Australia’s Melbourne Symphony Orchestra has posted an in-depth blog at its website by Lucy Rash, its education manager, about The Pizzicato Effect, the orchestra’s El Sistema-inspired community music program. The program, which serves 70 children from 20 schools in Hume, north of Melbourne, is being run by the MSO’s education and community engagement team. The MSO is shifting the program “away from the periphery and toward the core of our work as a company” as part of its new strategic plan, says Rash. More than a third of students served in the program speak two or more languages at home, and the orchestra staff at schools work onsite with students from more than fourteen different language groups including Arabic, Turkish, and English. In her discussion, Rash refers to the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s YOLA, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic/In Harmony Liverpool, Sistema Aotearoa (Auckland, New Zealand), and El Sistema Sweden. Click here to read more.
Posted April 12, 2017
