09-11-2008
a day in Israel
Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Sunday, 9th November 2008.
Today is a day off for everyone. I am on my own, finishing some work on my computer and then off for a few meetings with friends.
Unfortunately, my friend Itshak Frankenthal had to cancel our meeting of today because of a funeral. I was longing to meet him again after not seeing him for several years. Itshak was cofounder of the Parents Circle and more recently of the Arik Institute for Reconciliation, Tolerance & Peace, two associations which do formidable work in the field of peace education in the region.
Tonight, our last meeting will be with my good friend the Haaretz journalist and music critic Noam Ben-Zeev and his wife Yael. It will surely be wonderful - as always - to be able to share our experiences and future projects for the region with them.
08-11-2008
continuing collaboration with Al Kamandjati, Ramallah
Our partner in Ramallah, the music school of Al Kamandjati, which was only founded three years ago, has developed rapidly with projects in Ramallah, Jenin a.o. cities of the Westbank. Ramzi Abu-Radwan, the school's artistic director, is very succesful in convincing sponsors to support their projects, and they deserve this succes more than 100%. It is such a pleasure for us as well to be able to develop projects for this school, as they almost all give very concrete results.
Together we decided that Music Fund will soon start a new project with Al Kamandjati, focussing our interventions on the wind instruments of the school, by donating more instruments (especially trumpets, trombones and oboes), but also by sending instrument 'doctors' Joris Buysse (B) and Pierre Helou (F) the coming months to Ramallah to work on the instruments already available, as well as giving initiation-workshops to those interested. We hope to then find talented persons to whom we could offer an internship in Joris' atelier in Belgium.
© Pierre Helou teaching repair techniques of wind instruments at the Institut National des Arts (INA), our partner-school in Kinshasa
A.M. Al-Qattan Foundation & Music Fund in Gaza
Ramallah, Saturday 8th November 2009.
Meeting Ziad Khalaf, the head of the Ramallah office of the A.M. Al-Qattan Foundation, we evaluated our failure to enter Gaza this last week, and agreed upon a number of new initiatives which Music Fund will be developing in the near future in partnership with the A.M. Al-Qattan Foundation.
Besides storing tools and parts for future workshops in Gaza at our repair-workshop at Nablus the Culture, Music Fund has donated a few valuable music instruments which our equipe took with us in our luggage: 2 flutes and 1 violin.
Music Fund will again come to the region in April or May 2009 and then again try to propose initiation-workshops in repairing music instruments to people related to the Gaza Music School.
In the meantime, Olivier Marie, the French piano-tuner who is working for Music Fund with trainees at Nablus the Culture, will the coming months try to go several times into Gaza in order to verify and repair pianos which can be found in the Gaza and the Gaza-strip.
Pianos are desperately needed for the music school in Gaza. For the moment, they have only one available in the school, but it need to be repaired. They also hope to soon receive another piano from within Gaza.
Music Fund and Nablus the Culture therefor decided to donate an upright piano to the Gaza Music School. This piano was bought by Sami Hammad of Nablus the Culture and has been have been restored the last months by the students of Olivier Marie's training programme for pianotuners in Nablus. As soon as this piano is restored, we will try to get it into Gaza, something which is not so easy to do.
Nablus the Culture also proposes to transfer 10 beautiful guitars to the music school in Gaza, which were originally donated to them by Music Fund. As the Barenboim-Said Foundation just did exactly the same, the music school in Gaza is not immediately in need to receive them, but could use them later on.
We also introduced Ziad Khalaf to the Nablus-based oud-maker Ali Hassanen, who is making ouds which are very highly appreciated by such wonderful oud-players as Habeeb Al Deik or Khaled Sadouq. Ali Hassanen makes 2 kind of ouds in different sizes: some are small for the small ages and women, others he makes are big and are meant to be performed by men. If the music school in Gaza needs to buy more ouds for its students in the future, they might be buying them from Ali, as the A.M. Al-Qattan Foundation tries to spend as much as possibly locally, preferably in Gaza, or else in the Westbank, in order to give support to the local economy. They will soon meet Ali to find out more about his instruments.
So, even though we did not succeed to get permits to get into Gaza this time, there are good reasons to hope that this partnership between Music Fund and the A.M. Al-Qattan Foundation will develop into something strong, thereby giving support to those children and youngsters in Gaza who want to learn music.
© the Qattan Centre for the Child in Gaza, to whom Music Fund already donated a number of music instruments in the past (a.o. one piano a.o.)
07-11-2008
repairing music instruments in Nablus
© string-instrument 'doctor' Baptiste Argouarc'h, oud-maker Ali Hassanen and student piano-tuning Sameh Assad in repair-workshop Nablus the Culture
© a guitar in need of first aid at the music school of Nablus the Culture
06-11-2008
Jerusalem - meetings
Jerusalem, Thursday 6th November 2008.
