22 School Band and Orchestra • December 2012

SBOUpClose: Paul MacAlindin

By Eliahu SuSSman

Paul MacAlindin

Iraq& the National Youth Orchestra of

A Triumph of Music

In September of 2008, conductor Paul MacAlindin was enjoying a plate of fish and chips in a restaurant in Edinburgh, Scotland when he reached over to pick up a copy of the Glasgow Herald that was sitting on a nearby table. In that newspaper, an announcement caught his eye: “Search for UK Maestro to help create an orchestra in Iraq,” read the headline. “An Iraqi teenager is appealing for a British maestro to help her set up the country’s first

national youth orchestra.” What followed was a brief description of the mission of Zuhal Sultan, a remark-able then 17-year-old Iraqi teen who had a vision. Sultan, a piano playing girl who grew up in Baghdad, dreamed of assembling a National Youth Orchestra. Her story gained attention when she was contacted by Raw TV, a British television channel that makes reality shows in London. Raw TV then put out the press release, which MacAlindin came across in a restaurant in Edinburgh.

A Triumph of Music

24 School Band and Orchestra • December 2012

Paul MacAlindin, a Scottish con-ductor and music director who is based in Germany but has worked through-out Europe, was hooked. “I was so im-pressed by the story,” he recalls. “I said to myself immediately, ‘I know how to do this.’ I contacted Zuhal through Raw and the British Council London, who put me in touch with their Iraq office.” With funding and assistance from groups like the British Council London and the Scottish Government, plans were put in place for a schedule to be arranged, tutors to be flown in, details to be ironed out, and the Na-tional Youth Orchestra of Iraq (NYOI) was born.

SBO recently caught up with MacAlindin to discuss the rather in-credible particulars of how this ground-breaking ensemble was launched, the logistical and musical challenges the NYOI has faced, and the larger sig-nificance of creating a unified outlet for young musicians in a war-ravaged country.

School Band & Orchestra: What were some of the logistical and conceptual challenges of getting the NYOI off and running?

Paul MacAlindin: In year one, we had no idea who was providing secu-rity or where we were rehearsing as we flew into Iraq. It’s a last minute culture, so we were given the Palace of Arts by local government contacts on arrival, who also supplied us with local Pesh-merga soldiers, the Kurdistan Region’s own army. These were burly young men in uniform patrolling the build-ing and its surroundings with AK-47s.

It became a ritual of our bassoon tu-tors over the years to get photographed holding the weapons. I guess there’s not much difference between a bassoon and a Kalashnikov, on some deep level.

SBO: How much of a realistic con-cern was safety?

PM: Safety is priority number one. You can’t concentrate on learning mu-sic unless you have the basics in place. Choosing a Kurdish town in the north to hold the course was sensible for the Kurdish Iraqi players, but could mean a long and potentially dangerous jour-ney from Baghdad for the Arab players. Because the Kurdistan region of Iraq is much safer than the rest, this was a logical location for the course.

Once we’d all started to relax into a routine, we began to get to know each other and the town of Suleymaniyah, which was a heartwarming and lovely experience. We were very fortunate to begin our life there.

SBO: Would you talk about the pro-cess of recruiting players?

PM: The musicians hear about NYOI through Facebook (www.face-

book.com/nyo.iraq) and word of mouth. Auditions have to be done by YouTube. I needed to know what stan-dard the players were at, so I could choose suitable repertoire, and obvi-ously, I couldn’t take on everyone. There are no course fees, so the players have to be fully financed by the project.

Auditions by YouTube were very difficult because Iraq’s infrastructure had been shattered by the war, and wireless capacity was just beginning to be set up. Uploading five minutes of video could take 10 hours, and if there were a power cut, you’d have to start all over again.

SBO: What were your initial expec-tations, musically?

PM: I had few expectations coming in. I was very clear what I wanted to do in that first two-week course in 2009, but I had no idea how this would work in reality. The repertoire was Haydn’s “Symphony No. 99” and Beethoven’s “Prometheus Overture.” I also had a pile of shorter, easier pieces, which I would weave into rehearsals in week one as I got a feel for how [the students] were progressing. There was a lot of

“The short-term goal is to put on a concert at the end of each course. The long-term goal is to train as

many talented young Iraqis as possible so that they will return to Iraq with better teaching ideas and more motiva-tion to start their own ensembles and chamber orchestras – and this is already happening.”

MacAlindin leads the NYOI in rehearsal.

Photos by Tariq Hassoon.

