Ravinia 2024 Issue 1

“This is all about connection and feeling that you have a bigger commu- nity.” Alsop said in an interview during her recent run conducting John Adams’s El Niño in her Metropolitan Opera debut. “It’s about getting kids with like interests to connect, to meet kids from different backgrounds, different parts of the country, different cultural origins, everything. Because the more diversity and connections we can make, I think the richer the culture.” National Seminario Ravinia was inspired by the success of El Sistema, the legendary training program for elementary and high-school musicians founded in Venezuela in 1975 that now informs programs operating in more than 50 countries. Ravinia’s Reach Teach Play, which launched an El Sistema– style program more than a decade ago, introduced the National Seminario last summer. There are no formal auditions; El Sistema–style programs are invited to nominate their students to participate. Last year’s three-day Seminario drew 126 young musicians from 26 such organiza- tions in 15 states and Canada. This year’s students come from 43 programs in 19 states, Canada, Mexico, Sweden, and Greece. “I know that everyone was really hap- py about the way things went last year,” said Alsop. Jonathan Rush, an Alsop protégé, was the inaugural Seminario’s lead conductor. “We were content with the interest level, and that’s why it’s been expanded this year.” Alsop knows a thing or two about getting kids interested in classical music. OrchKids, the after-school program she launched in 2008 while music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, became a national model for bringing music to under-served elementary school children. (Naturally, OrchKids is among those 43 participating pro- grams.) This year’s Seminario showcases Alsop’s gift for mentoring at a differ- ent level. She’s particularly proud that Seminario students will spend time with the slightly older NOI players. Students will stay in Lake Forest College dormi- tories, and in addition to sectional and orchestral rehearsals, they’ll travel to downtown Chicago for an architectural boat tour. “The National Orchestral Institute musicians are pre-professionals, roughly between the ages of 25 and 28,” Al- sop said. “The younger kids will have mentors who are very close to their own age, which I think really will be magical. And not only that, we’ve engaged a doz- en or so Chicago Symphony members to come and work with the young National Institute pre-professionals. So we have a sort of complete-circle mentoring.” In addition to conducting Finlandia for the orchestra uniting the Seminario students and their mentor musicians, Alsop will close the July 10 concert with Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 featuring only the NOI players. “A piece like Finlandia they can do side-by-side,” she said. “It’s not that hard. But I’m eager to have the younger kids observe the Mahler. I want them to see these kids who are just a few years older than they are. ‘Look what level you could be at too.’ “I think that mentorship is very undervalued,” she continued, “though maybe underrated is a better word for it. It’s so important that young people have advisors, inspiring professionals, older people to look up to. I try to inspire people to be a mentor in everyday life. Sometimes it just takes one thing that you say that’s thoughtful to a young per- son that can really change the trajectory of their entire career. “For me, at this point, I’m not necessarily ‘getting something out of ’ Marin Alsop brings focus to a National Seminario Ravinia side-by-side rehearsal with the 2023 students and Chicago Philharmonic mentors. RAVINIAMAGAZINE • JUNE 7 – JUNE 30, 2024 14 PATRICKGIPSON/RAVINIA