Mastreo José Antonio Abreu, recipient of the 2009 International Citation of Merit at the New York 2009 ISPA Congress, Transformation: Art as an Agent of Change.  View other ISPA Award winners.

Nominating Statement | “Through music, Maestro Abreu’s courage, love, ambition, and vision have changed for the better the lives of tens of thousands of young people in Venezuela and around the world.”

He has earned many accolades, like sower of hope, dream maker and key player in Venezuela's historical evolution throughout the last 50 years, but a simple word would just befit maestro José Antonio Abreu-Anselmi, the founder and driving force behind the National System of Youth and Children’s Orchestras of Venezuela, and that word is 'visionary'. This unshakably convinced, warm-hearted, strong-willed musician has been able to undertake a task that reaches beyond music to encompass the rescue and education of Venezuelan youngsters.

Born the eldest of six children to a family of musical lineage, at the break of dawn on May 7 1939, in Valera, a city in the northwestern Venezuelan state of Trujillo, Abreu confesses that it was his eagerness to serve his country, and his concerns and uneasiness about social inequality that encouraged him to develop, in 1975, an ingenious Venezuela-oriented plan aimed at synthesizing and channeling the economic, managerial, pedagogical and musical experience and knowledge he has acquired throughout his life.

Since 1982, with support from the OAS and the Governments of the benefited countries, or just through individual initiatives, systems of youth and children’s orchestras have been modeled after the Venezuelan program in more than 20 countries including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United States.