26 School Band and Orchestra • December 2012

ducking and diving, but we pulled to-gether a final concert that the audience was pretty surprised and delighted at. I loved that they burst into applause, not just after every movement, but wher-ever there were two or three beats rest in the Haydn. This was hilarious fun, and made the whole relationship with the audience come to life.

SBO: What sorts of musical back-grounds do the players in the NYOI have?

PM: Many of the players have no formal teaching, and those with teachers are often not instilled with a pedagogy, or sometimes sabotaged by older players who try to quash their talent, as a threat to them-selves. My tutor team agrees that those without teachers are generally better off than those with. There is no exam system, and players coming from certain districts of Baghdad or Kirkuk have to be careful how loud they play in case they get their fami-

lies into trouble from local funda-mentalist authorities.

There are Institutes of the Fine Arts around the country, so the founda-tions are there, and they provide what support they can. Some of my less fi-nancially well-off players have been given their first instrument through such organizations, but then often

there is only the Internet to download from for further study. Classical music is seen as a basic educational necessity regardless of whether you play classi-cal or Iraqi music. This takes young musicians up to a lower intermediate level, especially in terms of reading music and playing the more popu-lar instruments such as violin. Many of the NYOI players know how to play Iraqi music, but don’t tell me, as they see their own traditions as being somehow less significant. This is why every program we do features an Arab and Kurdish Iraqi orchestral composi-tion. Violinists and clarinetists are the most versatile, as they can alter their tuning with a good degree of control and play traditional Iraqi Maq’ams.

SBO: How would you describe the experience of working with students from conflicting ethnic backgrounds and across different languages?

PM: Back in 2009, the Kurdish/Arab/English tutor divide was obvious in week one, as people would simply not speak to each other outside re-hearsal. Given that the Kurds don’t speak Arabic and the Arabs don’t speak Kurdish and only half the orchestra could get by in English, this is not sur-prising. But once we had a birthday party, and discovered what an irre-pressible bunch of party animals we all were, the ice broke and everyone hun-kered down with new determination to make the concert happen. Music and party are the two common languages of NYOI.

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SBO: Could you elaborate on that birthday party? How did that come together?

PM: It was the Friday at the end of week one, and we were all in an Irani-an restaurant that we’d booked to feed the orchestra during our stay. We’d all started sitting at our usual tables out-

side on the lawn, defined by language, Kurds, Arabs, English speakers. A birthday cake for Boran Aziz, a highly talented young pianist, appeared for her 18th birthday, on that day. After singing “Happy Birthday,” a violinist and Daff player struck up a tune and we started dancing around in a circle. All the differences melted away and we

realised how keen we were to let go and have a good time. Now, every year, someone brings along a Daff, which is an Ottoman drum, and someone else will start playing a local melody on violin or clarinet, two very common folk instruments in Iraq, and we’ll all spontaneously start dancing, non-stop for hours on end. And without a single

I traveled to Iraq for parts of three consecutive summers, about two-and-a-half weeks each year. I first heard about the NYOI while doing a fellowship with Carnegie Hall, where one leg of my program was educational outreach. The director of my fellowship program had given my name to an American representative for the NYOI, Allegra Klein, who presented the opportunity to me. Going to Iraq was a pret-ty scary idea at the time, but I was eventually convinced that I would be safe, and I decided to go ahead and do it.

When I got to Iraq, it was a lot more peaceful than I was expect-ing. There was some tension between the Kurds and the Arabs in the orchestra and there were some adventurous moments, but the sensa-tionalized violence and chaos that the media loves to report on was basically non-existent. Still, we were all pretty paranoid whenever we went outside. We spent most of our time indoors in the hotel or at the rehearsal hall, but whenever we went outside, the locals were friendly. There was also a lot of curiosity about who we were and what we were doing.

As far as the schedule went, the rehearsals were pretty much all-day affairs. We’d wake up in the morning and have sectionals right after breakfast. There were tutors for each instrument; I worked with the first violin section. Sectionals would last about two hours, during which time we’d go through the parts, fingerings, mark the score, and work on rhythm and other areas that might be problematic. The Iraqi musicians had such a wide range of playing levels that it was quite challenging. We’d break for lunch, and then have full rehearsals for another three hours or so. There was also travel time going from the hotel where we were staying to the rehearsal venue, and then time out for meals, so we were basically working with the kids non-stop. In addition, we would give lessons in the evenings, sometimes before dinner and sometimes after dinner, one-on-one, working on whatever individual skills the NYOI musicians needed [to improve].

