If it is up to one of them, Rafael Payare, the next maestro could well come from Montreal North.
The conductor of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, many of whom have discovered the sympathetic face of Everyone is talking about itSunday evening, thus makes his dream of establishing “El Sistema OSM” in Montreal North come true. El Sistema is a musical program based on the principle that an orchestra symbolizes the ideal society and that the more a child is nourished by Music, the better he succeeds.
The idea that music can save young people from disadvantaged neighborhoods from delinquency seemed far-fetched when it was launched in Venezuela 50 years ago. Some three million children are now engaged in classical music thanks to Sistema and hundreds of professional musicians owe their careers to it. Among others, Gustavo Dudamel, who already has his star on Hollywood Boulevard and will become conductor of the New York Philharmonic next year, the flautist Pedro Eustache, right-hand man of Hans Zimmer, and “our” Rafael Payare.
Kent Nagano’s project
If Montreal North becomes a mecca for classical music, it will also owe it to Kent Nagano. Like Payare, Nagano was “lucky” so to speak, to grow up in a disadvantaged environment: Morro Bay, a village in California where his father made a painful living fishing for abalone, an endangered mollusc. Having never forgotten his hard-working childhood, Nagano took advantage of his long stay as conductor of the OSM to set up La musique aux enfants in Montréal-Nord.
He and the tireless Madeleine Careau, former CEO of the OSM, recruited the Faculty of Music of the University of Montreal, the Commission scolaire de la Pointe-de-l’Île, the municipal council of Montreal-Nord, then persuaded important foundations to devote the money necessary to transform the annex of the Saint-Rémi school into a mini rehearsal and concert hall. This is where the Music for Children program was launched. Since then, all the preschool children at École Saint-Rémi play 30 minutes of music every day.
-And it’s not over!
The place was ideal for Payare to make it the cradle of El Sistema in Quebec. “And it’s not over” to paraphrase Stéphane Venne, who left us on Saturday. Other municipal administrations and other developers see El Sistema as the salvation of disadvantaged neighborhoods.
At the same time as El Sistema OSM was created, the Music for Children program was renewed for five years. Madeleine Careau took charge of their destinies with Kent Nagano and Rafael Payare as mentors. One day, Montréal-Nord will become the birthplace of great names in classical music.
It was in September 2008 during a free OSM concert in Montreal North to mark the sad incidents which followed the death of Freddy Villanueva that Kent Nagano conceived his Music for Children project. A tragic death which, unlike so many others, was not in vain.
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