On An Overgrown Path

Jordi Savall has refused Spain's national music award the prestigious Premio Nacional de Música - which is worth 30,000 euros - because of his objections to the Spanish government's arts policies. Readers will know that I am a huge fan of Jordi Savall , both as a musician and a humanitarian. But his refusal of the Premio Nacional de Música leaves me puzzled as well as pleased. In a few weeks time - as seen above - Jordi Savall and Hespèrion XXI present a specially commissioned musical tribute to the 14th century traveller and diarist - "voyager of Islam" - Ibn Battuta in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi. Jordi's concert is promoted by Abu Dhabi Classics, and his musical depiction of Ibn Battuta's from Morocco (where the traveller was born) to Afghanistan is being given just one gala performance at the Emirates Palace on November 20th . There appears to be an exclusivity agreement with Abu Dhabi Classics as Hespèrion XXI's schedule s...

That headline is, of course, fiction, and can you imagine the outcry if it was true? But the facts are equally alarming: Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolivar Orchestra - classical music's social conscience - appeared on January 27th as part of the 2014 Abu Dhabi Festival in the United Arab Emirates, a region with a human rights record that makes contemporary Russia look like a liberal paradise. Article 80 of the Abu Dhabi Penal Code designates sodomy as punishable with imprisonment of up to 14 years, and in 2005 UAE justice minister Mohammed bin Nukhaira Al Dhahiri reportedly stated “There will be no room for homosexual and queer acts in the UAE... our society does not accept queer behaviour, either in word or in action”. The United States is this year’s “country of honor” at the 2014 Abu Dhabi Festival and joining Gustavo Dudamel in the United Arab Emirates's capital this year are Renée Fleming and the Dresden Philharmonic , Miloš Karadaglić ,  Vladimir Ashkenazy with Ga...

Quite rightly there is anger about the persecution of homosexuals in Russia . But quite puzzlingly there is silence about the prohibition of homosexuality in Abu Dhabi and other United Arab Emirate States. Article 80 of the Abu Dhabi Penal Code makes sodomy punishable with imprisonment of up to 14 years, and in 2005 UAE Justice Minister Mohammed bin Nukhaira Al Dhahiri reportedly stated “There will be no room for homosexual and queer acts in the UAE ... our society does not accept queer behaviour, either in word or in action”. Now comes news - see story above - that members of the Gulf Cooperation Countries, including Abu Dhabi which is part of the United Arab Emirates, are considering tests to identify and deny entry to LGBT travellers. The United Arab Emirates have a spectacularly bad human rights record which stretches far beyond LGBT prohibition. Yet, as I highlighted back in 2008 , Abu Dhabi has a thriving international arts festival organised in conjunction with leading class...

Classical music faces massive funding pressures as traditional sources of finance dry up. So it is puzzling that when making the case for music funding and music education, the value of art music as a window into diverse cultures is all too often seriously undersold. One of the pioneers of music as a window into diverse cultures has been the Catalan viol maestro and all-round music animateur Jordi Savall. His latest essay in the genre is the 'Ibn Battuta: The Traveler of Islam' project which has just been released as a lavish double CD book and disc package . Jordi Savall's Ibn Battuta chronicles in music the travels of the Muslim Moroccan scholar and explorer Ibn Battuta (1304–1368/1369) during which he covered 75,000 miles journeying across Africa, the Middle East, India and Southeast Asia. With music ranging from Moroccan taksim through Hindustani raga to traditional music from China's Shandong province, this is a typically impressive Jordi Savall survey of mus...

Prompted by my post about the rise of champagne activism in classical music, a reader points out that the "the ever ultra chic Kronos Quartet, allegedly founded by a dissenter form the Vietnam war, has no problem with collecting the Benjamins from Abu Dhabi" - see above . To which I would add that Ivan Fischer, who is in the news for appealing to the EU for generosity towards refugees, has also been collecting the Benjamins from Abu Dhabi - see below . Presumably the hectic schedules of Maestro Fischer and the Kronos did not allow them to read this section of the Human Rights Watch 2015 Report on the United Arab Emirates : Nearly five years after Human Rights Watch first revealed systematic human rights violations of migrant workers on Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island, a development project which will host branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums and New York University, some employers continued to withhold wages and benefits from workers, failed to reimburse recruiting...

Following the terrible Paris shootings classical music has, quite rightly, has thrown its weight behind the freedom of speech movement, So it is worth noting that next week's Association of British Orchestras conference includes a session titled 'Touring China ' which explains how orchestras can exploit the lucrative Chinese market. China is now a regular destination for top orchestras and in the last few weeks both the London Philharmonic Orchestra and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra have been touring the country. The standard measurement of press freedom is the World Press Freedom Index compiled by respected NGO Reporters Without Borders . In the 2014 World Press Freedom Index, out of 180 countries China is ranked 175th, a ranking which is below the Islamic Republic of Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. In their commentary Reporters Without Borders describes how in China "human rights activists and dissident bloggers such as Xu Zhiyong and Yang Maodo...

