An incredible argument against America’s tragic downsizing of school music programs? Why sure! What do you get when you create a national system of youth musical education that reaches 250,000 kids, spawns 120 orchestras, and offers even the poorest kids in the country an opportunity to express themselves and plug into global culture? Well, El Sistema, as the huge and tuneful operation in Venezuela is known, is one. Complete and utter musical bliss in the form of the globe-trotting Simon Bolivar National Youth Orchestra, under the direction of world hotshot 26-year-old conductor Gustavo Dudamel, is another. Check it:
(and before all you neo-cons jump all over the whole national program thing with your musty Soviet-socialist rhetoric, that’s the delightfully heretical Shostakovich they’re playing to cleverly diffuse you, dudes). The Youth Orchestra, which will be playing ol’ Shosty’s 10th Symphony, Bernstein’s West Side Story and some fiesty Latin American selections at Davies Symphony Hall this Sunday Nov 4, get pretty festive too:
Of course, there’s a temptation to romanticize these talented kids as geniuses of the barrios – but in many cases that’s indeed what they are. Come out this Sunday and see where a little inspiration and support can lead ….
Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra
Sunday, Nov 4, 7pm, $25-$81
Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness Avenue, SF
(415) 864-6000
www.sfsymphony.org