What happened as a result of the maestro conducting ‘Twinkle, Twinkle’ 

This story is about my brother Ben and about how amazing things happen. Every bit of the story is relevant. 

Ben, 86, is the conductor of two wonderful orchestras that he founded and has led for  decades – the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra (BPO) and the Boston Philharmonic Youth  Orchestra (BPYO).

At the end of the season the BPYO goes on tour. This year’s tour, the 28th, was to Mexico.  Over 16 days, they gave six concerts. One of the six concerts was in the city of Puebla. For Ben, it was a return visit. 

He is not only a conductor. Ben is also a public speaker who for decades has been a keynote  speaker at innumerable events at the highest international level – twice, for instance, a keynote speaker at the World Economic Forum in Davos. His TED talk, The Transformative Power of Classical Music, has had over 25 million hits. 

In 2008 he was in Puebla as a keynote speaker at the Festival of Ideas which is held each year in that city. The Festival makes this statement: 

Festival of Ideas speakers are much more than great speakers: they are leaders, creators and visionaries whose work has left a mark on the world. From explorers of  the boundaries of science and art to pioneers in innovation, education, and leadership, each brings a unique story that inspires and transforms. 

The story of that first visit to Puebla was the subject of a chapter in a book by Roz (Rosamund) Zander, Ben’s then wife Pathways to Possibility which was a continuation of  what Ben and Roz began with their earlier co-authored book The Art of Possibility – Transforming Professional and Personal Life. 

Roz began the chapter by setting the scene:  

One of the heroes of this story is a man named Julio who had left Mexico to continue his studies on the violin in Switzerland and spent eleven years playing in the Suisse Romande Orchestra in Basel. Then, disillusioned with the itinerant life of an orchestral musician he returned to Puebla with the intention of building a music  program for children on the model of El Sistema initiated in Venezuela by  conductor/politician José Antonio Abreu, with the mission to lift kids out of poverty through classical music. 

The belief of the El Sistema movement is that every child, rich or poor, can learn to experience and express great music deeply. For Dr. Abreu and his followers the way  out of poverty lies in strengthening the spirit through a music education, based in love and joy in an inspiring, nurturing community. To run a program like that in Mexico was Julio’s dream. 

So on his return from Switzerland, Julio visited all the schools in the area, auditioning children for their musical talent, giving ear tests and rhythm tests to more than eight hundred kids. Then, by soliciting donations of instruments and securing a small rehearsal space near Puebla, he built his own program of thirty children. But it wasn’t long before Julio started suffering from a lack of resources and faintness of  heart and succumbed to the story of hopelessness. He just couldn’t see where it  would go from there. 

A woman named Leonor was the mother of three of the children in Julio’s band. She had previously applied unsuccessfully to be a volunteer worker at the annual Puebla Festival of Ideas but in 2008 her application was successful. She was assigned to be Ben’s guide or ‘minder’ throughout the conference. She did her homework, reading up about her charge. During the drive from the airport to his hotel Leonor told Ben about Julio and asked whether he could speak with Julio at some point. Ben’s reply: “I don’t want just to speak to Julio. I want to visit his school. Can I go and see the children in action?” 

The next morning, Leonor drove by the hotel to take Ben to the small town on the outskirts  of Puebla where Julio had his little school. As they were leaving, Ben caught sight of a man he had met at the dinner the night before, who was making a documentary on the conference for Spanish TV. In the spirit of the moment, he called out, “Eduardo, come with us! We are going to see a music school. It’ll make a great episode in your documentary.” Eduardo shouted back: “I’m here to film the conference.”  Ben’s response– “Never mind the conference. This will be more fun.” So in the same spirit of possibility, Eduardo and the four in his team piled into the SUV. The seven people, with cameras and sound equipment, drove forty-five minutes to a run-down, very poor section of a neighboring suburb. 

Roz in her chapter described what happened: 

Inside a small hut that served as the music school, Julio gave a little speech  welcoming everyone into the overflowing space that included the little orchestra and the parents of the children. Then he raised his baton to start the ‘concert’. For all  Julio’s efforts, the children sat grim-faced, sawing out a truly monotonous version of  “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” . . . The children played to the very end without expression, but as the last tuneless notes faded away, something completely unexpected happened. The visiting conductor got up and began to clap wildly, exaggeratedly, really outlandishly, infusing huge energy into the room. . . For a  moment there was silence, then Ben sprang into action. 

He got the violins and the two violas on their feet, exhorting the cellos to imagine  they were standing up as well. Taking the baton from Julio, Ben started them again  on “Twinkle, Twinkle”. The volume of their sound swelled under this bizarrely energetic conductor. Then he asked a question that made it impossible for the kids to keep straight faces. “Listen closely, this is going to be hard. Can you play your  instrument and smile at the same time?” Repressing giggles, they played the next few bars. The strange visitor again exhibited great excitement, clapping riotously.  “Now,” he said, “I’m going to ask you to do something really difficult. I want you to  play your instrument and smile and walk at the same time.” 

