USA/GAZA: PALESTINIAN SALEEM ABOUD-ASHKAR AND ISRAELI SHAI WOSNER PERFORM TOGETHER AS CONFLICT RAGES IN THE WEST BANK

Record ID: 392521

  • Title: USA/GAZA: PALESTINIAN SALEEM ABOUD-ASHKAR AND ISRAELI SHAI WOSNER PERFORM TOGETHER AS CONFLICT RAGES IN THE WEST BANK
  • Date: 26th February 2002
  • Summary: VARIOUS OF ASHKAR AND WOSNER PLAYING PIANO
  • Embargoed: 13th March 2002 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES AND KHAN YUNIS, GAZA
  • City:
  • Country: Palestinian Territories
  • Topics: Conflict,Entertainment,General,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVABXE6SOGFJC1L6TP14JF9FNHPL
  • Story Text: In the wake of ever increasing violence in Israel and the occupied territories, two men born on opposite sides of the conflict, came together in New York City on Tuesday (February 26) to perform a dual piano recital in preparation for an upcoming concert at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
    They are two men who share a common love for the piano and are willing to work together to create beautiful music. Each were born in Israel, a land that has become better known for the sounds of bullets and bombs as opposed to piano concertos. But Palestinian Saleem Aboud-Ashkar and Israeli Shai Wosner came together on Tuesday (February 26) to perform together and show that there is a common language and common ground for Palestinians and Israelis to work together.
    Shai Wosner was born in Tel Aviv in 1976 and that same year, Saleem Aboud Ashkar Ashkar was born in Nazareth. Each man pursued the piano and excelled well beyond what most people could only dream of achieving as a pianist.
    Their two careers have taken similar turns as well. Each has received numerous prizes for playing the piano and have competed in the Clairmont Competition and the Queen Elizabeth Competition. The two have studied under some of the best pianists in the world and have played with some of the greatest orchestras in the world.
    But while they performed together on Tuesday at an event hosted by the Israeli Consul General of New York, Alon Pinkas, violence continued in and around Israel, the West Bank and particularly in Gaza where a Palestinian gunman opened fire on Israeli troops while young Palestinians hid from Israeli gunfire in the streets. Even with the hope that various peace proposals may bring stability to the region, many there can not begin to imagine of world of peaceful collaboration between Palestinians and Israelis.
    Pianist, Shai Wosner says that he and Saleem Ashkar remain focused on their piece of music and leave it up to the audience to draw their own conclusions, "People can make of it what they want if they see in it a message of collaboration across the borders or across cultures and across the conflicts then we have done our little service but it's not the centerpiece of our collaboration I mean we play the piece, we work on the piece."
    Ashkar believes the point is that he and Wosner have gone beyond the politics of their relative homelands, "The fact that we can ignore this issue, ignore the political issue and make music is the point."
    Wosner and Ashkar first collaborated at the East Divan Workshop in the summer of 1999 in Weimar Germany. The two were later invited to play under Maestro Daniel Barenboim at the Symphony Center in Chicago with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and at Carnegie Hall with the Chicago Civic Orchestra.
    Some of the music the two performed in New York City on Tuesday included Mozart's Sonata in D major for two pianos and Ravel's La Valse.
    -ENDS-
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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