Middle East Tour 2006

Fifteen members of the COL and COL Orchestra returned to the Palestinian Territories and Israel in May 2006 to stage a series of concerts, including several collaborative performances involving local musicians. Click here to view a gallery of images from the visit.

SHAFA ’AMR

This year’s Choir of London tour to the Middle East aimed to build on a number of musical partnerships forged during the Choir’s inaugural visit to the region in December 2004. One such partnership involves the Sawa Choir, a Palestinian children’s choir based in Shafa ’Amr, in the Galilee region of northern Israel. In addition to its own calendar of performance engagements, the Sawa Choir has also for several years enjoyed an inspiring and musically exciting relationship with a well-known Jewish-Israeli children’s ensemble based in Emek Hefer, the Efroni Choir. A joint concert involving both choirs was one of the outstanding highlights of the Choir of London’s first visit to the Middle East in 20004. Since then, the ties between the two groups have continued to develop, despite worsening political tensions - and a resulting tendency towards polarisation - in the region.

A trip up to Shafa ‘Amr at the start of the Choir of London’s May 2006 tour offered an ideal opportunity both to renew links with the Sawa Choir, and to work for the first time with its thriving adult counterpart, the al-Ba’ath Choir. Over the course of a two-day visit, visiting British singers worked alongside both groups, preparing a richly varied programme of music designed to explore point of contact between the choirs’ respective musical traditions. One such point of intersection was Byzantine chant, which constitutes a staple element of liturgical and concert repertoire for both the Sawa and Efroni choirs; another was the folksong, an important part of both Arabic and English secular choral canons. These overlaps enabled the creation of a collaborative programme which included elements of Arabic and Latin chant, renaissance polyphony, english madrigals, and traditional Arabic folksongs. The performance was further enriched by more substantial modern works which incorporate chant or folksong elements, such as John Tavener’s Funeral Ikos and Benjamin Britten’s The Twelve Apostles (the latter involving all three choirs singing together). The programme was eventually performed to a packed house at St Paul’s Anglican Church (15th May), under the joint direction of Rahib Haddad, conductor of the Sawa and al-Ba’ath choirs, and William Dawes, travelling with the Choir of London as guest conductor.

During their stay in the Galilee, Choir of London members enjoyed the generous hospitality of local singers, and were offered an insight into the life of the Palestinian Christian community living within Israel - a group whose voice is so rarely heard in the straightforwardly dichotomous ‘Israel-Palestine’ narrative which tends to dominate media presentations of the region.

JERUSALEM

The Choir of London gave two public performances during its stay in Jerusalem. The first of these was staged in the glorious surroundings of St Anne’s (17th May), a remarkable Crusader church just inside the north-eastern wall of the Old City. A mixed audience of local and international visitors heard a programme of unaccompanied choral works (including music by Sheppard, Duruflé, Tavener and Rutter), as well as instrumental pieces by C.P.E. Bach and Claude Débussy. Interspersed amongst the music was a series of poems read by the actor and director Samuel West, who accompanied the Choir throughout its tour.

A second performance in Jerusalem took place as part of a 50th anniversary concert given by the Jerusalem Chorus, with which the Choir of London also performed in 2004. On this occasion, the visiting COL performers joined the ranks of the Jerusalem Chorus to help them perform a selection of some of their favourite choral repertoire, drawn from their concert programmes over the past five decades. The performance, staged at St George’s Anglican Cathedral on May 18th, was invested with profound significance for members of the Jerusalem Chorus. Since Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem following the Six-Day War in 1967, the group has been unable to rehearse or perform in what had previously been its home city: most of its members (including its conductor and accompanist) are forbidden from entering Jerusalem because of their status as West Bank ID-holders. For this anniversary concert, special permission had been sought to enable the Chorus to stage its first performance in the city for almost 40 years.

Plans for the concert were unfortunately disrupted at the last minute by the rejection on security grounds of travel permit applications for three members of the Jerusalem Chorus, including that of its conductor Salwa Tabri. Miss Tabri, who is 80 years old and suffers from chronic MS, was a founding member of the original Jerusalem Chorus, and it was therefore doubly regrettable that she should have been prevented from taking part in this celebration of the choir’s half-centenary. Despite these rejections, it was decided that the St George’s concert should go ahead with the 20-strong contingent whose applications had been successful, or who did not require a special permit to travel.

On the day of the performance, a major security alert resulted in the complete closure of the West Bank for several hours, making it impossible even for internationals and those with travel permits to cross checkpoints between Ramallah and Jerusalem. After a six-hour wait, however, most of the Jerusalem Chorus singers did eventually manage to pass through and reach the Cathedral, where a large audience had gathered. The concert went ahead as planned, with highlights including extracts from Haydn’s Mass in Time of War, Vivaldi’s Gloria, a rousing rendition of the ‘Anvil Chorus’ from Verdi’s Il Travatore, and an Arabic-language setting by the Palestinian composer Rima Tarazi.

RAMALLAH

It was strikingly clear during the Choir of London’s May 2006 visit to the West Bank that the quality of life of individual Arab residents of the Occupied Territories had deteriorated sharply since its last trip eighteen months earlier. The economic situation had become particularly grave as a result of the halting of international aid following the election of a Hamas government in January, and of continuing restrictions on the export of Palestinian goods to markets outside the West Bank.

In spite of these problems, musical life in the Palestinian Territories shows no sign of diminishing: indeed, for many Palestinians, worsening political prospects have prompted an increased commitment to music and other cultural activities as both a source of hope and a vehicle for peaceful protest. For those whose movements are severely limited, participation in music also appears to have developed an increasingly important function as a means of feeling connected to the outside world.

The Edward Said National Conservatory of Music continues to run regular concert series and to offer tuition in Arab and Western classical music in its bases in East Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Bethlehem. Palestinian musical education has also been bolstered further in recent years by the arrival of two new organisations: the Barenboim-Said Foundation and the al-Kamandjâti Foundation. The former maintains a team of top-flight professional European instrumentalists in Ramallah, where they teach full-time, also giving their own recitals and encouraging performances by their students. The al-Kamandjâti Foundation, meanwhile, has made considerable strides in improving musical education provision for those outside the main Palestinian population centres, running regular teaching programmes in a number of refugee camps.

The burgeoning enthusiasm for performed music on which these organisations have been able to capitalise was obvious from the size of the audience which attended the Jerusalem Chorus’ concert at the Ramallah Cultural Palace (19th May). A repeat of the previous night’s programme in Jerusalem, (but with a full complement of Palestinian musicians this time) the performance was watched by an enthusiastic crowd of close to 600 people.

The Choir of London will return to Israel and the Palestinian Territories in March 2007. Please check the News page for details as they are announced.