Thinking about Polyphony

The Galilee Chamber Orchestra will play Carnegie Hall on November 20.

This matters for many reasons. First, it’s fair to assume that the only way to have gotten to Carnegie Hall is to have practiced a lot. So the performance is likely to be good.

Good art matters. Good music matters. They make life better.

But there’s also history, sociology, and philosophy behind the performance.

The Galilee Chamber Orchestra is a project of the Polyphony Foundation, an Israeli nonprofit organization that teaches classical music to schoolchildren and provides teenage and young adult music students with the opportunity to learn and perform. Sounds good, right? If bland. But there’s so much more. The Polyphony Foundation is based in Nazareth, was founded and is led by a Christian Arab Israeli, and is made up of both Arab and Jewish Israelis. Its goal is to make music and cross boundaries because music transcends boundaries.

The orchestra is led by its conductor and artistic director, Saleem Ashkar, who is also a pianist and a professor of keyboard music at Brown. His brother, Nabeel Abboud-Ashkar, created Polyphony and runs it; to meet him is to see the intensity that he focuses on it.

Cliff Kulwin of Montclair, the rabbi emeritus of Temple B’nai Abraham in Livingston, and his wife, Robin, both are deeply involved with Polyphony. “To me, Polyphony represents the Israel I hope to see,” Rabbi Kulwin said. “It’s an Israel where Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs do not merely co-exist, but can thrive together, as they do making music.

“I have a relative who is a professional musician, who tells me that in any orchestra you have people who have differences of opinion on the music, on politics, on just about anything. They might not even like each other. But all of that is irrelevant when they sit down to play. Then the music takes precedence. The music has an almost magical ability to insist that the musicians find a way to play together.”

This isn’t pie in the sky. It’s a real-life orchestra that includes Arabs and Jews who make music together, and that music brings joy.

“And I will also say that I’ve heard the Galilee Chamber Orchestra many times,” Rabbi Kulwin said. It’s not only an example of peaceful coexistence. It’s also “an international ensemble of the highest order,” he said.

If only all of us, even the least musical among us, could model ourselves on Polyphony.

—JS