Anyone see that documentary on BBC last night with Alan Yentob?  It looked at the music school system (El Systema) in Venezuela.  It took kids who were poor and/or living rough, brought them into the music school and put them into an orchestra straight away and taught them how to play music (no individual lessons in the early stages).

The results were phenomenal - even the sound of the orchestra with the youngest members was incredible.  This is the same programme that produced the Simon Bolivar National Youth Orcestra of Venezuela, which you will remember if you saw last year’s proms!  Could this be the future of music schools in this country??  A similar plan is now being used in parts of Scotland - would be interesting to find out how it is being funded.

Ian.

Yup - I caught the beginning (fell asleep part-way through), but yes, it did seem to be a very interesting and worthwhile approach.

Well worth doing some more digging and if you can find any refs on t’internet I’d have thought it’d be worth posting on this forum for the benefit of us all.

We’re going to have to get better at this and scan schedules ahead of time and provide notices beforehand so that more people can watch the programme (or record) rather than react.