beginning of Barenboim-Said Foundation music workshop in Nazareth

François Deppe and Mike Schmid (Ictus) have started working with the young musicians from Nazareth and the Westbank, who have been brought together by the Barenboim-Said Foundation . This music workshop has been organised by the Foundation, in collaboration with Orpheus (Nazareth), Al Kamandjati (Ramallah) and Ictus (Brussels). It is wonderful to see all these teachers from very different organisations from the Westbank, Israel, Germany and Belgium all together teach Palestinian kids and adolescents coming from the Westbank and Israel. Even in the field of music and culture collaborations over the borders or even within one small region can be a difficult thing to make happen, because of clashing egos or interests. I see such unfortunate conflicts over here in Nazareth, in Ramallah and in Nablus, and of course in most of the other places were I work in Europe as well. It causes a lot of waste of invested time and energy. I therefor again want to salute the fact that the Barenboim-Said music workshop has succeeded to become an oasis in which collaboration between different forces in the field is made possible. The workshop is now organised twice a year, once in Ramallah (Westbank) and once in Nazareth (Israel) and it is a pleasure to collaborate with them by sending our musicians of Ictus to participate in it, as well as by donating instruments, as does Music Fund. Teaching in this workshop is no easy job at all. When I arrived at the workshop-site around 11 am, our musicians already had 2 full hours of teaching behind them, and by noon another full hour was added to their schedule. When I saw them again in the evening, they just decided to add another evening session after having worked almost non-stop throughout the day. This has not only to do with a preliminary workschedule imposed by the workshop direction, but more with what they feel like doing with their time over here. They talk about the kids they are teaching in a very enthusiastic way. It is wonderful for them that they know a lot of them very well, since they have been teaching them at different occasions over the last four years. It is a real pleasure for them to see how they evolve over the years, especially seeing how incredibly fast this happens. Some of the kids from Nablus who are selected for this workshop, only started learning an instrument only one year ago. It is a real present for a musician to be able to teach such eager kids.