NEC and Latin America
In 1977, conductor, cellist, and educator Mark Churchill had completed bachelor’s and master’s degrees at New England Conservatory and was getting to know the world of music below the equator as artist-in-residence at a university in Brazil. Two years later, Churchill was back in Brazil on a Fulbright grant to conduct doctoral research on Brazilian chamber music. Fast-forward to 1993: Churchill has been NEC Dean of Preparatory and Continuing Education for more than a decade, has learned about the effectiveness of international youth orchestras to promote cross-cultural understanding as founding Resident Conductor of the Asian Youth Orchestra, and has found a way to combine his passions for youth education and Latin America with a concert tour of Chile by NEC’s Youth Philharmonic Orchestra. This sets off a succession of Latin American tours by the YPO that included Venezuela in 2001 and 2005.
At about the time Churchill was making his first trip to Brazil, another music educator and conductor, José Antonio Abreu ’02 hon. D.M., was bringing youngsters into a garage in Caracas, Venezuela, to expose them to the rigors of instrumental training and lure them away from the distractions of crime and poverty. By the time Abreu and Churchill first met in 2000 to plan the founding of the Youth Orchestra of the Americas, Abreu had built El Sistema—his national system of orchestral training—to an impressive level of accomplishment. On the 2001 YPO tour, NEC students saw how this system brought energy and focus to a nation’s youth, and performed alongside many of the current members of today’s Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela.
While the YPO tours continued, NEC stayed close to Latin America in other ways.
- In 1994, NEC presented a schoolwide festival of Latin American music.
- In 2001, NEC invited Cuban classical and popular musicians from that summer’s YPO tour to a weekend of joint musical activities at NEC.
- In 2002, following a decade of planning, the Youth Orchestra of the Americas was auditioned, and embarked on a three-week tour of the Americas in its debut season, with NEC as a founding partner and Jordan Hall as its point of rehearsal and departure.
- In 2003, pianist Danilo Pérez of the NEC jazz faculty created the Panama Jazz Festival in his native country, which had previously named him Cultural Ambassador. Pérez started bringing NEC students and faculty to perform at the festival, which is now also a center for student recruitment.
- In 2005, NEC signed a friendship agreement with the newly launched Inter-American Center for Social Action Through Music, an international center for El Sistema’s educational mission.
- In 2007, NEC presented the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela's sold-out performance in Symphony Hall, as part of a Boston residency during the orchestra's North American tour that included collaborative activities with NEC students and faculty and an orchestral reading session with conductor Gustavo Dudamel and the NEC Symphony Orchestra.
All during this time, many NEC faculty members have taught, conducted, and performed throughout the region.
updated 20 February 2008