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Photo taken at the nucleo in Tabay, Merida State.   I was taking a flight recently when I witnessed a mini-drama unfold at the front of the aircraft. From my vantage seat in row 1 I could see the flight attendant doing a routine in-flight announcement… except for her, there was nothing routine about it. … Continue reading Confidence trick

  An update to this page, including a directory of the major Sistema programs, was posted on February 16, 2012, and is available here. I'm somewhat surprised by this realization, but I've never seen a Canadian el Sistema initiative myself. It isn't for lack of programs: I've heard of startups in Calgary, Hamilton, Mississauga, Toronto, … Continue reading El Sistema in Canada

  The month of March marked two major milestones (alliteration unintentional) for this blog: the 15,000th unique visitor since the blog first went public in the Fall of 2009, with one of the last of those representing the one hundredth sovereign nation. (Tajikistan). Concerning the first, that’s only unique visitors: the number of total hits … Continue reading 15,000+ unique vistors from 100+ countries

  Part 7 of the ongoing La Scena series was published in the print version in French only, so the English text is reproduced in full below. Both versions are also available for download in PDF format here. IT’S 35˚C IN THE TOWNSHIP gymnasium north of Cape Town, South Africa, but the bass-baritone is doing … Continue reading Symphony in Many Movements

  The 2011 edition of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra has come and gone, the reports are in and the reviews have been…tepid, mostly confirming (albeit indirectly) the general suspicion that conductor Michael Tilson Thomas is far more interested in technology than in people. To be fair, he’s backed into a corner somewhat by geography; were … Continue reading One Year Later

  Here's a wonderful video courtesy of Cape Festival that gives a real sense of the work being done through the project. The blog post reflecting on the experience as a whole can be found here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saLQLFWTOyI

  We were driving back from a rehearsal at one of the township schools north of Cape Town when we passed this and just had to get a photograph, had to pose for our petit hômmage to the Maestro from the opposite side of the Atlantic. I don't think for a moment that Dr. Abreu's … Continue reading Report from South Africa

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!