The Teacher Using Music to Transform Lives
Issías Alonzo Balvín grew up in the Peruvian Andes, singing and playing traditional instruments. His passion led him to the National Conservatory, where he honed his musical skills and discipline, paving the way to become a professional musician, before later joining Sinfonía por el Perú. Today, as a teacher and orchestra director, he shares his knowledge with children and teenagers.
In a classroom crowded with drums, violins, and trumpets, Issías Alonzo Balvín moves like the notes flowing across a sheet of music: swiftly and tuned in to the needs of each student. More than a teacher, he sees himself as a guide. “To be called a teacher is a big title. It carries a huge responsibility,” he says. “I just teach music. And teaching, to me, means guiding.”
Issías’s connection to music began when he was growing up in Huancayo, a city in Peru’s central highlands. His first toys were wind and string instruments; his earliest audience, the uncles and grandparents who gathered at the family home to play vernacular Andean music. Although he briefly considered a career in medicine and also took business courses as a teenager, Issías ultimately returned to music - this time, as a vocation.
He studied composition and orchestra conducting at Peru’s National Conservatory. It was there that he first heard about Sinfonía por el Perú, a national initiative offering music education to children and adolescents from vulnerable communities.
Community impact
With the help of a teacher who gave up his conducting career in Italy to dedicate himself to music education in Peru, Issías received training to create, organize, and lead a polyphonic choir in the district of Rímac. He began in a “módulo” and later moved to a “núcleo” — as Sinfonía por el Perú refers to its 17 comprehensive training centers across Lima and other regions.
But it was precisely in Rímac where Issías came to understand the true purpose of the program. In this district, where 76% of residents live in poverty or extreme poverty and 43% of preschool-aged children suffer from anemia — according to data from the Ministries of Social Inclusion and Health — Issías encountered 16- and 17-year-olds who had not finished primary school, and 20-year-olds still in secondary school after repeatedly failing grades.
The youngest students, on the other hand, often came to class because of family pressure or simply because their parents had nowhere else to leave them. Many had never even seen a musical instrument — but all of them carried something with them: problems at home, fears, or difficulties connecting with others. They arrived wrapped in mistrust, having grown up hearing phrases like “you’re not good at this” or “this isn’t for people like us.”
Bringing them together in a joint performance was no easy task, so Issías designed a piece where the youngest students would sing, and the older ones would act. Gradually, both students and the teacher realized what music could become: a release valve. Through group rehearsals that respected each individual’s process, the children started to discover that their voices mattered — and that making mistakes didn’t mean failure. These realizations changed everything.
“Here, they feel respected. They sense they have a chance to change. They’re no longer worried about bullying — and they start to dream about the future,” he says.
Issías recalls a seven-year-old boy who came to piano class out of obligation. He seemed to hate everything — the classroom, the instrument, the routine. But it wasn’t disinterest; it was the pain of his parents’ separation. Little by little, as the teacher began to understand him, the piano became a refuge. The boy went from practicing 40 minutes a day to three hours. His personality changed — he became more empathetic. Today, he’s studying sound engineering and has rebuilt his relationship with his parents.
Gabriela Perona, Executive Director of Sinfonía por el Perú, explains that one of her top priorities is to look after the well-being of the program’s teachers, as the emotional support they provide can take a mental toll.
More teacher training programs
In Peru, music is not taught as an independent subject but is instead part of the broader “Art and Culture” area, which is often taught by non-specialist teachers due to a shortage of qualified graduates. In 2016, then-president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski promised to make music a mandatory school subject. However, the only change implemented was an increase in weekly art instruction from two to three hours.
The Ministry of Education offers an extracurricular program called Orquestando, which operates in 18 schools across Lima and other regions — a limited number compared to the more than 53,000 public schools in the country. That’s why programs like Sinfonía por el Perú play such a critical role.
Christine Rhomberg, Director of Music for Social Change at the Hilti Foundation — a long-standing partner and principal supporter of Sinfonía por el Perú — explains that most music universities don’t prepare teachers to work with children from vulnerable backgrounds. “Traditional music education focuses on performance and technique, on reading sheet music. Universities don’t do enough to address the broader context — the well-being of young musicians or the opportunity to connect them with chamber music, which is a fundamental base for making music together.”
That’s why the Hilti Foundation launched the Academy for Impact through Music (AIM) in 2020 — an innovation lab designed to train music teachers through a socially driven pedagogical approach. AIM emphasizes the importance of building empathetic connections to foster both personal and community growth among students, and brings together participants from from all over the world.
According to Gabriela Perona, 16 graduates of the program have now returned to Sinfonía’s training centers to become music teachers themselves—in remote regions and even in the Amazon. That full-circle journey fills them with pride.
“I was fortunate to have access to music as a child. Now it’s my job to make sure others have the same opportunity,” says Issías with conviction.