What does the South American country of Venezuela remind you of? Gangs? Drug violence? Miss Venezuela? How about the future of classical music?

"If anybody asked me where is something really important going on for the future of classical music, I would simply say, here, in Venezuela," says Sir Simon Rattle, the renowned music director of the Berlin Philharmonic, after he visited the country and conducted the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela.

The youth orchestra, which drove audiences in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, London and Berlin into something approaching hysteria, will give two concerts at the National Center for the Performing Arts today and tomorrow.

The program today includes Ravel, Castellano and Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony, while the second program has Bernstein's West Side Story and Mahler's Symphony No 1.

The program might not suggest anything special, but on stage you will witness a fascinating blend of daring souls, fiery and passionate, of young hearts dedicated to an adventure.

Just imagine some 240 young players on the stage. They don jackets in the blue, red and yellow of the Venezuelan flag, leap off their seats, shout and shimmer. The cellists twirl their instruments as if they are spinning their dates at a dance. At one point, all the orchestra players lift their instruments high over their heads and shake them.

But this is not just fun. You can hear virtuosity of the strings and woodwinds, the strength and polish of the brass and the vibrant percussion.

"These musicians perform with such discipline and well-honed precision that they can go for maximum expression and follow the lead of their impetuous conductor. Mr (Gustavo) Dudamel has a keen ear for instrumental coloring and musical character," commented The New York Times last November.

Dudamel is the 27-year-old conductor that The Los Angeles Times reported caused "Dudamelmania" and compared him to a rock star, saying he was "absolutely revelatory".

"Dudamel is the most astonishingly gifted conductor I've come across," says Rattle. And Claudio Abbado agrees with him.

How did such a gifted conductor and orchestra come into being? Both are products of the National System of Youth and Children's Orchestras of Venezuela, which is arguably the most ambitious program of music education and orchestra training in the world.

The 68-year-old musician and economist Jose Antonio Abreu, who has preached the virtues of arts as a tool to achieve social emancipation, started the "system" 33 years ago when he founded the first youth orchestra in Venezuela in 1975.

"Abreu's vision starts with getting children out of poverty and off the street," Dudamel says. "It's a social project first and cultural project second."

In the 1970s, Venezuela had only two professional orchestras that were mainly made up of immigrants from Eastern Europe and Italy. In the last three decades, the system has achieved an artistic explosion.

There are now 222 symphony orchestras and musical groups for pre-school children and young people, 100 regional centers, 20 centers for academic education, technical structures and teacher support, that benefit 290,000 Venezuelans.

The timeline sees children joining an orchestra when they are 2-4 years old, followed by a pre-school orchestra from 4-7. After that they continue with the children's orchestra, between seven and 15, and from there they go on to youth orchestras from 15-22. Finally they reach the top, or professional level, with their acceptance into one of the symphony orchestras of each region, or into the Simon Bolivar Symphony after they are 22.

According to Rocio Maneiro, Venezuelan ambassador in Beijing, his government set up the State Foundation for the system in 1979. Today, it employs 15,000 music teachers. The government funds it to the tune of an annual $29 million - in a country where the average annual income is below $3,500. It is enough to work miracles.

"The system is a new musical education model with methodologies adapted to the country's social reality," Rocio Maneiro says. "The system has evolved into a social program that allows the inclusion of children and adolescents regardless of their social-economic condition.

"It achieves social integration through the artistic and professional development of people that face problems of negligence, poverty, physical disabilities and drug addiction. It has secured many abandoned children and saved many young people from the scourge of drugs. It has transformed thousands of lives of the many under-privileged young people in Venezuela. Meanwhile it has brought up a number of outstanding young musicians."

Dudamel is one of these outstanding young musicians. Born on Jan 26, 1981, in Barquisimeto, Dudamel took up the violin when he was very young and was soon studying composition and conducting. He joined the "system" as a 10-year-old, hoping to play the trombone.

"I knew the trombone because of salsa and popular music and my father played trombone in the 'system'. But my arms were too short, so they gave me a violin," he recalls.

He played the violin in his hometown orchestra and as a 12-year-old Dudamel stepped onto the podium when the conductor was ill. In 1996, he was named music director of the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra and in 1999, he continued his conducting studies with Abreu and was appointed music director of the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela.

The rest is history. A spectacular win at the 2004 Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition in Bamberg, Germany, pushed Dudamel into the international spotlight and he has since been engaged by all the leading orchestras, in Berlin, New York, Milan and London. He has been appointed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra to succeed Esa-Pekka Salonen in 2009.

"A project which does not generate a result has no reason to be," says Dudamel. "The project of the 'system' has a result. I have lived it. I am a product of it. I have been studying music since I was 4 years old, and from that moment on I entered in a family which has led me to learn values, not only musical ones, but life-wise ones for situations that I have to face, and that is the success of the system."

He also credits the system from a life on the streets.

"Music certainly changed my life. I can look back now and see that many boys of my age went on to become involved in drugs and crime. Those who played music did not," he says.

"In the orchestras, we learn discipline and concentration, develop aesthetic sense, share with companies, work as a team in order to achieve the harmonious sound of a musical work. We also learn the values of feeling ourselves an important and fundamental part of an orchestra family."

As more outstanding Venezuelan musicians hit the international circuit, the world is taking notice. China, which also can boast that it is "the future of classical music", would like to share Venezuela's experience in music education.

"Too many people have recommended the magic orchestras of Dudamel to me. As a conductor I had doubts about how good such a young conductor could be. How many repertoires could he play?" says Chen Zuohuang, artistic director of the National Center for the Performing Arts.

"But when I watched the video and read the story of the system, I had to see the performance in Beijing," he says. "The system gives me much inspiration. Classical music is booming in China. The government, education institutes and patrons all pay much attention to the music education of the next generation. In this aspect we can learn much from our Venezuelan colleagues."

(China Daily December 11, 2008)