Wednesday, June 18

            We are joined this morning by Daphne, who flew in to Caracas yesterday afternoon, but was ill.  She had missed the connecting flight in Puerto Rico because she was buying some cold remedies at the drug store in the airport. We're happy to have her with us.  

A Luthier for Every Nucleo

            To address the need for quality instruments that we have noticed the previous day, Maestro Abreu created in 1982 an instrument workshop within an existing vocational school.  Founded and directed by Luis Alaluna (Norma Nuñez calls him the "second maestro" and describes him as a "real character"), the Luthier Academic Center trains luthiers to build and maintain the string instruments for El Sistema.  Maestro Alaluna started with 15 students of whom seven completed training. That group has gone on to teach the next generation. There are now three generations of luthiers.  In a few months, Alaluna will move to a new, larger center that is being completed in the Andean state of Mérida.  This new facility will further boost the number of trained instrument makers.  The goal?  One luthier for every nucleo!


The Luthier School

             A light and airy building (most of the studios have louvred glass windows), the workshop is a very intimate, hands-on operation.  To accommodate our visit, we have had to split into two groups. Maestro Alaluna, himself, presides over the first room in which five apprentices are building guitars.

Anita, Rodrigo listen to Maestro Alaluna describe his school

One young woman is carving a narrow furrow around the sound hole into which she will tweeze tiny bits of marquetry inlay.


Applying marquetry

An apprentice is sanding the varnish on a nearly finished instrument, dipping fine grit sandpaper in water and gently buffing the surface. Maestro II demonstrates how the body of a guitar is shaped with heated strips of wood that are encased in a form.


Shaping a guitar body

            In an adjacent room, we watch a violin-maker and his student. The luthier tells us that they don't build the fractional size violins that young children play.  "With the small ones, you lose too much material.  It's a waste of wood," he says. Besides, it's cheaper to import those from China.  "This way, we can concentrate on making the better full-size violins" and provide free maintenance on all instruments.


Violin maker and student with (far left) Elizabeth

Susan examines violin body under construction

            Bows are also crafted and repaired at the workshop.  The emphasis is on maintenance, however, because constructing bows gets into the sticky question of wood.  The most suitable wood for bows is pernambuco, a Brazilian species that is endangered.  Pernambuco is in short supply everywhere and bowmakers all over the world hoard their precious collections or sell them at a high premium. At this workshop, the luthiers use some pernambuco, but also work in "similar woods."  They also import a lot of carbon fiber bows for the youngest children. 


Bowmaker shows horsehair used for rehairing a bow

            Moving into another room, we observe instrument makers repairing the neck of a double bass that has been broken.  "Too much twirling of double basses," quips Joan, recalling the hijinks of the Símon Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela whose players frequently spin their instruments and hold them aloft during exuberant performances of Leonard Bernstein's Mambo.

            This group of luthiers is more than happy to demonstrate their instruments and they play several infectious Latin American songs for us. 


Luthiers demonstrate their instruments

Randy, himself a violinist and avid chamber musician, tries out a handcrafted violin. He pronounces it "impressive."  We're impressed with his playing.


Randy test drives a handmade violin

            Later, he and Susan soberly observe that even with the handmade "high end" violins, the wood being used is of an inferior grade.  The resulting instruments are quite good, but don't compare to the extraordinary instruments (with purchase prices in the six figures) that some members of NEC's Youth Philharmonic Orchestra play.

A Nucleo in an "Ungovernable" Housing Project

            This afternoon, after lunch, we visit a well-established nucleo very close to the Teresa Carreño Concert Hall.  The Nucleo San Agustín had previously been located in a school that was torn down.  Its temporary quarters are in the basement of Parque Central, an enormous high rise residential/commercial complex.  Rodrigo describes this complex as "a mess."  Built in the 1970's, it is "so huge and so many people live here that it is ungovernable."  It's nearly impossible to police it.  Because of the crime, many of the shop fronts are boarded up.  Physically, it is deteriorating. Nevertheless, hundreds of little kids in blue Nucleo San Agustin tee-shirts are here, waiting for lessons or engaged in rehearsals and sectionals.  And, the nucleo boasts a particular distinction: it was the center that produced Edicson Ruiz, now a bass player for the Berlin Philharmonic and the youngest musician ever engaged by that premier ensemble.  Ruiz is clearly a local hero. Check out his bio at this link


Youthful choir members

            We sit in on a woodwind class.  These kids have been together for about two months, after having worked for a year or so in choir and rhythm classes.  They are somewhat older children—perhaps averaging 11 or 12 years. 


Beginning woodwind players

There are flutists, clarinetists, a couple bassoonists and four oboists.  The latter are working just with reeds and play them like kazoos in the little performance we hear.  The teacher/conductor, herself a flutist who teaches all the winds, tells us that there is only one oboe for these four players.  That's okay, for now, she assures us.  "They need to work their muscles through breathing exercises.  They need to learn control of the mouthpiece, and they need to exercise their facial muscles."  We ask if the children are taught to carve reeds.  Not yet, she says. "After about 10 years they can learn that."