Julio joined in on his violin. Ben increased the tempo to match their walking and led  them around the room, skipping and bending, bobbing and dipping. He had some  children playing one rhythm and others another. All at once they were playing  “Twinkle” exuberantly, energetically and at quite a satisfying tempo. . . As the  cameras whirred, some of the parents started dancing in the crowded space, while  others listened to their children who were all of a sudden playing music. 

That afternoon Ben gave his keynote speech at the conference. Seeing that Julio was in the audience, he told that morning’s story. That night at the conference dinner, Ben was seated next to Ricardo Salinas. He knew that his dinner companion was something on television. He  did not know that Salinas was the owner of Mexico’s leading television conglomerate. Salinas had attended Ben’s keynote speech and wanted to know more. “We talked about the implications of the effect of music training on getting young people out of poverty. I told him  about Leonor. He said he would call her. I gave him her telephone number.”

The next day Salinas called Leonor. He said he wanted to meet her to hear more about the children playing music.  

In February 2009, Leonor went with her friend Monica to Salinas’ office. They showed him a seven-minute clip they had cut from a film about El Sistema illustrating how the programme impacts both the lives of the children and the whole community. Moved and impressed, Salinas said: “We will do this together. Not just with Julio’s small orchestra, but all over  Mexico”.

He then put a challenging question. He told the two women that in November he would be hosting a big event with state governors, ambassadors, entrepreneurs and business leaders. He wanted a large orchestra. Could that be achieved? Leonor said, “Well we already have 35-40 who play ‘Twinkle’ badly, so why not?” 

Julio put out a notice calling for 200 would-be child musicians. 350 children arrived to audition. 70 percent of them had never had an instrument in their hand before. All 350  were accepted. Instruments were acquired from China. Additional music teachers were found, some brought in from Cuba. That took time. The first rehearsal was on June 3 2009.  

On November 8, 2009, six months and 126 rehearsals later (that’s 21 rehearsals per month!), the concert took place in Mexico City with an orchestra of 350 playing a quite demanding programme.  

At the end of the concert, directly addressing the state governors in the audience, Salinas  asked whether they wanted a similar orchestra in their state. He said that his foundation would pay half the cost. Over dinner that evening the 28 governors present all signed an agreement that Salinas had prepared. 

A year later, from that standing start, nationally there were 23 youth orchestras and a national youth orchestra drawn from their best players. On November 22, 2010, a concert by  the Mexican national youth orchestra was held in a huge hall in Mexico City with an audience of 10,000. An orchestra of 186 and a choir of over 200, performed selections from  Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Orff’s Carmina Burana and among other pieces, a trumpet concerto performed by an eight-year-old. 

Ben was present, seated next to the wife of the President of Mexico. Leonor had asked him to come to see what had transpired out of his visit to Puebla.  

Julio, who conducted both the November 2009 and the November 2010 concerts, was director of the national programme, a position he still holds today.  

In 2008 Mexico had no youth orchestras. By 2022, just before Covid, there were 83 full-scale  youth orchestras and more than 200,000 youngsters had taken part in the programme. 

A last note to this history: Estefan Moctezuma, President of the Foundation Esperanza Azteca which was set up to run the nationwide music programme for social development, was appointed in 2018 to be Mexico’s Secretary of Education. In that role he secured an addition to the Constitution itemising the subjects to be taught in schools which, it states, ‘will include . . . the arts, especially music’.  

Last month’s BPYO concert was therefore Ben’ s third visit to Puebla. The other five concerts on the tour consisted just of Ben conducting the BPYO – in two concerts joined by 16  members of the Mexico National Youth Orchestra.  

The Puebla concert was significantly different. To Ben’s astonishment, it began with what became almost half an hour, for the showing of the Spanish TV film made 17 years ago, followed by Leonor and Julio telling the story. 

It was different also because of the music programme. Part was Julio conducting his  musicians and a choir of 200. Then, for Dvorak’s New World Symphony, the BPYO was joined by the whole Puebla Youth Orchestra. The two orchestras played as one. 180 musicians on  the stage; each member of the Puebla orchestra with a BPYO player as desk- partner. They had had only 90-minutes of rehearsing together. How could that possibly work? To Ben’s delight, it worked – not ‘surprisingly well’ – but perfectly. 

Both Ben and BPYO orchestra members declared the Puebla concert to be a high point of  the tour. 

*** 

Roz was obviously right to signal Julio as one of the heroes of this story. But would it all have happened without Leonor’s sense of possibility when she first read up about Ben and told him about Julio and later went to see Ricardo Salinas, having prepared a (judiciously brief) film about El Sistema. And would it all have happened if Ricardo Salinas had not realised its significance and used his great influence and means to make it happen? And would it all  have happened if Ben had not called out to Eduardo, the Spanish documentary film-maker,  and if Eduardo had not been beguiled by Ben’s insisting, “Forget about the conference. This will be more fun”. Indeed, would any of it have happened if Ben had not been a keynote  speaker at that year’s Festival of Ideas and delivered inspirational conducting of ‘Twinkle’  and caught the imagination of Ricardo Salinas through what he said at the conference and over dinner.  

Ben lives in Possibility. To adapt a current phrase, he talks the talk (brilliantly) and he also lives the talk. As a result – sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly – extraordinary things happen. 

Michael Zander 

July 2025