Dudamel’s the Dude, but could we do it here?
I was lucky enough to see the Prom performed by the Simon Bolivar Orchestra, just over a week ago, and conducted by the prodigy Gustavo Dudamel, a mere 26. That makes him the daddy of the orchestra though, who are all Venezulans aged between 18 and 25. Some critics have described it as the best Prom ever, with the orchestra donning venezualan jackets, playing in the crowd and basically displaying an exuberance rarely seen at a classical concert.
The performance has reverberated even more widely because of how it came about - the orchestra is merely the pinnacle of an amazing 30 year long project in Venezula called El Sistema. A quarter of a million young Venezualans play in youth orchestras, and many of them come from very deprived backgrounds. With the recent focus on gang violence in Britain, many are now asking whether it could be done here - including my friend Charles Barwell HERE and Julian Lloyd-Webber. Apparently it is going to be tried out in Scotland, in Stirling.
Of course, we already have a good netwrok of orchestras in this country, and we don’t (yet) have the scale of social deprivation we see in Venezula. Given the huge opportunities that exist here, it is debatable whether a systematic national programme could have the same effect as it has in a developing country. But the idea certainly needs exploring.