American Voices is a cultural organization that seeks to provide quality artistic experiences for artists and audiences in those parts of the world newly opened to such experiences. Founded by executive director John Ferguson in 1993, following the end of the Cold War, American Voices began its work in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and Central America, and has since traveled throughout 18 time zones from the Philippines to Peru. The emphasis is on American music and dance from the classical, jazz and Broadway traditions.
This cultural diplomacy has now moved into the Middle East and Central Asia, and this month includes the Summer Arts Academy in Erbil, in Northern Iraq, where Marc Thayer, the SLSO’s Education and Community Partnerships director, is taking part. Marc explained to me before he left that he became aware of American Voices and got involved in this project through an old friend, David Handel, who is music director of the National Symphony Orchestra of Bolivia and who has worked with American Voices in Bolivia, Malta, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and El Salvador. Handel is working with musicians from the Iraq National Symphony Orchestra as well as from the symphony orchestras of Suleimanya and Erbil, with all to come together to play as the Unity Orchestra next week. (Suleimanya is in the Kurdish region of northeastern Iraq.)
Some 300 participants at the Summer Arts Academy are also involved in workshops in jazz music and dance, piano, ballet, hip hop, and Broadway music and dance.
Marc is working with string and chamber musicians, introducing the Suzuki method, and giving both group and individual lessons. He is also sending in dispatches when he can. Here is his first post from Erbil:
Day 1
Left STL on July 12 at 9am, and left DC at 6pm.
Left Vienna at 10:30 am on the 13th and arrived in Erbil around 4:30pm, 2 hour time change, I think, 9 hours ahead of St. Louis.
All three checked bags arrived by some luck. Ten Americans here and one Swiss jazz teacher. We loaded into vans with luggage in back of pickup truck. Outside is like being in an oven, intense sun and dry. Thirty-minute drive to Hotel Khanzad, escorted from hotel with armed guys in our van and armed soldiers in open van ahead of us with machine guns, through checkpoints and cement barriers at airport and hotel. Beautiful, barren, brown mountains in background behind hotel.
Got our own rooms, very nice, clean, twin beds. AC is great! Then went to see the new Ministry of Culture building and 700-seat concert hall, very nice but stage is not deep. Looked at classrooms, new music and supplies, not sure if we'll have enough music stands for three orchestras plus college and high school students.
[Marc describes meeting w/a number of Iraqi musicians and a feast prepared for them.] Chopped salads already on table. Delicious food, buffet included roast chicken, ground lamb, rice, chicken soup, great hummus and fresh bread, veggies, red cabbage with parsley, chicken with tomatos and onions, three types of melon.
We join with others in large room…. One of our translators is 16 years old and speaks very good English, Kurdish, Arabic, and Turkish. Everything has to be double translated because the folks from Baghdad don't speak Kurdish, and those from Suleimanya (Suly from now on) speak a different dialect of Kurdish.
Introductions made by John Ferguson, exec. dir. of American Voices. Orchestras from Suly and Baghdad are present so far, plus students and dance groups. The only young kids are dancers, a folk-dance group from Baghdad. John passes out security badges needed to get into the Ministry. People have lots of spirit, talking a lot, smoking a lot, many strikingly beautiful people. John says we are the first foreigners many of them have seen, especially the Kurds, who were so isolated.
Then the conductors all meet to discuss repertoire and rehearsals for tomorrow. Security won't let us split up so we all have to wait for the end of meeting. Finally get back to hotel at 12:00 and need a drink, so various young staff guys reluctantly open the bar for two of us and five others join.
I take a shower and go to bed at 1:45am for a whole five hours. CNN on TV plus old American movies, lots of Arabic channels. Good night.
