TURNING HIS DREAMS INTO ACHIEVEMENTS
Lesley Valdes, INQUIRER MUSIC CRITIC

A good many virtuosos try out their concert ideas in Philadelphia before they take them to Carnegie Hall. But when Philadelphia Orchestra member Ohad Bar-David decided to experiment with a program of Middle Eastern chamber music, the cellist chose this tony desert resort where his family vacations for the "run-out" concert.

Bar-David, who is Israeli and lives in Wynnewood, is a busy fellow with big dreams. At the Philadelphia Orchestra, where everybody calls him "Udi," he's known for pursuing grand visions with the pragmatism of an entrepreneur.
Bar-David's current dreams concern cross-cultural collaborations. He wants to hear concerts of newly composed works that will bring together Buddhist chants and Beethoven, or bluegrass worked into a Western concerto. He wants to collaborate on a symphony that joins Arab and Jewish musical themes.

"This is the right time, the world is changing, these things are important to spiritual growth. And they are marketable," he says. Bar-David emphasizes that the Philadelphia Orchestra Association has not signed on to any of them. Yet.

Lest you think them pipe dreams, one of his cross-cultural ventures has already happened. Remember the "Hear O Israel" joint concert the Philadelphia Orchestra and Israel Philharmonic gave to celebrate Israel's 50th anniversary of statehood in January last year? Bar-David was artistic coordinator - as he puts it, "the matchmaker" - for the successful event at the CoreStates Arena.

Turning a dream into an achievement takes many steps. Before he could present, in a world-class venue, the harmonies common to people whose politics are in conflict, Bar-David knew he'd have to start small. So the cellist asked Simon Shaheen, Palestinian virtuoso on the oud - the short-necked, plucked lute of the Arab world - to play the modest, 200-seat Kerr Cultural Center here for a concert last Sunday. Taking a cue from the Oslo peace talks, Bar-David and Shaheen billed their concert "A Musical Dialog Between Palestinian and Israeli Musicians."

The dialogue wasn't about when or whether Palestine will achieve nationhood, or about the first Arab to run for Israeli prime minister. This back-and-forth was purely musical.

Arabs and Jews rarely perform together in public in this country or in Israel, given the volatile state of Middle Eastern affairs. It was only two months ago that conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim made headlines for his recital at the National Conservatory of Palestine. For an encore, Barenboim, an Israeli Jew, shared the keyboard with an Arab student in a sonata for four hands.

While most Arab musicians are familiar with the classical music of the West, it's not often that a Jewish musician can tell you the difference between a "taqasim" and a "theme and variation." (A taqasim is an improvisation.)

Bar-David wants Western players and listeners to stretch their minds and ears. Israelis and Palestininans "come from the same land, and it is inevitable there are intervals and themes that we share in our music," he said.

To show these commonalities, Sunday's program juxtaposed Hasidic songs and a composition by Israeli composer Paul Ben-Haim with music by Shaheen and the Egyptian Riyad Sambati. [See accompanying review.]

Bar-David's Middle Eastern dream coalesced in November, when he and a group of Philadelphians, including orchestra board member Carole Haas, visited a village in Israel where a small group of Arabs and Israelis coexist. It's called Neve Shalom-Wahat al Salam, the Hebrew plus the Arabic name for "Oasis of Peace."

When he returned to Philadelphia, Bar-David began giving concerts to benefit Neve Shalom-Wahat al Salam. But he wanted to go further - to include Arab music that he didn't know. "Whenever I would talk to my Arab friends about what we could do to help Neve Shalom," Bar-David said, "Simon's name would come up. He is so highly respected."

Shaheen, who also plays violin, is considered the leading interpreter of Arab classical and traditional music, a sort of oud-playing Yo-Yo Ma. The virtuoso has five lauded recordings - including The Music of Mohameh Abdel Wahab on Axiom, and Saltanah on Water Lily; he has composed several film scores, including for The Sheltering Sky and Malcolm X. He has played Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center and other major venues with the Near Eastern Music Ensemble; he conducts workshops on Arab music, including an annual summer retreat for Arab Music at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts.

