Join us in our journey of growth by donating in support of expanding musical and intellectual opportunities for children living in Toronto’s underserved neighbourhoods.
After all, we’re Stronger Together.
At Sistema Toronto, we know that music education can be a pathway to growth and development for young people, and that the benefits of this education should be readily available to kids across the city, regardless of neighbourhood or socioeconomic status. Expanding our program, reaching more kids, and finding meaningful ways to connect with our students are foundational to our mission, and we’re thrilled to announce that we’re taking huge strides towards becoming more accessible so that even more children can benefit from the power of ensemble music education.
We’ve developed FORTE: Stronger Together, a campaign to keep Sistema Toronto growing, thriving, and inspiring our students to succeed as they grow into engaged citizens and future leaders. At the centre of this campaign is a push to expand and deepen our program: we’re reaching more students through daytime programming and community partnerships; supporting our Honours students with more opportunities for volunteering, teaching, and performance; and introducing new program offerings to help our students expand their musical horizons and express themselves in new ways. You can read more about the details of our growth here.
But what does this work look like on the ground? Read on to find out!
Our classrooms are spaces for our students to explore their creativity and develop new ways to express themselves, and we’re thrilled to be making this programming accessible to more kids. In addition to our intensive after-school core program, we’re now providing Sistema Toronto programming at schools in underserved neighbourhoods during the daytime, ensuring that even more kids can participate. As of the 2023/24 school year, we’ve been offering daytime Sistema programming at the TDSB Africentric Alternative School and Firgrove Public School, and as of the 2024/25 school year we’ve begun doing the same at Yorkwoods Public School. At these schools, students have the opportunity to learn from Danae Olano – a jazz musician, pianist, composer, vocalist, and Sistema Toronto Teaching Artist. Speaking about her experience working with daytime students, Danae says:
“The students have been engaging really well, showing excitement and happiness both in their faces and behavior. They’re especially enthusiastic about playing instruments and adding motion to the new songs we work on, which makes learning fun. Looking ahead, I’m confident that the students will be able to perform together as an ensemble at our upcoming concerts. I’m really enjoying working with them, and it’s rewarding to see their progress in both music skills and behaviour.”
In addition to our daytime programming, Sistema Toronto is expanding our footprint in the communities we serve by working with community partners, offering workshops and drop-in sessions to reach students without Sistema programming at their schools. So far, we’ve worked with the Toronto Public Library to offer workshops at the York Woods Branch on the djembe, and plan to continue this initiative into the 2024/25 school year with offerings at more libraries across the city, and different instruments for participants to try. To learn about our upcoming workshops at TPL and to sign up, keep an eye out for announcements on our social media pages and sign up for our newsletter.
Another goal of FORTE: Stronger Together is to strengthen our Honours Program, ensuring that students who have graduated from our core program in grade 8 have the opportunity to develop leadership and organization skills and receive one-to-one instruction as they continue their music education through high school. As of last year, Felipe Luzuriaga and Jonas Joya, two seasoned Sistema Toronto Teaching Artists, have stepped into new roles as Honours Coordinators, with Joya overseeing Scarborough Honours students, and Luzuriaga working with those from Parkdale, Yorkwoods, and Lambton Park. This additional support is instrumental in allowing the Honours Program to flourish; dedicated coordinators are able to mentor and teach the students, organize one-to-one lessons, and facilitate performance opportunities.
As these students progress as musicians and leaders, they will be able to step into teaching roles in Sistema Toronto’s core program, giving back to the community and supporting another generation of young musicians. Some Honours Students have already taken up leadership roles in our centres, joining the Teaching Artists as assistants and helping the younger students as they learn. As a great example, our Scarborough centre has benefited from the help of Danielle, an Honours student who joins the centre once a week to assist in cello classes. Kathryn, the Centre Director for Sistema Toronto – Scarborough, is hopeful that Danielle’s work with the students will grow into an opportunity to grow her own musical portfolio:
“Danielle is interested in going to university for music and asked if she could volunteer every week to get some experience teaching. She has been giving students lessons and helping support the large cello classes. She is also interested in getting some experience as a conductor. We’re hoping to train her so she’s ready to conduct our senior orchestra at the June concert.”