Music has been chasing money ever since Bach bundled together six concertos in the hope of earning a few lunches from Christian Ludwig, the Margrave of Brandenburg. In the twenty-first century, as the credit crunch bites and funding dries up in Western countries, hardly a day passes without a story about yet more lavish arts patronage in the Eastern 'sunrise' economies. Today Abu Dhabi gets the red-carpet treatment in the Guardian . Out in the United Arab Emirates the arts are getting everything money can buy, and more. The Louvre is signed up with a new building by Pritzker-winning architect Jean Nouvel and there is a must-have Guggenheim Museum by the must-have Frank Gehry, and crowning it all a 6,300 seater Performing Arts Centre seen above by British-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid who won the Pritzker prize in 2004. Justin Timberlake and Elton John have already done their thing in the new Abu Dhabi Arts Centre, and classical music is represented by a lavish festival organi...

UN Human Rights Day on December 10th prompted a Guardian article by Daniel Barenboim headlined "It will take more than tolerance to protect human rights". Barenboim's invaluable work with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and the Barenboim-Said Akademie is quite rightly held up as a glowing example of the role of the arts in protecting human rights. But that must not stop discussion of how far an artist should compromise in pursuit of their goal. Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra have visited Abu Dhabi twice . Abu Dhabi is the capital of the United Arab Emirates, a federal nation with a lamentable human rights record, as independent monitoring organisation Human Rights Watch reports : The United Arab Emirates (UAE) often uses its affluence to mask the government’s serious human rights problems. The government arbitrarily detains, and in some cases forcibly disappears, individuals who criticized the authorities, and its security forces face allegations of ...

The New York Times reports that Abu Dhabi is on the itinerary of the New York Philharmonic's upcoming Asian tour. Alan Gilbert , the orchestra's new music director is represented by IMG Artists . As I reported in April last year, the Abu Dhabi music and arts festival is organised by IMG Artists. Cue a blog post from the orchestra about there being no such thing as a free lunch? Photos of surveillance of foreign workers in United Arab Emirates and of child camel jockeys in Abu Dhabi from Or does it explode? - inside the struggle for civil rights in the Middle East . Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

An impresario in the broadest and most creative sense of the word, the career of Quincy Jones [seen above] has encompassed the roles of composer, record producer, artist, film producer, arranger, conductor, instrumentalist, TV producer, record company executive, magazine founder, multi-media entrepreneur and humanitarian.. Quincy Jones has been nominated for a record 79 Grammys and won more Grammys than any living musician (27). He produced the best-selling album of all-time (Michael Jackson’s Thriller) & the best-selling single of all-time (We Are the World) and has produced, composed, conducted, arranged or performed on more than 400 albums... With a long history of humanitarian work which began in the 1960’s and 70’s, Jones was one of the key supporters of Jesse Jackson’s Operation PUSH. In 1985, he pioneered the model of using celebrity to raise money and awareness for a cause with “We Are the World...” - Qunicy Jones official website The Rainbow PUSH Coalition (RPC) is a mul...

Gustavo Dudamel, Simon Rattle, Daniel Barenboim, Jordi Savall and Joyce DiDonato are among the leading musicians who have performed in the Gulf States in recent years, and the the inaugural BBC Proms Dubai festival takes place in March 2017. So, given classical music's ongoing love affair with social media, the launch of the 140 Characters website deserves a heads up. This is the work of Human Rights Watch , and in recognition of Twitter’s 140-character limit, the interactive website profiles 140 prominent Bahraini, Kuwaiti, Omani, Qatari, Saudi, and Emirati social and political rights activists and dissidents - see images above - and describes their struggles to resist government efforts to silence them. All 140 have faced government retaliation for exercising their right to freedom of expression, and many have been arrested, tried, and sentenced to fines or prison. Dubai, which is hosting the BBC Proms, is the largest city in the United Arab Emirates, and Abu Dhabi, which ha...

The Gulf States have, justifiably, come under the spotlight for their repressive treatment of gays . But the human rights abuses are far more widespread: investigative organisation Human Rights Watch has documented these abuses and starts its latest report with these words: The human rights situation in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) worsened in 2012 as authorities arbitrarily detained and deported civil society activists, and harassed and intimidated their lawyers. In September, an independent monitor found significant problems in the treatment of migrant workers on the high-profile Saadiyat Island project in Abu Dhabi, identifying the payment of illegal recruitment fees as a key concern. Fortunately classical music is actively involved in human rights via the four superstars who are United Nations Messengers of Peace , including new recruit Lang Lang . Of these messengers of peace, three have first hand experience of the situation in the Gulf States, as Daniel Barenboim , fellow m...

Yesterday's Observer reports on the laudable plans of Iván Fischer and his Budapest Festival Orchestra to play in every abandoned synagogue in Hungary in memory of the expunged Jewish communities. In the article Fiona Maddocks describes Fischer as a fearless and outspoken campaigner. He is clearly on good terms with the United Arab Emirates' government; because in 2015 he took the Budapest Festival Orchestra to the UAE capital Abu Dhabi and received the Abu Dhabi Festival Award - see above. So hopefully he will now use his campaigning powers to persuade the UAE to end its refusal to recognize Israel as a state; which would help the Jewish community by allowing Israeli passport-holders to legally enter the Emirates. Also on Facebook and Twitter . Any copyrighted material is included as "fair use" for critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s).