Oboists to be

            This is one of the few opportunities that we have had to ask questions of a teacher, so we pepper her with them.  What about the kids who aren't deeply committed? How much practicing should they do? "It's most important that they have the habit of practicing everyday," she says.  "If a child is a little lazy, he should have his instrument inside and nearby at all times so he sees it. However, practicing is a personal decision and responsibility."

            Walking to the next crowded classroom, we stop at one in which an impossible number of double bass players are practicing the "Ode to Joy" from the Beethoven Ninth.  It reminds us of the conversation Joan had on the airplane and of Maestro Abreu's emphasis on performing the most elevated musical works. 


"Ode to Joy" on double basses

            Moving on to an orchestra of violins, we find another group—with only four months' experience on their instruments.  They, too, are practicing the "Ode to Joy."  Clearly, the themes of great works are imprinted on the students' memories long before they are actually able to play whole performances of them. 

            A full symphony orchestra presents a little concert that includes the Conga del Fuego Nuevo by Arturo Marquez and Vivaldi's Concerto for Two Oboes with student soloists.

Concerto for two oboes

Contemporary Improvisation Counters Regimentation in Montalban

            We drive over an hour outside of Caracas to Montalban to the Children's Academic Center, one of the crown jewels of El Sistema.

            The building is probably one of the nicest we have encountered, with bright fresh paint on the walls, albeit crumbling tile floors. This center serves 1500 students in two shifts.  It is the home nucleo for our guide Norma, who played viola here.  It is directed by Susan Simon, a blonde maestra of "a certain age"—an exception to the more common practice of young directors. Simon is said to be a particularly charismatic and imaginative teacher of the very youngest students.  Indeed, she tells me she uses colors, shapes, and clay to teach notes and chords. Greeting our group, she says, "Welcome to Wonderland."

Hanging out at Montalban between rehearsals

            "Wonderland," it may be, but it reinforces the impression some of us have gotten that musical training here is a little like being in the army. This nucleo seems the most regimented of all those we have visited.  There is military precision in the way we are whisked from one room to the next, and the way different ensembles are lined up and ready to perform for us. And there is military precision to the uniformed security guards with walkie-talkies who follow us, herding the laggards who don't stick with the group.

            In contrast to this regimentation, though, is a contemporary music performance we observe.  The Montalban center has engaged composer/conductor Eduardo Maturet to lead a contemporary improvisation project with the senior orchestra players.  Maturet explains that he wants "to explore areas of creativity" with the young musicians.  "The distance orchestral musicians have from new music is a problem and has a lot to do with how musicians are educated, "he says.

Eduardo Maturet: "A little chaos is good for them."

            Turning his attention to a 14-piece ensemble of strings, winds, percussion, and trumpet, he asks the musicians to improvise according to instructions found on collage-like postcards. The "piece" is called Twelve Monkeys. With the full orchestra, he urges the students to free associate from a collection of small fragments of music printed on a page on their music stands.  "A little chaos is good for them," Maturet says. "I have a vision of another generation of musicians that is not afraid of new music."

Improvising

            The number of ensembles at Montalban is dizzying.  In quick succession, we hear the Symphonic Band which has been working with a brass player from the Berlin Philharmonic, a cracker-jack young orchestra that plays several works including a Lully (?) work with trumpet solo and the "March of the Toreadors" from Carmen; the National Children's Choir; and the Children's City Orchestra of Caracas which plays the Rossini Overture to "La Gazza Ladra" and the Festive Overture of Shostakovich.


Cracker jack young orchestra

            As he did yesterday with the orchestra in Guarenas-Guatire, Tony congratulates the young musicians.  "We want to take the magic.  We want to take the power of music you demonstrate.  We want to take it back to America. Thank you for your passion, commitment, energy, and joy in music-making."


Mark and fellow cellists

A Passionate Finale

            For some of our group, there has been enough music, enough to think about for one day.  For the others, though, there awaits a spectacular coda to the day.  Thanks to Mark Churchill's wide circle of friends in Venezuela, we have been invited to sit in on a rehearsal by the Schola Cantorum of Caracas conducted by the magnetic María Guinand. 


María Guinand 

The choir is preparing to travel to Amsterdam where it will take part in a Deutsche Grammophon DVD production of Osvaldo Golijov's St. Mark Passion, conducted by Robert Spano. This is the choir that has sung the Passion from its premiere and performed it in Boston with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Atlanta with the Atlanta Symphony and other American and European cities.  Guinand is said to have worked very closely with Golijov in the composition of the piece.  Clearly, chorus and conductor know the work intimately.

            The conductor explains that the Passion is meant to invoke "a popular feast in the Caribbean."  As in Bach's passions, the chorus serves as the "crowd," but for Golijov the crowd has an overtly dramatic as well as musical presence. These musicians not only sing, but act out the scenes.


The chorus acts as the crowd

Vocally, the music is terribly taxing: Guinand comments that voice teachers are horrified by the harsh, vibrato-less tone that the singers use in many sections.  And this is compounded by the intensity of their physical movements. But the effects are electrifying.


Guinand incites her performers

            What with Guinand's brief synopsis of each section and the choir's passionate performance, our group gets a breathtakingly vivid impression of this modern masterpiece.  We return to the hotel revitalized.