The first year was really doing a lot of basic work with the musi-cians. There was a really wide range of musicianship, and some of them had never been in an orchestra or done a string sectional before. In the end, they pulled through for the concert – the concerts were always rewarding. Still, the second year wasn’t like picking up where we left off after the first year, because we had so many new members. Almost half of the musicians the second year were new, having heard about the NYOI purely through word of mouth. By the third year, though, it seemed like some of the more advanced musicians had be-gun teaching their colleagues.

I thought it was important to give my time freely while I was over there, and they were so enthusiastic about learning any-thing they could. They were like sponges. They really absorbed as much as they could. Working with them was really touching for me. Some of the Iraqi musicians would stay up all night long downloading videos related to the music we were playing – they hardly went to bed. We would give them a hard time about it, being strict with them and telling them that if they didn’t sleep, they wouldn’t be able to concentrate.

There was a French horn player named Ranya Nashat, who was the most outgoing person in the group. She also spoke very good Eng-lish. When I asked her why she and her colleagues were staying up all night, she said, “You guys don’t understand what a gift this is for us. Your presence here means so much that we want to absorb every moment, and that’s more valuable than sleeping. There’s no way we’ll know what happens tomorrow.” This a girl who grew up in Baghdad, and still lives there. Ranya told me, “You don’t know what we see every day. My friend was just killed last week.” That put it into perspective for us, and I guess that’s why I went back for the next two summers.

Seeing the way that these kids worked together by the end of each season, I realized that wherever you are, whatever your means or resources, it doesn’t take much to make the most of any situation. Especially in music, where people have a common goal and interest, it doesn’t matter what happened in the past. There was a lot of conflict between the Arabs and the Kurds and the Arabs outnumbered the Kurds. By the end of the session, they were not only working together, but laughing and helping each other, and really learning, trying to pull off something that may have been beyond their scope.

Learning from them really was a gift for me. I realized a lot about how necessary it is to reach out to people through what we do. It gave more meaning to my own life as a performer and as an educator. I could be playing in concert venues – I’m on tour right now – but what really gives meaning to what I do as a musician is helping, and feeling useful, needed, and relevant. They made that happen for me. They helped me realize the importance of what I do and why I do it, which is to teach, to pass on what I know to people who are eager to absorb it, and to people who need it. And that place really needs it, more than any other place that I’ve ever been to.

Angelia Cho is a New York City-based violinist and member of The Academy, a program “for musicians who wish to redefine their role as musician and extend their music making from the concert stage into schools and the larger community.” In 2009, 2010, and 2011, Angelia traveled to Iraq as a violin tutor for the NYOI, one of approxi-mately 10 instrument coaches brought in for about two weeks each year.

Cho is currently touring with A Far Cry, a self-conducted classical chamber orchestra that she helped found in 2007. In between recent tour stops in Georgia and Louisiana, Cho took a moment to share her experiences in Iraq with SBO.

28 School Band and Orchestra • December 2012

drop of alcohol. I think this first party made everyone feel they could have permission to be young, joyful, and silly while still taking music seriously.

SBO: How would you describe the strategy for getting the NYOI off the ground, and then developing growth?

PM: I think that first year worked with sheer guts and determination. The past four years have been blood, sweat and tears, especially for me, but there really is no other way of setting some-thing like this up for sustainability. Al-though the orchestra intake is better each year, there are still fundamental problems of listening, musicianship, and technique that our tutor team – one per instrument – try their best to iron out in our brief annual courses, but this cannot replace the years of neglect that these young people have experienced.

Our strategy is to become diplo-mats, showing a more positive, united face to the world than it has seen so far, and to reach out to other youth orchestras. Last year, we collaborated with the German Youth Orchestra, Bundesjugendorchester, and this year with Edinburgh Youth Orchestra. Next year will be with the French Orchestre Francais des Jeunes in Aix en Provence. Our values, chosen in a players’ work-shop in 2009, are love, commitment and respect.

SBO: What do you mean by “values” for the ensemble?

PM: In 2009, I ran a mission and values workshop with the players, be-cause I needed to know who they were and what they wanted out of this or-chestra for the coming years. We asked them to write down anonymously, on pieces of paper, what qualities they valued in themselves, in music, in the youth orchestra, and if they were to run their own youth orchestra, what values would be its foundation. The most common answers were love, com-mitment, and respect, along with hard work, love of Iraq, and peace clustering around them. So that gave me as good a mandate as possible for how the play-ers themselves saw the orchestra.

In practice, as with any value sys-tem, this can be hard to live up to, but at least it’s there to refer to, and for everyone to remind themselves what NYOI is about. These are very broad and solid foundations that create a standard of behavior towards each oth-er, especially through hard times.

SBO: How has the course of study and performance for the NYOI evolved since its inception?

