Barenboim–Said Academy

The Barenboim–Said Academy is an academy located in Berlin, Germany, that offers an integrated curriculum in music and the humanities; it opened on December 8, 2016. Inspired by its eponymous co-founders, the conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim and the literary theorist and intellectual Edward Said, the academy was financed to a capacity of 90 young musicians, with an admissions focus on the Middle East and North Africa, in the spirit of the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra. Through their joint education and music-making, students will be given the cognitive competence and critical understanding to become exemplary artists and contribute to the future of civil societies in their countries of origin.History and aimsAfter a chance meeting between Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said in a London hotel lobby in 1992, an intellectual exchange about music, literature, society and the Middle Eastern conflict as well as a deep personal friendship ensued until Edward Said's untimely death in 2003. The spirit of this extraordinary relationship was captured in their joint publication Parallels and Paradoxes. This exchange gave rise to the idea of creating an orchestra in which musicians from Israel, Palestine, the Middle East and North Africa would play music together – harmonize in music – and thus create a foundation for discussion with the possibility of mutual understanding. Barenboim has spoken of the ensemble as follows: "The Divan is not a love story, and it is not a peace story. It has very flatteringly been described as a project for peace. It isn't. It's not going to bring peace, whether you play well or not so well. The Divan was conceived as a project against ignorance. A project against the fact that it is absolutely essential for people to get to know the other, to understand what the other thinks and feels, without necessarily agreeing with it. I'm not trying to convert the Arab members of the Divan to the Israeli point of view, and not trying to convince the Israelis of the Arab point of view. But I want to – and unfortunately I am alone in this now that Edward died a few years ago –...create a platform where the two sides can disagree and not resort to."