Knowledge is the Beginning: Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

Discussion in 'Chit Chat' started by OddTrader, Oct 22, 2006.

  1. "Knowledge is the Beginning: Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra"

    Q

    Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim founded the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra with young Arab, Palestinian and Jewish musicians. This program traces the orchestra's history from 1999 to today.

    UQ

    Great documentary indeed for peace aim!

    I hope there will be many more of this kind to come.
     
  2. Their playing music-for peace?
    Thats just odd.
    Thats supposed to happen after stupendous victories, like the 1812 overture.
     
  3. That's a very moving film about how very different ideas can be exchanged among the musicians.

    Q

    http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ramallah-Concert-Eastern-Orchestra-Barenboim/dp/B000BS6YBA

    UQ

    Q

    http://explorersfoundation.org/glyphery/203.html

    The following is taken from: http://www.daniel-barenboim.com/biography.htm

    In the early 1990s, a chance meeting between Mr. Barenboim and the late Palestinian-born writer and Columbia University professor Edward Said in a London hotel lobby led to an intensive friendship that has had both political and musical repercussions. These two men, who should have been poles apart politically, discovered in that first meeting, which lasted for hours, that they had similar visions of Israeli/Palestinian possible future cooperation. They decided to continue their dialogue and to collaborate on musical events to further their shared vision of peaceful co-existence in the Middle East. This led to Mr. Barenboim's first concert on the West Bank, a piano recital at the Palestinian Birzeit University in February 1999, and to a workshop for young musicians from the Middle East that took place in Weimar, Germany, in August 1999.

    The West-Eastern Divan Workshop took two years to organize and involved talented young musicians between the ages of 14 and 25 from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Tunisia and Israel. The idea was that they would come together to make music on neutral ground with the guidance of some of the world's best musicians. Weimar was chosen as the site for the workshop because of its rich cultural tradition of writers, poets, musicians and creative artists and because it was the 1999 European cultural capital. Mr. Barenboim wisely chose two concertmasters for the orchestra, an Israeli and a Lebanese. There were some tense moments among the young players at first but, coached by members of the Berlin Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony and the Staatskapelle Berlin, and following master classes with the cellist Yo-Yo Ma and nightly cultural discussions with Mr. Said and Mr. Barenboim, the young musicians worked and played in increasing harmony. The West-Eastern Divan Workshop was held again in Weimar in the summer of 2000 and in Chicago in the summer of 2001. It has since found a permanent home in Seville, Spain, where it has been based since 2002.

    Edward Said passed away in 2003 but his partnership with Daniel Barenboim lives on through the West-Eastern Divan Workshop and Orchestra and through the Barenboim-Said Foundation, which promotes music and co-operation through projects targeted at young Arabs and Israelis.

    UQ

    Q

    http://www.playbillarts.com/news/article/5055.html

    Even the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, co-founded in 1999 by Daniel Barenboim and the Palestinian-American writer Edward Said (who died in 2003) as a gesture of unity between musicians in the troubled Middle East, is facing tense times during the current conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, reports the BBC.

    UQ

    Q

    http://www.newint.org/columns/media/music/2006/06/01/ramallah/

    The definition is pertinent in the case of the West-Eastern Divan musicians, the youth orchestra formed in 1998 by the Argentine-born (and Jewish) conductor Daniel Barenboim and the late Palestinian historian Edward Said. Their aim in creating a first-class orchestra comprising Israeli and Palestinian youth was simple: to use music as the opportunity in which these historical enemies could play and listen to each other.

    Barenboim is too astute to say that this endeavour will result in peace, but it will, he says in a short speech at the end of Live in Ramallah, bring about the ‘understanding, patience and the curiosity to listen to the narrative of the other’.

    UQ