PM: The 2009 and ‘10 courses were two weeks of rehearsal in Iraq and one concert. The 2011 course was two weeks in Iraq and one concert, then two more weeks in Bonn, a workshop concert in Berlin, two kids’ concerts and one final concert in Beethovenfest. This year, the whole course was in Ed-inburgh for 3 weeks, with concerts in Glasgow, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and London Queen Elisabeth Hall. We’re still trying to create the ideal for-mula for working.

SBO: Do I understand this correctly then, that in some respects the NYOI is as much an advanced music educa-tion training program as it is a select performance ensemble?

PM: Yes. It has to be a musical boot camp to skill-up the players and get them through the course and final per-formance, as there really isn’t much of a music educational infrastructure to

support them in Iraq. Those that make it through the auditions are largely self-taught.

SBO: Have you had the same musi-cians participating from year to year?

PM: We run annual auditions, just like every other national youth orchestra. The best applicants from each year get in, subject to available places. I reckon about a quarter have been in since the start. The short-term goal is to put on a concert at the end of each course. The long-term goal is to train as many talented young

Iraqis as possible so that they will re-turn to Iraq with better teaching ideas and more motivation to start their own ensembles and chamber orchestras, and this is already happening. In that sense, the viral effect of good quality teaching influences Iraqi music making by stealth over the long term future. That we’ve made it through the first four years is a miracle, but it’s the deep impact over the next 25 years that we’re thinking about, as well. We can’t guarantee that there’ll be a musical infrastructure for the future, but we can change the way music edu-

On the web: • www.nyoiraq.com• www.friends-nyoi.com• twitter:nyoiraq• www.facebook.com/nyo.iraq• www.youtube.com/user/nyoiinfo

Year Founded: 2008Founder:ZuhalSultanMusical Director:PaulMacAlindinCurrent number of Musicians:45Total number of Musicians in NYOI history:100Notable accolades & accomplishments: • BringingyoungIraqisfromdiverseback-

groundstogetherinpeaceandmusic• InternationaldebutatBeethovenfest• CommissioningKurdish&Arabcompos-

ers:http://soundcloud.com/nyo-iraq• FoundingGermanFriendsofNYOI:

www.friends-nyoi.com• InvitedbyScottishGovernmenttoper-

formatEdinburghInternationalFringe• LondondébutwithJulianLloydWebber

ForacloserlookattheNYOIinaction,scanthisQRcodewithyoursmartphone!

The National Youth Orchestra of Iraq

at a Glance

“We can’t guarantee that there’ll be a musical infra-structure for the future, but we can change the way

music education is perceived, one player at a time, and give them a strong feeling of success and achievement.”

30 School Band and Orchestra • December 2012

cation is perceived, one player at a time, and give them a strong feeling of success and achievement.

After four years of getting this baby organization on its feet, we now have rolling interest from various embassies,

countries, festivals, and this is all we can do to make sure it has a sustain-able future. The orchestra is a paradox from top to bottom, and like all good paradoxes, it works because, and not in spite of, it’s apparent contradictions.

SBO: The “orchestra is a paradox from top to bottom”? Could you ex-pand on that?

PM: The first paradox is why a Scottish conductor based in Germany is doing this. I still don’t really know, other than it still sounds like a great idea, and it’s easy to fall for the young players and want to try and help them.

The second paradox is how a 17-year-old female pianist in Baghdad rallied considerable support in that

“How can a bunch of young people who can’t even speak each other’s language, and have been

taught to hate each other, sit down in front of the same music and play beautifully together?”

Photos by Tariq Hassoon.

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School Band and Orchestra • December 2012 31

first year to get NYOI off the ground. Zuhal has a magnetic charm and is fu-riously intelligent. We’re lucky to have her.

Thirdly, how can a bunch of young people who can’t even speak each oth-er’s language, and have been taught to hate each other, sit down in front of the same music and play beautifully to-gether? Because of the discipline of or-chestral playing, we have a very secure and productive framework to come together. Having me and the other for-eign tutors there also creates a neutral third space between the Kurds and Ar-abs through which we can mediate and pour our energy safely.

The fourth paradox is between Arab, Kurdish, and Western musical culture, but this is also a generation who glob-ally switches between cultures more ef-fortlessly and articulately than ever be-fore. It’s a real Generation Y orchestra, with a high awareness of music outside Iraq through the Internet. Taking a very conservative format, the orchestra, and fitting it into a very conservative coun-try within this globally aware context actually fits strangely well.

