They've survived bombs, random attacks and power failures during performances ? which puts our worries about the role of the arts in perspective
Here's a story to put our worries about arts cuts ? Will all the London orchestras survive the next few years? Will the BBC's projected 20% cuts mean the loss of one of its orchestras? ? into perspective: an interview in the Wall Street Journal with Karim Wasfi, chief conductor of the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra. Wasfi describes how things have improved in recent years for the orchestra, which began as Baghdad Symphony Orchestra in 1944. Having been in charge since 2004, and survived "several random attacks", as journalist Melik Kaylan reports, Wasfi says that "I'm now able to struggle with artistic quality ? getting the music right ? rather than logistics or mere survival. This last year we put on 23 full orchestral concerts around the country ... Now, the orchestra has expanded to 90 members. We've put on very fine performances of Rhapsody in Blue and Grieg's Piano Concerto, Wagner, Brahms, and specially commissioned works by Iraqi composers. In November we played Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade ? a grand, challenging piece that can be a sweeping, stirring thing of flamboyant sound or just a bunch of loud noises. We rehearsed it for two months." The orchestra's home is the Institute of Fine Arts in the suburbs of Baghdad and all concerts are free thanks to support from the government, and the sense, Wasfi says, "that we illustrate a kind of collective achievement for the country".
His mission is to make the orchestra open to every part of Iraqi society. "We have every sect in the orchestra," he says: "Christians, Shias, Sunnis, Kurds." Karim has launched a youth orchestra and even pays disadvantaged children to come to concerts ? an educational initiative I don't think any orchestra in the UK has attempted. "I'm sure there are some fanatics who disapprove of the symphony, but we've generated such goodwill that they're afraid to oppose us publicly."
Anyone who complains about the trials and tribulations of getting to concerts in Glasgow or Manchester should read Wasfi on what it's still like in Baghdad, with security checks, personal searches, police surrounding the building, and miles for audiences to walk ? let alone what he's had to deal with when his apartment complex was partly demolished after a bombing, and the time the orchestra narrowly escaped a car-bomb. All of the orchestra's concerts are full, a beacon of hope for Iraqis to "trust the public space", Wasfi says. "That's another goal for the symphony. As if we didn't have enough goals." Watch Karim and the orchestra playing Saint-Sa�ns's Romance with Hassan Hassun on solo flute here; a performance from May last year in which the lights go out at 6.50pm, thanks to a power cut ? but the band, seamlessly, plays on.
Julie Berry Lori Heuring Nicole Scherzinger Jill Arrington Tami Donaldson
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