New York-based Music for Life International Inc. will present a benefit concert called The Scheherazade Initiative at Carnegie Hall on Monday, January 26. Under the baton of George Mathew, MLI’s founder and artistic director, an orchestra comprising musicians from numerous New York City orchestras as well the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Curtis Institute, and other organizations, will perform Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade and Maurice Ravel’s Shéhérazade. Net proceeds will benefit the United Nations Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women. “Scheherazade, as the narrator of the Tales of the 1001 Arabian Nights, is an archetypal figure,” says Mathew, “who not only neutralized the violence directed again herself but enriched global folklore for generations. Over the last millennium, her legend has been an inspiration for composers, poets, writers, painters, sculptors and other artists.” The Scheherazade Initiative is the sixth in a series of humanitarian concerts that MLI and Mathew, a Singapore-born Indian conductor, have conceived and presented at Carnegie Hall. More information on the event can be found here.
Posted January 5, 2015
