On 20th of July young people from Sistema Cyprus along with more than 150 young musicians between 10 and 18 from 15 European countries performed at the stunning Cantiere Rossini in Pesaro as part of SEYO – Sistema Europe Youth Orchestra. Watch at 1:40:00 a special moment for us, when Barbara from Sistema Cyprus got to co-conduct with the conductor Etienne Abelin the piece “The Forest has secrets too” by Marta Domingues, Portuguese composer, with Ale Damasceno, Brazilian musician living in Portugal imitating the sounds of the Amazonia forest. A piece composed under within our B-Me project from our partners Orquestra Geração.
Let’s let the photo take us back to our summer 2024 Rock concert! 🔥 On July 2nd we left classical music behind for a while, and let rock music move us and the audience in a sold out Nicosia Municipal Theatre.
At the “Raphsody Unleashed” concert, Sistema with its 3 orchestras, in collaboration with Anthi Papaphilippou and Nicosia Municipality Children’s Choirs, but also a wonderful rock band (with Avraam Kondo and Elli Koutsoulis on vocals, Miros Evagelidis on Drums, Andreas Paraschos on the Electric Bass, and Panos Larkos on the Electric Guitar), presented a rich artistic program of rock music, accompanied by the orchestral arrangements of the young Cypriot Avraam Kontos and choral arrangements by Anthi Papaphilippou under the direction of our conductor Santiago Ossa Alzate.
The audience also got to hear for the first time, the piece ‘Phoenix Thrive’, a composition that Avraam Kontos composed, inspired by the children of Sistema Cyprus.
In this concert, we combined our music with the actions of the YCAN Police of Cyprus in the context of the World Anti-Drug Day. Sistema Cyprus is not just an orchestra, but a socio-musical organization, with its social dimension always at the center of our vision. With this concert, we put into practice the common vision we share with YKAN- the prevention against drugs and social exclusion as well as the hope for social change for a better future.
We thank YKAN for giving us the opportunity to include our concert in its actions for World Anti-Drug Day. A unique evening! We sincerely thank all the children of the choirs as well as Avraam Kontos and Anthi Papaphilippou for the perfect cooperation we have had all these months. ❤️🫶
Help us offer to every child embarking upon their musical journey with Sistema Cyprus, their own musical instrument.
Instruments needed:
Violins, Violas, Cellos, Double-basses, Flutes, Oboes, Clarinets, Bassoons, Trumpets, Trombones, French horns, Percussion instruments and even music Stands.
The Lullaby Project was presented for the first time to the public of Cyprus through an online concert dedicated to the greatest love on June 16th, 2021, at 7pm as a YouTube premiere. This is a partnership between the socio-musical program of Sistema Cyprus and New York’s Carnegie Hall.
Through Sistema Cyprus’ YouTube channel, and under the direction of Santiago Ossa Alzate we all have the opportunity to enjoy original lullabies composed by new parents for their babies in collaboration with professional musicians.
Since 2020, Sistema Cyprus has been one of the international partners of the Lullaby Project, a program of the Carnegie Hall Weill Music Institute (WMI), through which pregnant women and young parents work alongside professional musicians to compose personal lullabies for their babies. Participants can express their feelings, hopes and dreams, looking to the future with their child. The Lullaby Project supports maternal health, aids child development, and strengthens the bond between parent and child.
This is the first time the Lullaby Project has partnered with a Cypriot organization and, in its Cypriot version, embraces parents who are active in Sistema Cyprus, as well as parents who have recently arrived in Cyprus, including Caritas Cyprus beneficiaries.
In this first version of the Lullaby Project in Cyprus compositions of 3 composers will be presented; George Christofis in collaboration with Louise, Andreas Michalopoulos in collaboration with Dioh, and Georgia Christoforou in collaboration with Aurelie, but also those of 3 music students, Annita Konstantinou and Marios Kolonia (University of Nicosia) in collaboration with Sophie; and Mostafa Ismail (European University of Cyprus) in collaboration with Youssef.
Narration / dramaturgy by actress Christina Constantinou.
In New York, the Lullaby Project has embraced mothers in hospitals, homeless shelters, shelters, schools, and prisons. The first Lullaby Project took place at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, New York, in December 2011. Since then, it has expanded to many parts of the United States and to various countries around the world.
Through the Lullaby Project, lullabies have been written in more than twenty different languages and in a variety of musical genres, reflecting the different backgrounds of the participating families. More than 1,600 families have written unique lullabies for their children, many of which are available for listening and sharing at www.carnegiehall.org/lullabies.
In September 2023, the doors of our new permanent home in Nicosia opened to welcome 80 new children. A second-string orchestra in Nicosia became a reality, with children who were patiently waiting to join for the past 4 years!
Older children from our Intermediate Orchestra graciously offered their help to our newcomers, joining and helping their teachers in lessons and rehearsals. They were never asked to do that, and it caught us by surprise! With their actions they confirmed that we are indeed one big family!
All the above would not be possible without our supporters.
We thank our Corporate Sponsor, Mohari Hospitality, who funds the running costs of the second Strings orchestra amongst other running costs.
We are also beyond thankful to Yianis Christodoulou Foundation, who for the third time since 2018 continues to support us with the purchase of musical instruments for the needs of the second orchestra.
Also, the Anastasios G. Leventis Foundation, which has consistently supported us since the beginning of our operation.
B-ME: Blending Melodies: Bridging Cultural Identities
ABOUT THE PROJECT
The B-ME: Blending Melodies: Bridging Cultural Identities was implemented by Sistema Cyprus, El Sistema Greece and the Associação das Orquestras Sinfónicas Juveniles Sistema Portugal and was co-funded by the European Union.