Starting during the 2023/24 year, Sistema Toronto also became the first Sistema organization to partner with the Women in Musical Leadership (WML) program, giving our Honours students the opportunity to work with Dora-nominated conductor Jennifer Tung. Tung is the conducting fellow in the inaugural year of the Women in Musical Leadership (WML) program and has joined our Honours students to lead their rehearsals and performances. In 2024, she conducted our Honours students in a collective concert at Sir Oliver Mowat Collegiate Institute, where students played in an ensemble of 130 musicians in a performance entitled Scarborough Celebrates Women Composers. Here, students not only had the chance to benefit from Tung’s professional background, but also to broaden their musical knowledge by learning about the contributions of historical and contemporary women composers.
Finally, as a way of helping our Honours Students network and collaborate, we’ve introduced our annual Honours Symposium: a day-long event that occurs in the spring and invites Honours students from all four centres to participate. Students at the symposium have the chance to work together to generate ideas for future Sistema Toronto projects, learn from professional guest artists, and rehearse their repertoire as a large ensemble. This event is not only a chance for senior students to share with and learn from one another, but also allows them to take ownership of their learning by giving them a voice in our planning process.
In an effort to expand our orchestra, Sistema Toronto has added wind instruments to the program at our Yorkwoods centre, with the intention to introduce these instruments at all centres in the future. As of last year, students in the core program at Sistema Toronto – Yorkwoods were offered the opportunity to begin group clarinet lessons alongside their strings, percussion, and choir classes, and starting this year, these students will have the opportunity to learn trumpet as well. The addition of wind instruments represents a step towards becoming a symphony orchestra and gives us the chance to expand our sonic palette, providing our students with more songs and styles to play, new musical influences, different ways to express themselves musically, and the possibility for us to collaborate with other organizations.
We currently have three Teaching Artists working with students on their wind instruments: Jacob Pozin teaching trumpet, and Alberto Di Priolo and Tiago Delgado leading classes on clarinet. Although students are very new to these instruments, their progress has been impressive: some are even able to play simple songs with less than two months experience. Jacob Pozin, Sistema Toronto’s first trumpet teacher, describes the challenges students face when picking up a trumpet for the first time, and the ways in which a difficult instrument like the trumpet can present a unique challenge for the students:
“The trumpet is a difficult instrument to learn, but they’re making great progress. With only three valves to work with, the challenge comes down to the fine muscles of the mouth, ‘embouchure’ as we call it. The students are learning to play different notes and rhythms on the trumpet, but most importantly to work as a team and have fun while doing it.”
The clarinet classes, too, are being well received by students who are excited about the possibility of playing a wind instrument in addition to their strings. Alberto Di Priolo, Sistema Toronto’s first clarinet teacher, describes the success students have had in picking up a second instrument:
“At the beginning there was a lot of excitement, because many of the students had never seen wind instruments up-close, and for the clarinet students in particular, exploring new possibilities of producing sound was an interesting experiment. The new clarinet students were already able to play a string instrument, so at the end of the year we had 9-11 year old students able to play violin or cello as well as clarinet, and were playing well enough to be able to perform at the winter and spring concerts.”
Speaking of his own experience teaching clarinet classes, Teaching Artist Tiago Delgado describes the ways in which he has encouraged students to help one another and work collaboratively towards success:
“We are working on developing confidence through posture and breathing. The learning process is collaborative; the more experienced students support the new ones on learning a diversity of skills, from new fingerings to songs. This helps build community in the classroom, too.”
We’re so excited to be seeing our plans for growth coming to fruition in our centres, and we look forward to continuing to share our students’ progress with you as they learn new instruments, take on new roles and challenges, and develop a passion for music.