On Sunday 3 December, a delightful concert took place at the Municipal Theatre in Nicosia. The children’s orchestra of Sistema Cyprus entertained the audience with classical solos and symphonies, offering an evening of serenity and positive energy.
Sistema Cyprus is a social music orchestra and choir programme founded in 2018. It provides music education to children and youth in Cyprus, including migrants, refugees, and those with fewer opportunities, and looks to ensure that they receive respect, recognition, and are included in the local society. Sistema Cyprus achieves these goals by offering daily lessons, weekly rehearsals, and regular public performances.
Sistema Cyprus is inspired by the social project El Sistema, founded in Venezuela in 1975 and subsequently spread to several countries. Through free classical music education and the formation of orchestras and choirs, El Sistema reaches children and young people in many difficult neighbourhoods around the world, giving children and young people with fewer opportunities the opportunity for personal development.
The classical music classes in Nicosia and Larnaca are attended by many children from different family and cultural backgrounds, who find in music a common ground and a means of expression and growth.
On the evening of the concert, Sistema’s children and youths performed in front of a warm audience, accompanied by the maestro Santiago Ossa Alzate and Ruben Cova Villalobos, who came from Venezuela as the guest conductor of the orchestra for the event.
“There was a lot of work put into this concert, more than the audience could have seen. Kids started preparing in September, and on the way to reach the goal they have had many obstacles to overcome, musical and everyday ones. In the end, they proved they could do it and gave us a wonderful concert filled with energy”, said one of the ESC volunteers helping with the afternoon classes in Nicosia.
The joyful and energetic orchestra performed several pieces, such as La Petite Danseuse by Eliot del Borgo, La Cucaracha, an arrangement by Norman Ward, and Merengue del Primero by Carlos Medrano.
The repertoire selected for the orchestra was quite varied, in terms of rhythms, periods, countries, and compositional styles, which, according to the maestro Ossa Alzate, “allows us to expose the beautiful of music in many ways, where some pieces require a more advanced intellect and technical effort, and other pieces that carry a simple melody but at the same time reach the hearts of all audiences and the orchestra”. The conductor also believes that the mixture of these pieces makes a concert dynamic, fun, and exciting, and highlights the cultural and musical diversity of different parts of the world.
For our part, as an audience, we can happily comment that this combination of sounds from different parts of the world moved us and immersed us in many different cultures, while we were comfortably seated in our seats. And now we look forward to the next concert!