I arrived in Carracas on Tuesday, July 6th, with just a little worry.  I knew that I was meeting our host Roberto Zambrano, Acarigua-Araure nucleo director, but I didn’t have his number nor did I have the address of where we were staying.  Once I got off the airplane and past customs there was Roberto waiting for me (and two others who were also on my flight).  I instantly new that I was in safe hands!  Since it was about 10pm and Acarigua was 5 hours away, we stayed in Carracas for the night.  The hotel was right across from the now famous Teatro Carino, where the main administrative head quarters as well as the Simon Bolivar Orchestras reside.  Although we didn’t have time to visit it, Roberto is trying to see if might be able to return to Carracas by plane to have a chance to see the building and maybe even meet Maestro Abreu, the founder of El Sistema, if time allows.

On Wednesday we journeyed for 5 hours through the beautiful mountains of Venezuela until we finally got to the region of Los Llanos, which is a plains region of Venezuela.  We had a very quick hotel checkin and headed over to a recreation center where the orchestra was about to begin afternoon rehearsals.

 

I should take a quick moment to explain what I am attending here in Venezuela.  Roberto calls this 14 day festival a seminario, which for all intensive purposes is an intensive orchestra camp where students play all day and work up tough pieces of literature in a relatively short amount of time.  

When I arrived at the rehearsal site, which was on an outside stage in a very hot and muggy setting, I walked up to the sound of an orchestra tuning.  In front of the orchestra was this young man dressed in a yellow shirt, probably not much older than 14.  He was their concert master.  Later, I learned that this boy had just completed a concert as concert master of the new hot shot student orchestra of El Sistema, where he played Mahler 1 under Simon Rattle’s baton.  I also learned that he had only been playing the violin for two years!  Actually there are 3 or 4 students that were in that orchestra. WOW!  

As I walked onto the stage, I saw children from ages as young as 9 years of age to about 19 years of age.  They began to play 1812 Overture.  All I can say is WOW!!  Really!  There they were, musicians of all ages, playing very tough music and they were doing it...sure it is rough around the edges and there is a lot of work to be done, but they were doing it...two days after they began learning this music and there they were...some as young as 9 years old and they were doing it.

After about an hour and fifteen minutes they took a break and we transitioned to sectionals.  I was about to really begin to take part in this process!  For about 2 hours I ran a brass sectional.  I had so much fun working with these kids!  They are so hungry to gather information and will work hard to do what you ask them to do. 

I have to say, I was so excited!  Maybe too excited, I was singing with gusto and jumping up and down as I conducted, but they fed off of it! 

Today, Thursday July 8th, we started rehearsals at 8am....well actually we wanted to start at 8am, but many of the orchestra members where not there.  Punctuality is something that we are going to have to work on while we are here.  

One word that epitomises El Sistema is “flexability”.  This was very apparent when is began to rain and the orchestra, comically, kept moving further and further away from the edge of the stage until there was no more space to move back.  We had planned to break off into sectionals, but since all of our rehearsal spaces were under a tree somewhere and it was raining, Jonathan Govias, the conductor and a recent graduate of the Abreu Fellowship, decided that we should split the remaining morning time with a Winds and Brass sectional followed by a Strings sectional.  The students took all of this in stride and adapted quickly to the changing environment.  

The orchestra will be performing Tchiakovsky’s 1812 Overture and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 - no small feat for any orchestra.  In addition to Jonathan Govias, there are four other instrumentalist from the US here also working with the students.  The students have welcomed us with open arms and are hungry for knowledge and a glimps of someone else’s views.  I hope that i can share at least half as much as what they have already shared with me.

Nos vemos!