Discord and harmony: how a youth orchestra flourished in Iraq against all the odds | The National
26/02/2017, 18*54
Members Tuqa Alwaeli and Sabat Hameed with the Tannenbusch School Orchestra, Bonn, in 2011.
Discord and harmony: how a youth orchestra flourished in Iraq against all the odds James McNair
July 28, 2016 Updated: August 10, 2016 08:56 PM Related
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Like many great stories, Paul MacAlindin’s account of how he came to assemble and conduct the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq (NYOI) begins in the most quotidian of settings. It was in October 2008, while eating fish and chips in an Edinburgh pub, that the author spied a Glasgow Herald article that would transform his life and that of countless others. The piece concerned Zuhal Sultan, a go-getting 17year-old pianist in Baghdad who sought what the Herald called a "UK Maestro" to help her found a national youth orchestra in war-torn Iraq. "Thank goodness for ‘Maestro’!" jokes MacAlindin in Upbeat: The Story of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq. "Had it just said ‘conductor’ I’d probably have turned the page." Listen: Crossroads podcast: An Iraqi classical soundtrack- Ep 14 MacAlindin, an Aberdeen-born Scot who was previously a conductor/guest conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic and Royal Philharmonic among others, recounts how he knew instinctively that he was the man for the job. But he was also acutely aware of the magnitude and
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