Should Furtwängler and Karajan be condemned for perpetuating their careers in a toxic political environment ? Should musicians with Russian connections be demonised? Difficult questions which, like Rinzai Zen Buddhist koans, are  translogical queries which have no obvious answer . I was reminded of these troubling questions by the difficult position some contemporary musicians are being put in due to their varying connections with Russia.  Estonian conductor Kristan Järvi's sin was to publish an ambivalent statement on his relationship with the Baltic Sea Philharmonic orchestra which he is the Music Director and Founding Conductor of. The Baltic Sea Philharmonic  brings together musicians from Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Sweden, and, yes, Russia. So Jarvi's ambivalence can probably be explained by an understandable desire not to alienate musicians with unknown political allegiances who play very well for him.  The purpose ...

Classical music's pursuit of the dollar into regions controlled by despotic regimes has long been a preoccupation on this blog , with the uneasy marriage of art and politics in the Gulf States receiving particular attention . To date On An Overgrown Path has been a lone voice on this topic, so I was heartened to find my esteemed fellow blogger Norman Lebrecht joining me in taking a critical position on classical music's exploitation of the petro-dollar. In a new post on Slipped Disc * about the purchase of a crystal encrusted Steinway by an oil sheikh, Norman rails against the Qatari regime with these words: The Qatar economy is built on tenured labour from the Indian subcontinent. The slave workers have their passports confiscated on arrival, are kept in camps outside the city and forced to work in temperatures of up to 50 degrees C. (You won’t hear about this on Qatar-based Al-Jazeera; yes, we’ve seen it, in the company of the late Lorin Maazel). That’s how Qatar sheik...

In a 2011 radio interview Jordi Savall explained to me why he started his own record label Alia Vox - "Ten years ago we started to feel that when working with the major companies, it was impossible to create innovative projects that introduced the risks associated with unknown repertoire. This convinced us that we had to be free to make our own decisions, and had to be free to give decisions about the music priority over commercial decisions". To date Alia Vox has been a Savall family label , with Jordi and his greatly-missed wife Montserrat Figueras as the constants, supplemented by their two children Arianna and Ferran . But now, eighteen very successful years and more than one hundred CDs later, Alia Vox has become an extended family label with the launch of Alia Vox Diversa. This will release recordings made by the pool of talented musicians who are long-term collaborators with Jordi Savall, and the mission of the label is to give the music priority over commercial im...

In the photo above Simon Rattle is being interviewed by LÜ Jia, Music Director of the Chinese government funded National Centre for the Performing Arts in Bejiing. Below Rattle is seen while on tour at a press conference in the Chinese city of Guangzhou. The Chinese government is guilty of the mass genocide against 1.2 million people  in Tibet and continues with its policy of eradicating the priceless Tibetan culture by Sinicization , while Guangzhou has been singled out as a centre of human rights abuses . In January 2018, the authorities in Guangzhou forcibly disappeared the wife of a US-based journalist. This forced disappearance came shortly after the journalist interviewed a Chinese billionaire fugitive who exposed corruption among China’s ruling elite. Rattle is also a repeat visitor to Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates. In their 2020 report Amnesty International reports that "Over two dozen prisoners of conscience continued to be detained in the United A...

'A sort of art revolution seems to have been going on [in the Gulf States] in the last ten years. In 2005 the Abu Dhabi government opened the Emirates Palace concert hall in a 7-star hotel, then four years ago the Qatar Philharmonic gave its first concert in Doha (under the baton of Lorin Maazel, no less). Last week Bahrain opened its new 1001-seater National Amphitheatre ; Dubai is also building an opera house and last year the spectacular Royal Opera House, Muscat opened its doors in the Omani capital. [See photo above]. This is where the BBC Symphony Orchestra caravan rolled up last week, thanks to an invitation from the Royal Opera House... With the growth of music education, orchestras and opera houses in this region together with fabulous hospitality, the Gulf Arab states could well become a popular and attractive part of our touring itinerary' - BBC Radio 3 blog post November 2012 by Phil Hall of BBC Symphony Orchestra 'The decision to bar homosexuals from ente...

This interview with Jordi Savall in La Stampa Cultura has been causing something of a furore. Forgive me if I don't have the story quite right, but the article is in Catalan and behind a paywall. But it appears Jordi's harsh comments about the state of Western classical music - formulaic, self-serving and lacking creativity - have been greeted with social media ripostes from within Spain that people in glass houses should not throw stones. Readers will know that over the years I have been one of Jordi's biggest fans , so it saddens me to say that I have sympathy for some of the views expressed by his critics. In recent years I have been uncomfortable with certain aspects of Jordi's work. For instance, his puzzling criticism of the Spanish government's arts policy when he was taken funding from the ethically compromised Abu Dhabi regime , the difficulty of reconciling his humanitarian stance with his concerts in China , and the lacklustre book and CD projects w...