“In a dusty Baghdad dance studio, conductor Mohammed Amin Ezzat tries to fire up the musicians of Iraq’s National Symphony Orchestra, whose enthusiasm has been dampened by eight months without pay,” writes Sammy Ketz in a Tuesday (8/14) Agence France-Presse article. “At the capital’s School of Music and Ballet, the 57-year-old maestro leads the group through a rehearsal of Modest Mussorgsky’s ‘Night on Bald Mountain.’… Ezzat and the 40 musicians surrounding him are gearing up to perform at Baghdad’s National Theatre on Saturday, but the … ensemble has lost more than half its members since the start of the year, when the government issued a directive barring state employees with two jobs from receiving two salaries. The anti-corruption measure was suggested by the World Bank and should affect only about a third of the orchestra’s musicians, but because of delays … wages have been withheld from the entire group…. Officially created in 1970 after several unsuccessful attempts, Iraq’s national orchestra has survived decades of upheaval…. According to Raed Allawi, the head of administrative affairs at Iraq’s culture ministry … the wages will soon be paid…. Further along into the rehearsal, the studio’s electricity cuts, a common occurrence in a country plagued by power outages.”
Posted August 15, 2018
