Hello everyone! First and foremost, I apologize for being a delinquent blog writer. I of course have intended to write more frequently. Here's a quick summary of the last 2 months: Christmas in Germany was wonderful, with Sebastian and his family, and visit from my dad, Beth and Denny. It all went by too quickly, and I was again back in Caracas. I hit the ground running with a meeting with Eduardo Mendez, the executive director of El Sistema, who was very helpful in putting me in touch with a lot of people. My first week back also involved going to two concerts that Dudamel was here directing, which were quite fun. By the second concert word had gotten out that he was here, and me getting tickets involved a crazy raffle-like wait list distribution.
I have delved a bit more into the research part of my project, which I have conceptualized in two parts-understanding how things happen today and collecting pedagogical and methodological tools, and history. As far as the first is concerned, I have begun to collect documents and a lot of methods, especially for the oboe. For the second, the orchestra foundation has an audiovisual archive from the first orchestras' first concerts. This has been really interesting as a means of seeing the development of the orchestras here, and I go to the archive a few times a week to watch old videos. The fashions are great, too. I also have had some very interesting interviews.
The end of January I traveled to the state of Falcón. I meant to stay 4 days, but ended up staying a week, which was wonderful! I went with my friends Carlos and Randall, who were conducting and playing piano with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Falcón that week, Carlos is finishing his Masters in Conducting here in Caracas. They are both Colombian and were good travel partners.
I spent most of my afternoons at the central núcleo in Coro, a beautiful colonial style city that was the first capital of Venezuela. The núcleo there has 750 kids in 6 orchestras, choir and music initiation courses, so there was a lot to observe. They also work with the region´s special needs kids in a deaf-mute choir, that will translate the choir's songs into signs. I learned how to sign United States and Chicago in Spanish Sign Language. In Coro as in most everywhere (ok, everywhere outside Caracas) there is electricity rationing at least once a day for a few hours, which meant that sometimes rehearsals were postponed (not any natural light in the rehearsal spaces) or students took over the courtyards to practice or receive lessons.
I also observed many oboe lessons, spending days with Pedro, an oboist in the Sinfonica and the professor in Coro. I ended up staying in his apartment with his wife, a bassoonist, Ricardo, the choir director, and Eduardo the tubist of the Sinfonica. They were absolutely wonderful people! After my first day in the núcleo I went with Pedro to watch the Sinfónica rehearsal, where I was invited to play in the concert for Carlos' recital.
These were my sectionmates for the concert, I also accompanied them to the other places they teach.
Pedro has collected tons of oboe methods and teaching materials, that he was generous enough to share with me. One of the methods is a beginning oboe book in Spanish that I am now using with my students in San Antonio. Today I taught and they were excited to have homework. Imagine that!
I got to travel to 3 other nucleos outside of Coro: in La Vela, Punto Fijo and San Luis. These are the three oboe students I got to teach in La Vela, a small port city outside of Coro.
The first picture of the blog is from San Luis, a small town in the mountains about 2 hours from Coro by bus on windy road. I went with Pedro and a group of musicians from the Orquesta Juvenil in Coro, Sunday morning, 6am, to teach. (The musicians in Coro that I met lead an impressively busy lifestyle-in the mornings they teach in the penitentiary orchestras, in the afternoon at the nucleo and orchestra rehearsals in the evening. Weekends are spent teaching at the nucleos outside of Coro.) We went on a little bus (provided by the orchestras) up into the hills to San Luis, where a new nucleo is being opened in a school. There are 500 kids enrolled and 50 instruments, so they are letting most of the kids start by passing around the instruments. We had 10 kids and 1 oboe, and this was the first lesson for most of them. The kids were very excited both about the oboe and about me, as I was the first foreigner many of them had ever met. After 3 hours of teaching sol-la-si-do on the oboe, I left the classroom to be attacked by a gaggle of girls who interrogated me about me. They were adorable.
I returned from my trip to lots of activity and visitors in Caracas. I also just got back from spending Carnival in Los Llanos, the Venezuelan plains, which will be the subject for my next entry. Hopefully I will post in the next few days. Abrazos a todos!
I thought I would post some pictures from my trip to Los Llanos, Venezuela's plains (there are more on Facebook, should anyone want to look there). I traveled with my friend Danielle who had just arrived in Caracas, and we met fellow Fulbright friends on the tour. We arrived a day early to Barinas, the jumping off point of our tour, and Chavez's homeland. I recently read that he very much has the characteristics of a llanero, a cowboy of Los Llanos. Los Llanos has amazingly diverse ecosystems, where grazing cows and horses share watering holes with capybaras (the world's largest rodents), turtles, caymans, piranas, and all sorts of different bird species. Danielle and I went on early morning runs, where we saw an elusive anteater (he was huge!), we went on safaris, pirana fishing, anaconda hunting, a riverboat ride, and horseback riding. It was quite the adventure.
There are some capybaras in the background!
In Barinas, "Chavez, te amo-Chavez, I love you"
A picture from the Carnaval parade in Guanare
