Wednesday (5/8) on the New York Times blog ArtsBeat, Felicia R. Lee writes, “A few years in the making, a Middle East tour of a work called ‘Symphony for Palestine’ will come to Ramallah, East Jerusalem and Jenin from May 30 through June 2, a German orchestra announced this week. The symphony and the tour are a collaboration between the Dresdner Sinfoniker with Palestinian and Azerbaijani musicians. The orchestra, performing with an international group of musicians and led by the Italian conductor Andrea Molino, will perform the symphony by the Iranian composer Kayhan Kalhor in concerts in each city. The symphony is dedicated to two people whose deaths drew international headlines, according to a statement from the Dresdner Sinfoniker. They are Juliano Mer Khamis, the Israeli-Palestinian actor and political activist who was the director of Freedom Theater, founded in the West Bank city of Jenin. He was killed in April 2011 by masked gunmen presumed by police to be Palestinian militants. Also being honored is Ahmed al-Khatib, a 12-year-old Palestinian from Jenin who was killed by an Israeli soldier in 2005 when the boy’s water pistol was mistaken for a real gun. The child’s parents donated his organs to several Israeli children.”
Posted May 10, 2013
