Book reviews August 2016 | Books | Entertainment | Daily Express
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Cymbals of love in war-torn hell: Book reviews Upbeat: The Story Of The National Youth Orchestra Of Iraq
THIS story of an Iraqi orchestra opens with a man eating fish and chips in a pub in Edinburgh in October 2008.
PH
Upbeat: The Story Of The National Youth Orchestra Of Iraq and The Invitation
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Book reviews August 2016 | Books | Entertainment | Daily Express
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Upbeat: The Story Of The National Youth Orchestra Of Iraq by Paul MacAlindin Sandstone Press, £19.99 Paul MacAlindin had just turned 40 and was working as a conductor and musician in Cologne, Germany, when he took a short trip back to his native Scotland and spotted an item in a local newspaper with an intriguing headline: “Search for UK maestro to help create orchestra in Iraq”. The newspaper piece was the result of an appeal by 17-year-old Iraqi pianist Zuhal Sultan, whose passion for music and belief in the young people of her country gave her the idea of setting up a youth orchestra. MacAlindin thought he could help and, after a long phone call to Zuhal, decided they could do it together. Following the Iraq war and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the country was a complete mess. Sectarian rivalries, religious splits, widespread misogyny and corruption on a massive scale dominated Iraq yet MacAlindin believed in the power of music to unite, even if some factions considered classical music to be a symptom of Western imperialism that deserved punishment of death. Fortunately such attitudes were found mostly in Baghdad, whereas the first course for those chosen to set up the National Youth Orchestra Of Iraq was based mostly in the more enlightened Kurdish region. All the same problems were evident from the start. The musicians spoke Kurdish or Arabic and could not understand each other. MacAlindin spoke English and German so many of them could not understand him either and everything had to be translated into three languages. The rivalries between Baghdadis and Kurds were also all too evident. Most of all, as MacAlindin says: “The serious scarcity of good young players in Iraq proved our main weakness.” Add to that a scarcity of decent musical instruments and the debilitating heat that damaged them and the project seemed crazy. However, with the aid of a group of Western tutors, he turned a ramshackle bunch of players into an almost coherent unit thanks to their own passion, with support from the British Council and a German charity. Over the next few years, the NYOI gave concerts first in Iraq and then in Britain, Germany and France, with their playing standards improving fast. However, the project involved MacAlindin in constant crisis management. The breaking point came in 2014 when plans to launch a series of concerts in the United States were frustrated by a combination of Baghdadi corruption and America’s bureaucracy, both exacerbated by the appearance of IS. Everything depended on sponsorship money, visas and travel arrangements being completed in time and the delays became intolerable. “The crux of their paranoia,” MacAlindin writes of the US Citizenship And Immigration Service, “lay in the fact that our orchestra’s membership was not constant... So in their minds a potential terrorist could have been added to the list by pretending to be a violinist. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Anyone who’d bought into such extremist ideologies would have either given up music or been executed by his comrades for playing a violin long ago.” MacAlindin only intended to be involved in the project for five years and, having been so close to disaster so many times, sounds almost relieved when it ends. However, his achievements were extraordinary. What’s more, many former NYOI members have gone on to forge successful careers in other countries. Upbeat serves as an inspiring and insightful guide towards understanding a land too long dominated by war and violence. WILLIAM HARTSTON
RELATED ARTICLES Worldly wise: Book reviews
Book Review: The Games, A Global History of the Olympics
