NYTimes.com: 'Venerated High Priest and Humble Servant of Music Education'

[(Meridith Kohut for The New York Times) José Antonio Abreu, the founder of El Sistema, a Venezuelan music education program.]

The New York Times

Daniel J. Wakin

March 4, 2012

Caracas, Venezuela

“AS he slowly walked through the adoring and bubbling crowd of young people, the frail elderly man brushed a cheek, clasped an arm, bestowed a smile. He lingered affectionately with members of a choir composed of disabled youngsters. For anyone who observed Pope John Paul II in action amid third-world crowds during the later years of his papacy, it was a familiar sight: the charisma, the smiles, the contrast of stooped holy man and spirited youngsters, the solicitousness for the weak.

“But on this February day at the Teresa Carreño Theater here, the center of attention was not a pope. It was José Antonio Abreu, the founder and influential leader of a classical music education program called El Sistema. Mr. Abreu was showing off some of its orchestras to visiting Americans in an elaborately choreographed showcase.

“The endless explorations of El Sistema, in articles, documentaries and books, give little attention to one of its more striking aspects: a similarity to organized religion and, more specifically, the Roman Catholic Church.”