Access and Training hopes to plant here in Chicago -- is Abreu's philosophy that children have a right to the fine arts, that society has an obligation to respect them and give them a top-flight education, skills, and dignity, and that there can be no compromise of the highest standards of performance and art. Forget about the Olympics; let's get going on Chicago's own El Sistema.Here is my Monday, April 13 Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com review of the three-day Chicago residency of Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela April 9 to 11, 2009, including the Orchestra Hall concert debut of the Bolívars on Friday April 12. The residency kicked off the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Chicago Young Musician Initiative and the 2009 Festival of Youth in Music which runs through May 16.
Sounds like the Venezuelans have it right
Concerts full of youthful zeal
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