(http://express.co.uk/entertainment/books/696258/book(http://express.co.uk/entertainment/books/698082/Olympicreview-To-The-Bright-Edge-Of-The-World-Harmless-LikeGames-2016-book-review-global-history-Rio-London-2012) You-Love-In-Central-America) Hot picks for poolside bliss Still haven’t selected your holiday reads? Take some inspiration from our choice of the month’s best new books for women The Invitation By Lucy Foley HarperCollins, £12.99 Writing for the local paper in Rome in 1951, young journalist Hal is struggling to make ends meet. When he chances upon a coveted invite to a contessa’s Christmas party for the crème-de-la-crème of Italian society, he can’t resist the chance to live like an aristocrat, even if it is just for one night. And who knows, he might even get a good story out of it. But social climbers aren’t interested in speaking to a nobody like Hal so he retreats to the rooftop to lick his wounds. That’s when he sees her, emerging from the shadows “like some magical winged creature... His breath catches. He had somehow known from the voice that she would be beautiful, but had not been quite prepared for what has been revealed”. Hal and his mystery woman escape the party and, after spending the night together, she retreats back into her glamorous world and he back to his unremarkable one. He doesn’t even know her last name, just that she is called Stella. A year later Hal learns that the contessa has made a film, The Sea Captain, and he is invited in a journalistic capacity to board her super yacht with the film’s stars and key investors for a two-week trip up the Italian coast to the Cannes Film Festival. On the first night Hal is introduced to his fellow travellers and one investor in particular catches his eye, Frank Truss, who is described by the contessa in hushed tones as “a powerful man... He has other business in Italy – industry, I understand. It is also possible that he may have certain connections here one would rather not look too closely at”. Accompanying Mr Truss on the two-week trip is Mrs Truss, or Stella, as Hal knows her. When their eyes meet, she looks less than pleased to see him and avoids him at all costs. Hal writes Stella off as a rich man’s wife who was looking for a bit of fun that night in Rome. But as they set sail and take in the pastel-coloured coastlines of Liguria, Cinque Terre, Portofino and San Fruttuoso, he watches as Mr Truss becomes more dominant and controlling over Stella. Fans of John le Carré’s The Night Manager will see similarities in the relationship between Mr Truss and Stella and the way Le Carré’s illegal arms dealer Richard Roper subtly controls his ethereal girlfriend Jed.
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Book reviews August 2016 | Books | Entertainment | Daily Express
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He appears to offer her the world but at what cost? Hal’s story is punctuated with chapters where Stella tells her own back story. She talks of her simple but happy life growing up in Spain with her father and little brother. But as fascism spreads through the country like wildfire, her family are killed and she finds herself begging for stale bread and sleeping rough. At her lowest point, a stranger, Mr Truss, offers to buy her a meal and before she knows it she is living in New York and having elocution lessons to stamp out any last trace of her accent. Mr Truss subtly controls every aspect of her life. Stella loses herself until that fateful night in Rome when she meets Hal. He is desperate to free Stella but does she want to be freed? The Invitation allows the reader to take a glamorous trip along the beautiful sun-kissed Italian Riviera and enjoy the quirky traits of the diverse range of characters aboard the yacht. Full of sun, sea and suspicion, this is a rich, gripping novel and the perfect beach read. SOPHIE DONNELL VERDICT: 4/5 The House On Sunset Lake by Tasmina Perry Headline, £16.99 Jennifer lives in the grand plantation house Casa D’Or in Savannah, Georgia, and when Jim Johnson spends a carefree student summer there, he falls for her. Then tragedy forces him to leave. Twenty years on, tasked with acquiring the property for Omari Hotels, Jim finds the house guards many secrets. Seductive and mysterious, this is the perfect novel to while away a summer’s afternoon. Ways Of Perfume by Chistina Caboni Transworld, £7.99 The women in Elena’s family have worked as perfumiers for generations but could she be the one to solve the mystery of an old, secret family concoction known as the Perfect Perfume? An intoxicating quest through Florence and Paris, this is a feast for the senses. Wildflower Bay by Rachael Lucas Pan Macmillan, £7.99 When conscientious Isla loses her job as head stylist at a fashionable Edinburgh salon, the idea of running the dated family hairdressers on a remote island is miserable. [PH]
Until island-native Finn walks into her life. From the gorgeous setting to the instantly lovable characters, Wildflower Bay is an enchanting, full-of-fun treat.
KERRY HIATT
[PH]
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