There's nothing quite like teaching to be reminded of how much more you yourself have to learn: docemur docendo, as the poet wrote. I've participated in plenty of conducting workshops, so I can say from long and painful experience that the craft of conducting, or rather, the craft of teaching conducting, is particularly prone to … Continue reading Keeping me honest
The following is a commentary on the article published in the current edition of La Scena. For the article itself, click on the image above. In my public speaking engagements, I make a recurring theme of "different vocabularies for different constituents." It's fairly easy for the artistic community to default to emotive terms when describing el … Continue reading Sististically speaking
In retrospect, I'm not the most likely candidate to be writing about elements of violin pedagogy. On paper my credentials appear respectable, if not even remarkable: a performance with the London Philharmonic Orchestra; collaborations with Marin Alsop - but like most musical CVs, those accomplishments require an extremely narrow interpretation of circumstance to be … Continue reading New Strad Article out!
After a brief hiatus for the Christmas holidays, La Scena is back with the fifth installment of the ongoing series on el Sistema. These articles are always tremendously challenging - just 500 words to deliver an entirely self-encapsulated idea on some aspect or facet of a huge topic. In this instance, the space constraint … Continue reading La Scena Series continues
A quick aside, before I continue with a train of thought temporarily abandoned with the previous blog posting: it appears February will be "Down Under" month. I'll be spending ten days in Brazil, working at Nucleo Neojibá in Salvador, Brazil, at the invitation of Ricardo Castro with whom I shared a panel at the London … Continue reading in a big way…
One week ago today I was in Anaheim at the NAMM conference, giving the “Music Education Day” keynote along with my fellow Abreu ’10 alumni. I opened the morning (which made for a nice change given that during the Fellowship I always ended up going last) and gave a brief synopsis of the Five … Continue reading The Classic Question
About once every year I foolishly start to think to myself that I might have figured out this conducting thing. It’s an easy trap to fall into, mainly because the idea is something I desperately want to believe and I look for reasons to believe it. Alas, the self-satisfaction, such that it is, has always … Continue reading A Christmas Present for El Sistema – Part 2
It’s been another stellar year for el Sistema – some might say a banner year, in fact. 2010 saw the formation and début of yet another extraordinary Venezuelan national orchestra, extraordinary not just for the caliber of music making but the inordinate youth (under the age of 16) of its membership. The Venezuelan “middle child”, … Continue reading A Christmas present for El Sistema
A sour note has been sounded in the sweet symphony that is El Sistema USA: the New England Conservatory of Music, the organization’s host and primary supporter, recently decided to discontinue its support of ESUSA and focus its attention solely on the Abreu Fellows program. Since the announcement, there’s been plenty of surprise, shock, angry … Continue reading Change is coming…
This article appears in the latest issue of La Scena but in French only. The English version is reproduced below, and has been appended to the downloadable PDF linked above. It’s hardly a secret that Maestro Abreu really doesn’t like the name el Sistema. In his defense, it wasn’t his choice, but a bureaucratic naming … Continue reading New La Scena Article now available
Jonathan Andrew Govias 