Youth Orchestras of Los Angeles (YOLA)

YOLA (Youth Orchestra Los Angeles)⁠—the LA Phil's music education program⁠—currently serves close to 1,700 young musicians across five sites, providing them with free instruments, intensive music instruction, academic support, leadership training, and opportunities to perform on stages in their communities and around the world. With an emphasis on equity, diversity, and inclusion, YOLA engages players from more than 200 schools in culturally vibrant and ethnically diverse communities across LA County. The program began as an adaptation of Venezuela’s revolutionary El Sistema music education program, but it is now an innovative model in its own right, often looked to as a guide for students and teachers from music programs around the country. The work of YOLA is focused in two areas: Local programs, which directly serve communities across Los Angeles, and national programs, which provide opportunities for young musicians, teaching artists, and program administrators to learn from and create community with one another. In Dudamel’s words, “To share music with children — who might not otherwise have access to it — is to share beauty, to share a different way of being. It can change their definition of what is possible for themselves.”