” ‘El Sistema’ [‘The System’], as we call it, now encompasses 140 youth orchestras and 128 children’s orchestras in our country, as well as the semi-professional Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of which I have been music director since 1999, when I was 18. Some 260,000 children and young people are involved in The System — studying and playing orchestral music all the time. Every day. Absolutely. We are a family. My orchestra, and The System, is my family.”