Barenboim's next project a concert hall for Ramallah

Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim plans to donate proceeds from a summer concert in Berlin by the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra to help build a concert hall in Ramallah.

The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, made of Israeli and Arab musicians, was created in 1999 in a bid to promote peaceful co-existence between Israelis and Palestinians.

It performed its first concert in the Palestinian territories in 2005, in an auditorium crowded with more than 1,000 guests.

The orchestra does much of its practising in Europe and doesn't get to play in Ramallah as often as Barenboim would like because of lack of facilities. It has a concert planned at the Jerusalem Music Center this month.

Barenboim has planned a particularly controversial program for the orchestra's engagement in Berlin on Aug. 23.

The concert, to take place in the Waldbuehne, an arena built by the Nazis as part of the facilities for the 1936 Olympics, will be a performance of Wagner's Die Walkuere (The Valkyrie).

The anti-Semitic Wagner is associated with the Nazis and Barenboim's decision to perform his music in Israel in 2001 caused a scandal in that country.

But Barenboim sees the concert as a way to thumb his nose at Germany's Nazi past.

"Hitler and Wagner would be turning in their graves" if they found out about it, he said.

The conductor, who collaborated with the late Palestinian academic Edward Said to form the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, considers the group "the most important musical project" of his life.

Barenboim is devoting funds toward the building of the concert hall in Ramallah because he believes it will make a difference in the everyday lives of Palestinians to have access to live music.

"Political negotiations are important, but everyday life is even more important," he said.

If the concert hall gets built in Ramallah, Barenboim says that he would help organize a concert there every four to six weeks.

"People need to learn how to live with each other and listen to each other," he said. "That's what we do as musicians every day."