venezuela’s youth orchestra system

If you pay attention to classical music, you’ve probably heard of Gustavo Dudamel. The young Venezuelan conductor has been hailed as the next Leonard Bernstein; he brings tremendous energy and color to his performances and has received glowing reviews from just about every major, well, reviewer in existence.

Even more exciting than Dudamel, though, is his orchestra. While he will in 2009 be taking the helm of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, he currently serves as musical director at the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, where he has been since 1999. That’s right, the world’s most up-and-coming conductor runs a youth orchestra.

The Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra is part of a network of 125 youth orchestras in Venezuela, all overseen by the Fundación del Estado para el Sistema de Orquesta Juvenil e Infantil de Venezuela, also known as the sistema, which was founded in 1975. The sistema’s training programs currently accommodate 250,000 budding musicians, 90% of them from poor socioeconomic backgrounds, who can enroll in the intensive musical training program at as early an age as two years old. And the program isn’t just remarkable for what it does for kids, taking them off the streets and giving them something to be good at. It also turns out seriously excellent musicians. One sistema alumnus is Edicson Ruiz, who at 17 became the youngest double bass player ever to join the Berlin Philharmonic. Eight years earlier, he had been working in a supermarket to supplement his mother’s scanty income and becoming ever more drawn to the street gangs in his neighborhood — until he showed up at the sistema’s local music school, saw a double bass, and never looked back.

One of my closest friends is an aspiring professional violist, and having peripherally partaken in her saga over the past few years, I can state with authority that it is extremely difficult in the United States to enter the professional world of classical music without having an obscene amount of money at one’s disposal. Venezuela’s government may have its problems — and I’m not even going to start trying to untangle that mess — but they’re doing something right.