In 1980, Shaheen emigrated to the United States, where he took master's degrees at the Manhattan School and Columbia University. He lives in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn.

He is a Catholic Arab from the village of Tarshihi in Galilee. He studied with his late father, a distinguished professor of traditional music. Given the border restrictions and prohibitions Palestinians face in Israel, Shaheen had to come to this country in order to travel freely in his homeland, he has said.

Growing up in Tel Aviv, the teenage Bar-David and Shaheen played together in a student orchestra in the Rubin Academy.

Moshe Bukshpan, an Israeli violinist who lives in Scottsdale and participated in Sunday's concert, also played in that student orchestra. He and Bar-David shared teachers with Shaheen.

"Arabs were the minority at the Rubin Academy," Bukshpan said, adding that he had friendly relations with Shaheen though neither he nor Bar-David had known Shaheen well.

"Last year, Ohad [Bar-David] and I played a concert together at a synagogue. But bringing Simon with his background makes this concert really special," Bukshpan said.

"Politics are unavoidable, which is frustrating and sad. But the more you do with people of different backgrounds, the better. . . . People need to see that through culture, we can find ways to make a better world.

"When you go to Yusif's Grocery & Restaurant," Bukshpan continued, speaking about a Phoenix deli, "you'll see that Yusif does business with the Jewish community. He even carries products from Israel." Others in the community, he said, "are much more extreme. Some Jewish people, or Muslims, when you talk about this musical dialogue, they don't want to get involved."

Buksphan has mentioned Yusif's - run by Arab Joseph Najib - because it was a local supporter of Sunday's concert, whose major underwriters are Haas and Philadelphia philanthropist Richard Goodwin. In the fall, Haas and Goodwin intend to bring a revised version of last Sunday's concert to suburban Philadelphia. Under consideration for the site are a reformed synagogue on the Main Line, Haverford College, or Lang Concert Hall in Swarthmore.

Yusif's hosted a preconcert dinner March 27.

"We have peace here!" Najib told Bar-David, as Najib and daughters Lida and Lara brought out the hummus and falafel platters. Twenty-five people bought tickets for the dinner-and-concert.

The modest deli-restaurant, in a North Phoenix strip mall, is a far cry from chic, palm-laden North Scottsdale Road, where the music took place the following afternoon. Multiculturalism isn't just a buzz-word here. The diverse dinner group included a television newscaster of Lebanese descent, a rabbi who plays the piano, and an Egyptian opera singer. There was also the Borick family, whose late grandfather was a prominent oud player and whose granddaughter, Anne Borick, an internist, took her medical studies at Temple University.

Sitting at a nearby table were Philadelphians Haas and Emilio Gravagno, who plays bass in the Philadelphia Orchestra. Across from Gravagno, sipping Turkish coffee as a chaser for the Arab liquor called ara, was Kavichandran Alexander, from Isla Vista, Calif., by way of Ceylon. Alexander is the founder of Water Lily, an audiophile and world-music record label. Water Lily and the Philadelphia Orchestra are engaged in an experimental analog recording of Liszt and Dvorak to be released in May.

"I like this idea [because] it is the same thing I am trying to do with my label," Alexander said of the concert. "To bring together music from the Eastern and Western cultures, to find the music of the future," he said.

"This is a new idea, and I am interested to see how the musics will blend," said Najib, who has lived in Arizona 27 years and serves on the local and national boards of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. "Fifteen years ago we had a real crisis of identity. You didn't dare want to be identified as an Arab. People thought you were a terrorist.

"We have done many things to communicate, but we have not made music," Najib said of Arabs and Jews. "Music is an unspoken language that says a lot. It is so very important to the Arab world because through it we speak. If I would play a song for you, you would know my feelings - if there is anger, affection or love."