While Pol De Winter (pianos) started a 3 day work-period in Ramallah, working on pianos of our partner-school Al Kamandjati and Baptiste Argouarc'h (string instruments) and Christian Bertram (guitars) continued to work on repairing instruments in Nablus, Messaouda (Messa) Zaouali (coordinator Music Fund) and myself did our work, which is trying to interest people and institutions and governemental agencies in giving our continuing to give support to our projects in the region. We travelled from Nablus to Jerusalem where we met with Leo Peeters, the Consul General of Belgium, as well as with representatives of the Belgian Technical Cooperation, the French Agency of Cooperation, as well as the Italian Consulat.
05-11-2008
views of Nablus city
© Olivier Marie, myself and Pol De Winter visiting the old city of Nablus
© a view of the garden of the instrument repair-workshop in Nablus
© at the home of oud-maker Ali Hasanen
© also at Ali's home, after eating a delicious Palestinian dish called "upside-down"
permits to Gaza refused
Nablus, Wednesday 5th November 2008.
We had 2 plans for this trip with our music instrument 'doctors': Plan A was to go work at the first ever music school of Gaza, created in September by our partner there, the A.M. Al-Qattan Foundation. Plan B was to alternatively work on music instruments and training of instrument technicians at our partnerschools in Nablus (Nablus the Culture) and Ramallah (Al Kamandjati).
The day of our arrival (Sunday) we received a first refusal to get permits to enter Gaza, and this morning we received a second refusal: this time accompagnied with the argument that only strictly humanitarian missions were let through, and that training music instrument technicians and luthiers could not be considered as vital or necessary.
We take things as they come, and continued to work on the basis of our plan B scenario, but are very disappointed anyway to have to disappoint our friends who are waiting for us in Gaza !
Fortunately both the Belgian Consulate and Embassy are continuing to press upon the authorities at the Gaza checkpoint to let us pass anyway one of the coming days. Even if only a few days would be left, we would want to go meet those people in Gaza who - in the midst of all the violence and misery in this region - decide to start a music school !
© one of the first views one sees when entering the Gaza strip, a picture I took when I went to Gaza last February to prepare our mission of this week
04-11-2008
Nablus and Ramallah
Tuesday 3rd November 2008: travelling with instrument ‘doctors’ Pol De Winter (piano), Baptiste Argouarc’h (string instruments), Christian Bertram (guitars) and Messaouda Zaouali (coordinator Music Fund)
Today our team split in two: Christian and Baptiste stayed in Nablus to work at Olivier’s atelier there, and Pol came with Messa and myself to Ramallah.
Christian and Baptiste worked on revising and repairing guitars and violins of the music school, while Olivier continued his lessons in piano-tuning and –repair at the workshop of Nablus the Culture.
© instrument experts Christian Bertram (guitars) and Baptiste Argouarc’h (string instruments) working in the repair-workshop in Nablus
Messa and I brought Pol to our partner in Ramallah, the music school Al Kamandjati, where he checked and worked on some of the pianos which Olivier had not looked at recently.
In the meantime we met with our friends at the Ramallah-office of the A.M. Al-Qattan Foundation, with whom we should from this week on be working in Gaza in support of the music school which they have opened there in September. They have been able to start 5 different instrument classes in Gaza (guitar, oud, kanoun, violin and keyboard/piano) and accepted 35 students. We are now in the region with this team of instrument ‘doctors’, as we wanted to be with Qattan in Gaza from the very beginning. We are waiting for our permits though, allowing us into the Gaza strip, and have not received them yet. We hope that tomorrow Wednesday will be our lucky day and we are all prepared to travel to Gaza then, although we cannot be sure whether we will be allowed at all to enter Gaza this week.
Messa and I also shortly visited the Barenboim-Said Foundation in Ramallah to see how things are going there with the music instruments we donated to them. They have problems with the baby-grand piano we donated last year, as well as with some of the string instruments they received from Music Fund in 2006, so it would be good if we could find time later this week to work there too, although this is not at all sure.
Back in Al Kamandjati, the music school which viola-player Ramzi Abu-Radwan started only 3 years ago (!), we visited the repair-workshop which this music school opened and equipped, with the help of Music Fund as well as other partners of the school. There we met with the young musician Shahade Shalalda, who is now working on repairing and constructing string instruments. Thanks to an Italian luthier who came to work for some time in Ramallah, Shahade was invited for a 3-month internship to different workshops in Italy. At the end of this period he made his own violin. He is clearly very talented and would like to be able to go to London to be trained at a lutherie-school there. If Music Fund can help him, we will.
