Venezuelan "Sistema" founder wins prestigious prize

He is Jose Antonio Abreu- the mind behind the critically acclaimed National System of Venezuelan Youth and Children's Orchestras. Also known as El Sistema, the network has taught music to thousands of mostly impoverished youths including abused kids and children with disabilities. The system is best known for its most famous graduate- Los Angeles Philharmonic music director Gustavo Dudamel- and has been copied in more than twenty countries.

For his work, Abreu was named as the co-recipient of Sweden’s biggest music award: the Polar Music Prize. "Driven by a vision that the world of classical music can help improve the lives of Venezuela's children, he created the music network El Sistema, which has given hundreds of thousands the tools to leave poverty" said the Swedish Royal Academy of Music about Abreu. Along with the deserved recognition, Abreu will also receive $128,000 at a gala ceremony in Stockholm on August 31.

Abreu’s dream to teach music to Venezuelan youth has helped push El Sistema to prominence:

"Art education is an essential component of the educational system," says Abreu, a deceptively soft-spoken man with the fiery social conscience of a Jesuit reformer, speaking at El Sistema's central offices here. "It cannot be a peripheral element. It's not possible that a child would have access to an arts education as an option, by accident or out of charity. Because an aesthetic formation is that which touches our sensibility. Art and religion influence, definitely, the formation of our values."

Abreu will receive this year’s Polar Music Prize along with British musician Peter Gabriel; as we mentioned in March, he has lent his humanitarian efforts to bring justice for the hundreds of unsolved deaths of women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

Image- eitb.com
Online Sources- AHN, CBS News, The Latin Americanist, Los Angeles Times, BBC News