music school in Gaza !

One of our partners in Palestine, the A.M. Al-Qattan Foundation, is now all set to start a music school in Gaza, of all places ! They have engaged a coordinator for the school, Mr Ibrahim Al-Najjar, last July. Then they rented spaces in the building of the Palestine Red Crescent Society, which they have been refurbishing the last weeks. The selection of teachers and students is now being made, in collaboration with the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music. In the second half of September music theory courses are started and in the beginning of October the full programme will be in place: they are starting with a 'humble' programme - as Ziad Khalaf of Qattan calls it himself - proposing teaching around 5 different instruments: oud, guitar, violin and keyboard/piano, and kanoun. Not bad at all as a start! In the beginning a selection of only 5 students will be accepted per instrument. © the building of the A.M. Al-Qattan Foundation in Gaza: the Qattan Centre for the Child The partnership between A.M. Al-Qattan Foundation and Music Fund - which has been made possible thanks to the support of the Belgian Government (via the Belgian Consulate and the Belgian Technical Cooperation in Jerusalem) and the Province of Antwerp (Belgium) - will the coming years be focussed on providing music instruments to the school, so that students will soon be able to borrow music instruments which they can take home to study. Furthermore, Music Fund will immediately start a training programme for instrument technicians in Gaza, so that soon some persons in Gaza will be able to do basic reparations to the instruments. Together with our partner in Nablus, Nablus the Culture, Music Fund will the coming months try to buy pianos in the region and have them repaired by our expert in Nablus, Olivier Marie, and his students, before then sending them to Gaza to the music school which Qattan Foundation is opening. This also is a wonderful new opportunity for us to spend money locally and have partners locally to help us find and repair instruments which are needed in Gaza. We have done this before and found a number of pianos which were 'sleeping' in storage-houses or private homes, collecting dust as pieces of furniture because no piano technicians are available in the Westbank to take care of the instruments. Our first 'mission' with instrument experts from Belgium - who will be giving an initiation-course of one week and repairing instruments during that same period - will be sent already in the end of October (between 30.10 and 9.11.08). I will write about this project more in detail the coming weeks. © this beautiful accordeon was donated to Qattan in Gaza in February 2008 © one of the pianos being brought into the training centre for piano repair and tuning at Nablus the Culture © our piano-expert Olivier Marie who is working for a full year at Nablus the Culture to teach piano repair and tuning to a selected group of five Palestinian students; Olivier Marie will be coming with us to Gaza in October to repair and teach repair techniques there as well.