Al Kamandjati also needs more music instruments. They are especially in need of wind instruments, particularly trumpets, trombones and oboes. Some of the musicians related to the school will be performing in Brussels in December, and this will be a good occasion for us to donate these instruments to them, as they will be able to transfer them themselves at their return to Ramallah.
© piano-expert Pol De Winter helping Olivier Marie to restore one of the pianos at the repair-workshop in Nablus
Sometime in 2009, we will also try to organise an initiation-workshop for the repair of wind-instruments for Al Kamandjati in Ramallah.
Furthermore, Ramzi invites Music Fund to be Al Kamandjati’s partner in developing their music school in the refugee camps in the south of Lebanon from 2009. Al Kamandjati also continues to be incredibly active in developing new projects throughout the Westbank (Ramallah, Jenin, a.o.) and deserves all the support it can get,… also ours.
It was a great pleasure to spend a short time within the walls of this organisation and its music school in Ramallah and experience the special atmosphere there and the quality and charm of the persons running this school: besides Ramzi Abu-Radwan, there are Céline Dagher, Saed Karzoun, and also our former intern Iyad Jarradat, who is now also involved in the organisation of Al Kamandjati.
03-11-2008
arrival in Nablus
Monday 3rd November 2008: travelling with instrument ‘doctors’ Pol De Winter (piano), Baptiste Argouarc’h (string instruments), Christian Bertram (guitars) and Messaouda Zaouali (coordinator Music Fund)
Our first stop in the Westbank is Nablus. We arrived there in the late afternoon and met with piano-tuner Olivier Marie and his students in the training centre for piano-tuners and –technicians which Music Fund has been able to set up together with our partner in Nablus, Sami Hammad’s Nablus the Culture.
Olivier is since the beginning of April this year training a small group of 3-4 young Palestinians from Nablus and the surrounding villages into basic repair and tuning skills for pianos. I consider this project as one of our most outstanding ones: We expect to be able at the end of Olivier’s one year training programme in Nablus to select one or maybe two of the most talented students and obtain scholarships for them which would allow them to enroll for a one year training at ITEMM, the wonderful lutherie-school in Le Mans (France), where our mozambican student Anselmo Chissaque is already studying now. This scheme would allow us to be - together with our partner Nablus the Culture - responsible for training one or maybe two piano-tuners for the Westbank. As there is only one older piano-tuner from Jerusalem doing some of the tuning and basic reparations of pianos in the Westbank, the need for palestinian pianotuners is big.
In the evening we paid a short visit to Sami Hammad at his home. Sami is unfortunately very ill, as well as going through some difficult times with the music school of Nablus the Culture. He has had to temporarily close the music school, because he has no music teachers for the moment. We hope he will feel better by the end of this month, as Music Fund is inviting him to travel to Europe to meet with music schools in Belgium and France, in order to interest them to send their students to teach in Nablus after they finish their studies.
shortly in Tel Aviv
Monday 3rd November 2008: travelling with instrument ‘doctors’ Pol De Winter (piano), Baptiste Argouarc’h (string instruments), Christian Bertram (guitars) and Messaouda Zaouali (coordinator Music Fund)
This trip started with bad luck: After our flight from Liège (Belgium) to Tel Aviv (Israel) was delayed from Thursday until Sunday, which made us loose 3 days of the planned 10-day visit to the Middle East, but we finally arrived late last night at Tel Aviv Airport where we fortunately had no further delays at the border. We spent the night at a hotel and could plan several meetings this morning.
In the morning we visited the workshop of the famous israeli violin master-maker Amnon Weinstein. Several people advised us to get in touch with him, amongst whom also luthier Jan Strick from Brussels, whose assistant Baptiste Argouarc'h is part of our team here.
Mr Weinstein’s workshop has been for a long time involved and interested in helping both Israeli Arabs & Palestinian musicians. Amnon Weinstein is involved in violin projects around the world, working with orchestras and artists both in Israel and abroad. Weinstein learned his craft from his father, and then studied in Cremona with Pietro Sgarabotto, Giuseppe Ornati and Ferdinando Garimberti, and in Paris with Etienne Vatelot.
Just before leaving to our first destination – Nablus – we met with one of my Israeli friends, Noam Ben-Zeev. Noam was the one who in 2005 introduced me to the music schools in Nablus. After having read his article on the topic in the Haaretz, I called him to help me get to know the people in Nablus, and he decided to take me there himself. Noam has been following our projects since and has written several articles on our work in the region, which were published in the Haaretz in 2005 and 2006. We will meet Noam and his wife Yael again just before taking our flight back next Sunday evening.
