‘Afghanistan has a very rich musical heritage and with music we can tell stories that not many people are brave enough to talk about,’ says Afghan cellist-composer Meena Karimi. In March 2021, she premiered Dawn, her piece for cello and orchestra, with the National Orchestra of Afghanistan. ‘Dawn represents the struggle and strength of women and girls in Afghanistan,’ she says. ‘Afghan women had to fight for their basic human rights or to participate equally in the country that they are part of. With music we have the opportunity to share both sides of the story, the beauty and the struggle.’
What Karimi didn’t foresee was that, five months after that Kabul premiere on International Women’s Day, she and all the musicians of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM) would be struggling to get out of the country in those chaotic scenes at Kabul International Airport after the Taliban returned to power in August of that same year.
Karimi, now 16, was one of the lucky ones as she had already been awarded a place to study at Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan, where she’s now based. Other members of ANIM failed even to get into Kabul Airport when a plane was first sent from Qatar to evacuate them. However, the last students and teachers of ANIM were finally able to fly out in November 2021. They have been given asylum in Portugal and are currently hosted by the conservatoire in Braga.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة July 2023 من BBC Music Magazine.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة July 2023 من BBC Music Magazine.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Discovering Donizetti - Thanks to a two-year lockdown project, nearly 200 previously lost Donizetti songs will now see the light of day
Thanks to a two-year lockdown project, nearly 200 previously lost Donizetti songs will now see the light of day. For most people, undertaking a lockdown project meant learning to bake sourdough bread, getting fit with Joe Wicks, or taking up a language. But Professor Roger Parker, the eminent historian of Italian opera and emeritus professor at King's College London, had something far more ambitious in mind. He set about unearthing songs by Gaetano Donizetti - many of which had been lost since the composer's lifetime - and the enterprise turned into a two-year labour of love.
Composer of the month - Bohuslav Martinů - Though the Czech absorbed many influences from his exile abroad, his colourful music was always distinctively his own
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As we get older do we respond differently to that vast canon of music dealing with mortality? Is it inevitably true that, as we journey through the decades, we are better able to interpret or empathise with a profoundly death-obsessed masterpiece such as Schubert's Winterreise? Or do human beings possess such a flexible sense of empathy that we can relate to virtually any state of mind if it is evoked convincingly enough by a composer?
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It was a little bit of history repeating when Rishi Sunak announced the UK General Election to the heckling of his political opponents blasting out D:Ream's 'Things Can Only Get Better'.
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The spirit of soprano Birgit Nilsson is alive and well in the town of her birth, home to a festival dedicated to her memory
Federico Colli
\"At this moment in time we don't need more virtuosi. We need musicians to engage with the philosophy of music
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What happens when classical music-style levels of ambition, invention and sheer length are brought to pop? The answer, as Meurig Bowen explains, is Prog Rock
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Young musicians may be physically fit, but with age come the advantages of wisdom and experience
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