The project paired local composers with musicians from a refugee or migrant background to co-create original musical compositions that bridge the different cultural identities. These compositions were performed by the partners’ youth orchestras and are available for any other orchestras in the world. Through awareness raising concerts in the partners’ countries and beyond, B-ME intended to highlight the value of cultural diversity.
Through this project we offered the opportunity to musicians who have a refugee or migratory background to work with composers from their current community and co-create music compositions that bilaterally blend the sounds of their origins. Each pair had the freedom in the creative process that allowed the composing partners to fully express their intimate music identity. The students of the partner organizations, who belong to these vulnerable groups, had the opportunity to learn through music workshops and later prepared and performed these compositions in concerts. By opening these concerts to the general public we gave people the opportunity to see these children and these composer musicians from a different perspective and enable their understanding of other cultures through music.
Finally, other composers and university students studying music and composition had the opportunity to attend seminars focusing on the objective of promoting social equity through music.
Orchestras in Europe and anywhere else in the world are invited to perform these compositions in their own countries.
MAC- Music for Active Citizenship: a Young Music Mentors Programme is an Erasmus+ project implemented in Cyprus and Greece by the consortium partners Sistema Cyprus and El Sistema Greece.
The project offered opportunities for social and educational interactions between local Sistema music program students with a refugee or immigrant background and native students who study music. Based on the foundation of social music education, the project promoted social equity and acted towards social inclusion while educating for the appreciation of social diversity.
The project focused on the capacity building of young music students and used music as a tool for reaching out to marginalized young people and preventing racism and intolerance among youth resulting in the promotion of intercultural dialogue and the appreciation of diversity in society, just like in the orchestra. We aspire that other social music programs will replicate the program in their own communities.
Sharing some moments from training our Young Music Mentors
MAC aims to bring together young mentors, who are already engaged in learning a musical instrument, together with 30 children and young people from Sistema Cyprus. The program commenced on October 2nd with a training seminar for the 23 young mentors, aged 14-35 years old. Specifically, the young music mentors were trained in the method and practices of El Sistema teaching and will collaborate with Sistema musicians.
This program will empower the competency of youth mentors promoting music as a tool to reach out to young people with fewer opportunities, as well as to prevent racism and intolerance amongst young people. In addition, the quarterly interaction with Sistema children that the participants will appreciate, will encourage intercultural and interreligious dialogue, and simultaneously strengthen the knowledge, the acceptance and the appreciation of diversity in society.
MAC is an Erasmus+ project implemented in Cyprus and Greece by the consortium partners Sistema Cyprus and El Sistema Greece.
MAC Training Package for Young Music Mentors is now available to download
The main purpose of the program is to use music education as a tool for the social integration of refugees and migrants, but also, more generally, for the acceptance of diversity and social change. MAC is a complete educational program containing both the basic theoretical principles of community music and the El Sistema program, as well as a multitude of educational activities with all the necessary supervisory materials and audio-visual media. The program also includes the training of young musicians who have the desire to work in music education in the future, of young music educators.
Since the completion of the program and its evaluation, the MAC training manual is made available here for music educators around the world to access it online.
Toolkits: M.U.S.E.- Music Unites Through Social Equity
The toolkits below have been developed under the project “M.U.S.E.: Music Unites through Social Equity”, co-funded by the Preparatory Action ‘Music Moves Europe’ by the European Union.
These toolkits present five different approaches of using non-formal methodologies for music education, offering a valuable resource for professional development to youth professionals working with students with less opportunities, and especially students of migrant and refugee background.
EXPLORING THE LULLABY PROJECT: LULLABY #2, ‘Y’ & MOSTAFA
by Maria Kouvarou
“I want to sing”
(Y. & Mostafa)
A lullaby is, among other things, a love song. The melodic expression of parental love. A musical vehicle through which emotions travel from parents to children. An original lullaby, as the ones that participants of the Lullaby Project compose for their little ones, is the ultimate form of that expression. Because what is being created in the process is an original lullaby. Inspired by a parent’s personal experience and powered by the special, individual bond, between a specific parent to her or his children.
Such is the case with Y. who, in writing a lullaby for his daughters, he channeled his life story, his shared experience with them, his aspirations for them, and his hopes for a tomorrow filled with light through music, through melodies, and through beautiful imagery. And created their own, original lullaby, a love song to be shared with them and the world.
This is one of the characteristics of the process that Mostafa points out, and possibly one of those attributes of the Lullaby Project that makes it equally enriching for the participant composers: the creative task to “write feelings” and, in this case, to “write somebody else’s feelings”. To be able to connect with the other, to sense their ideas at a deeper level, as to be able to help them transfer those in the musical universe of lullaby writing. In order to do so, one needs to be able to also connect with the ultimate attribute of a lullaby, which is the attribute that provides it with universality: love.
Love and its driving power create the thread that brings together the parents’ ideas with the composers’ creativity, the finished lullaby with the children, all the lullabies together, and all the lullabies with parents and children around the globe. In this way, love and its driving power dressed with the light of lullabies, become the soundtrack with which we can sing our way to a better world.
Artist collaborating with mother: Mostafa Ismail
Lullaby Supported by: European University
Follow Sistema Cyprus’ social media platforms on Facebook and Instagram to experience the journey of Lullaby creation.
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MAC- Music for Active Citizenship: a Young Music Mentors Programme is an Erasmus+ project implemented in Cyprus and Greece by the consortium partners 
