Hopes to bring an Afghan youth orchestra to the United States appear to have solidified. On Thursday the organizers of the tour released details of the performances, to take place at the Kennedy Center in Washington on Feb. 7 and at Carnegie Hall in New York on Feb. 12.
The young musicians, who attend the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, will play side by side with players from the Maryland Classic Youth Orchestras in Washington and the Scarsdale High School Orchestra in New York, a news release said. Two traditional Afghan instrumental ensembles and a wind group will also perform. The violinist Mikhail Simonyan will serve as soloist in an arrangement of a traditional Afghan piece titled “Lariya.â€
The United States Embassy in Kabul, the Carnegie Corporation, the World Bank and Afghanistan's education ministry are financing the trip. “Key U.S. decis ion makers are slated to attend the Washington performance,†the release said. In an interview in April the founder and director of the institute, Ahmad Sarmast, said the tour was partly intended to show the world some good news in Afghanistan, where music was banned by the Taliban in the 1990s.