The final paradox is the most tragic and most important, and that is the suffering of the players themselves. Al-though there is little evidence on the surface of what they personally have been through, everyone’s family has been affected by gas attacks, invasion, tribal tensions, and war. As young peo-ple, this is their normality. That comes out in the sound, which has been borne out of their determination to play through dangerous times, in order to shut out the world around them. It’s a crazy, tense energy, but one which we can convert into joy together.

SBO: In the bigger picture, what do you think this organization repre-sents?

PM: That’s a huge question. I don’t know really. The organization is a pro-cess. It represents a way of teaching and communicating that is kinder, more creative, more loving than what they’ve been used to. This has a stealth impact in Iraq, as people gradually realize what the true potential of these young players is, and it forces older musicians to deal with a highly informed, em-

powered next generation. The players know how to translate this experience to Iraq in ways I cannot. Diplomatically, we’re looking at an orchestra of Iraqis living in Iraq, all with Iraqi passports, but some people high up cannot let go of the divisions within Iraq, so we deal with some resistance to our symbolic wholeness. There’s another paradox – a national youth orchestra from a nation that doesn’t believe in itself as a whole.

SBO: How does this project differ from other conducting gigs you’ve had?

PM: NYOI will always be a coaching more than a conducting experience for me. Due to lack of experience, the play-ers don’t really know how to watch and play at the same time, and if they do, classical conducting technique doesn’t have much meaning. I adapt my physi-

32 School Band and Orchestra • December 2012

cal communication to be more ener-getic and direct than with profession-als. My verbal communication is very economical, because it also has to be translated into Kurdish and Arabic. There’s a Kurdish and Arab concert-master sharing every concert, which helps keep a cultural balance. Working with two concertmasters is also a joy, because you’re giving two people lead-ership experience instead of one, and leadership is a key development goal for when they return to daily Iraqi life. I’d say after four years, we’ve gotten all the lead positions about right.

SBO: How would you describe the impact that this ensemble has had on the musicians, their families, and their communities?

PM: That’s a huge question. I don’t know where to begin. In short, the aver-age age in Iraq is about 21. Our upper age limit is 29. Therefore NYOI players, who are about 18-25, are really the cur-rent generation of music teachers and

performers in Iraq. So those who teach, teach better. Some create ensembles like the Kurdistan String Quartet or the Babagoorgoor Chamber Orchestra in Kirkuk, and those who already play in ensembles like the Iraqi National Sym-phony Orchestra or the Kurdish String Orchestra, bring their NYOI experience to the rehearsals and performances.

SBO: Have you faced skepticism about the concept of playing classi-cal music in Iraq?

PM: The first orchestra in the Middle East was the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra, founded in Baghdad in 1959. But really, why are we still having this discussion today? The idea that orches-tras only belong to the West is something that might have held water 60 years ago, but now, orchestras are a world culture, composers of every background and style are writing for them, and practically every film you see needs one to bring the sound track to life. Even synthetic soundtracks end up imitating them.

Also, the contemporary definition of orchestra is broader than the 19th-century model, with Kurdish and Arab orchestras mixing violins, clarinets, double basses, ouds, nyes, josas up into whatever ensemble does the job of making the music. I’d say that four years on, we’re well on the way to in-tegrating diverse Iraqi voices into the programming, language is no longer a barrier with our superb team of trilin-gual translators, Kurdish/Arabic/Eng-lish, and the diversity of individuals, regardless of where they come from, or what they speak, is richer than the anodyne characterless conservatoire playing you now get that churns out perfect and perfectly dull musicians for the global market.

SBO: What sort of potential do you see with this ensemble, both cultur-ally and musically? What are the long-term goals of the NYOI?

PM: The energy, the grist to the mill that we bring to each other and our audiences, is irrepressibly joyful and defiant. It’s really the beginning of a 30-year arc that I can only see bring-ing good things to the people of Iraq. Iraq is so focused on rebuilding and at-tempting to maintain it’s fragile democ-racy that culture is pretty low down on the list of priorities.

And yet, for a post-war country as fragile as this one, I wonder who else but organizations like the NYOI is go-ing to keep it from falling apart? Cul-ture binds us together in common un-derstanding far more powerfully than infrastructure. As Iraqis soul-search for a new identity, music will play its part. Let’s not forget that the 21st century will not be shaped by the West, but by other cultures who are comfortable with paradox and see answers in ap-parent conflicts that we, with our linear thinking, don’t understand.

SBO: What particular lessons have you taken away from this experience?

PM: The lesson for me is to enter into as many challenges as possible in order to help others grow, because the most important resource I have for get-ting the best out of people isn’t talent, but compassion.

“How can a bunch of young people who can’t even speak each other’s language, and have been

taught to hate each other, sit down in front of the same music and play beautifully together?”