El Sistema, White Hands Choir: Salzburg Festival
About the Event
The El Sistema White Hands Choir will perform at the Salzburg Festival.
The White Hands Choir (Coro de Manos Blancas) was founded in 1999 as part of El Sistema’s Special Education Programme in Venezuela, with the goal of improving the social integration of children and teenagers with various handicaps by having them make music with non‐handicapped children.
The choir consists of two groups which have different artistic forms of expression and thus complement each other in a fascinating way: one part of the chorus, consisting of children with impaired cognitive or motor skills or visual impairments, sings, while the deaf‐mute members of the choir accompany the singing with expansive, artistically expressive movements – with their hands in white gloves.
The White Hands Choir will give its first performances outside Venezuela as part of the El Sistema residency at the Salzburg Festival in 2013, making two appearances at the Mozarteum, which children, teenagers and adults will find equally impressive.
El Sistema
“For the children we work with, music is practically the only path to a social existence in human dignity. Poverty means loneliness, sadness, anonymity. An orchestra means joy, motivation, teamwork, striving for success.” José Antonio Abreu
El Sistema – The Miracle. In 1975, José Antonio Abreu, conductor, composer and economist, developed the idea of improving social conditions in his country through classical music, by giving children an alternative to life on the streets. In Caracas, he founded the first Venezuelan children’s orchestra with twelve children from the barrios, the illegal suburban slums. Since then, he has built a network of orchestras and music centres – El Sistema – throughout the country; each of these teaches in the same unique way. The focus of this method of music education is on the ability to play together, which is why the children are integrated into orchestras from the very beginning. The transfer of knowledge from older to younger children is also part of Abreu’s intention and philosophy: to him, an orchestra is first and foremost a community in which children learn to listen to and respect each other. Thus, the goal is to integrate them into a social network in which every individual takes responsibility and contributes to the results achieved jointly. Maestro Abreu has been able to build upon and expand his vision continuously over the course of more than three decades. The children’s orchestras turned into youth orchestras and the music centres into academies where highly talented musicians study. During recent years, El Sistema has produced a whole series of internationally successful conductors, the most well‐known of which is surely Gustavo Dudamel. At the present time, there are 286 music centres in Venezuela, the so‐called nucléos, usually located at the edge of a barrio. Today, the Fundación Musical Simón Bolívar (the national system of youth and children’s orchestras and choruses of Venezuela) unites almost 400,000 members throughout the entire country in a system of preschool orchestras, children’s orchestras, and youth orchestras, all the way to adult symphony orchestras and choruses. 75 % of the children and teenagers participating in the programme live below the poverty line.
As part of the 2013 Salzburg Festival, this visionary and exemplary project will be presented for the first time in a larger context and in its full diversity outside of Venezuela. To achieve this goal, the Salzburg Festival has invited not only the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra – the orchestral training programme’s flagship, which has appeared previously in Salzburg – but also five of El Sistema’s other ensembles. The selection of ensembles, especially the invitation of the White Hands Choir (which unites children and teenagers with various disabilities), makes it clear that El Sistema is primarily a social project, which does its utmost to integrate as many social groups as possible, instead of excluding anyone.
