The Barenboim-Said Akademie: promoting political harmony through music-making

The Barenboim-Said Akademie in Berlin offers a
conservatory education to musicians from the Middle East and
North Africa as a way to promote a more peaceful future for a
troubled region. Monika Müller-Kroll talks to the rector of the
Akademie, Prof. Dr. Michael Naumann.


A natural continuation of Daniel Barenboim’s and Edward Said’s
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, the Akademie aims to produce a
generation of musicians who will “know better” than to support
religious or territorial conflicts. Fittingly, the Akademie and
Orchestra are based in the elliptical, Frank Gehry-designed
Pierre Boulez Saal in Mitte, a space which the architect has
described as “a place of sanity.”


Produced by Monika Müller-Kroll