Ravinia 2023 Issue 2

Previous page: Conductor and composer Raimundo Pineda led a Sistema Ravinia student string ensemble at a 10th anniversary concert in May on Ravinia’s Pavilion stage, where students from across the United States and Canada will converge on July 8 for the culminating concert of National Seminario Ravinia with conductors Marin Alsop and Jonathan Rush. Above: Sistema students regularly rehearse and perform with their instructors as part of their ensemble. Chicago Philharmonic musicians will be in residence all four days of the Seminario to be mentors to the 130 young people and play side-by-side with them during the final concert. Several Sistema Ravinia students from across its three nucleos—one each centered on Austin and Lawndale in Chicago and one spanning Lake County schools—are participating in the National Seminario, including baritone saxophonist Carlos Astudillo (right), and are looking forward to the camaraderie that will come from meeting, learning, and making music alongside like-minded young people, fulfilling the social change and growth aims of such programs inspired by Venezuela’s El Sistema. PATRICK GIPSON/RAVINIA (ALL PHOTOS) Although El Sistema has drawn some criticism since it was founded in 1975, it has garnered worldwide rec- ognition and spread to nearly 80 other countries, including the United States, where there are 140 instrumental mu- sic programs inspired by its success. One of the largest is Sistema Ravinia, which is in its 10th year of serving 250 primarily Black and Latino elemen- tary- and middle-school children in Waukegan and the Austin and Lawn- dale neighborhoods of Chicago. To celebrate the rise of Sistema music education in the United States and help spur even more growth, the Ravinia Festival is teaming with Chicago Philharmonic to present the first-ever National Seminario from July 5 through 8. The event will bring together 130 students from 23 Siste- ma-style initiatives across the country and Canada to participate in intensive orchestral training and to present a culminating concert on the Pavilion stage as part of Ravinia’s Kids Concert Series. “I think it’s going to be a great thing for these students to see that there is someone on the other side of the country who has the same interests as them or who is playing the same instrument as them and who wants to partake in the same experience together,” said conductor Jonathan Rush, who is leading the re- hearsals and final concert along with his mentor, Marin Alsop, Ravinia’s chief conductor. Carlos Astudillo, an 8th-grader at John R. Lewis Middle School in Waukegan and a budding baritone saxophonist, is looking forward to being able to interact with other mu- sicians like him at the Seminario. “It could really help me with my people ability and [allow me to] meet more sax players and learn a thing or two from them,” he said. Sistema Ravinia falls under the auspices of Ravinia’s Reach Teach Play, a multifaceted portfolio of education and community engage- ment programs that operate in large part behind the scenes and don’t typically get the same public attention as the festival’s high-profile summer concert schedule. It involves 20,000 public-school students annually and touches some 30,000 other peo- ple through such initiatives as free concert passes for underprivileged groups. “What we do is all about creating a continuum of a deepening relationship to music and a deepening relationship to Ravinia,” said Director Christine Taylor Conda, who is mark- ing her 21st year at Ravinia in July. Begun at the Catalyst Circle Rock Charter School in Austin, where Reach Teach Play already had a rela- tionship, Sistema Ravinia later added two other “nucleos” (music centers) for a total of 13 participating schools in all. The students, who take part in the free program with donated instru- ments provided at no cost, attend four afterschool sessions each week. “Sistema is the most intensive, concentrated and high-investment way that we have to bring real music training to hundreds of kids,” Taylor Conda said. Some of its participants have gone on to study at Chicago’s Merit School of Music and take part in the Chicago Musical Pathways Initiative, a competitive program which provides private instruction and summer intensives and other aids toward helping underserved students obtain a place at prominent music schools. But the Ravinia program has broader goals than just producing prodigious musicians. El Sistema in Venezuela carries the motto “Music for social change,” and it functions not under the ministry of culture but the RAVINIA MAGAZINE • JULY 3 – JULY 16, 2023 12