Community Corner
Potomac Resident Heads to the Philippines to Study, Teach Music
Potomac resident Paul Fontelo received a Fulbright scholarship.
Could an "El Sistema"-style youth orchestra program take shape in the Philippines?
It's possible, and Potomac resident Paul Fontelo is going to see if he can make it happen while in the Philippines next year studying classical music composition. Fontelo will learn from leading Filipino composers and musicians at the University of the Philippines College of Music on a Fulbright scholarship, according to a news release from the College of the Holy Cross, from which Fontelo graduated this year.
The El Sistema youth orchestra program is well-known throughout classical music and music teaching circles for bringing classical music study to low-income children. The program started 33 years ago in a parking garage in Caracas, Venezuela, and now teaches music to 300,000 of Venezuela’s poorest children, according to El Sistema USA.
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The program got a boost when its most famous graduate, Gustavo Dudamel, gained worldwide recognition as music director of both the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra (the flagship El Sistema youth orchestra in Venezuela) and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Dudamel has started an El Sistema-like program in Los Angeles, according to his website.
Potomac's Fontelo—a music and history double major—is interested in doing the same thing for Filipino children next year, while studying the rich musical heritage of the Philippines.
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"By gaining a deeper understanding on the process by which Filipino composers use heterogeneous culture to write music, my project aims to examine the manner in which music shapes and expresses everyday life in a multicultural Philippines," he wrote in his grant application.
Fontelo already is familiar with the Philippines, having interned there last summer for the cultural affairs department of the U.S. Embassy in Manila, according to the college's news release.
Fontelo—who played in his college's jazz ensemble, chamber orchestra and symphonic band, and also participated in the college's theater group, choir and water polo club team (which he co-founded)—is considering graduate school for music or a career in the foreign service, the release said.
"The field of ethnomusicology is burgeoning in the academic world, but I also have interests in composition and conducting," he said. "Holy Cross has helped me keep an eye out in these fields and I’ve been taught to appreciate the combination of the ethnomusicological and composition fields through professors Shirish Korde and Osvaldo Golijov. They’re leading figures in thinking about music through folk and ethnic traditions."
About 1,000 college students are awarded Fulbright grants each year for international study and cultural exchange.
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