The Committee

This orchestra brings together musicians of different generations, some of them active since its early years. The decision to take on a more direct role, and to form a Committee, came from musicians who know what being part of this project involves, and believe it is worth their participation.

From the beginning, this project has rested on bringing musicians together, and on the work of listening across very different experiences and narratives. The Committee shares the position that this connection depends on engaging directly with the most difficult subjects between the musicians, rather than working around them.

To be part of this orchestra is, for many of its musicians, complex and at times difficult. The Committee understands that not as the dialogue failing, but as part of what an honest one asks.

Not all of these experiences are symmetrical. The musicians in this orchestra hold different relationships to where they live, and to home. For some, returning to the place their family is from is not currently possible. For those who do live in the region, what follows is a personal account of how life between tours and life within the orchestra sit alongside each other.

Music and intellectual life were never separate for either Maestro Daniel Barenboim or Palestinian literary scholar Edward W. Said. The orchestra and projects that followed it, like the Barenboim-Said Akademie in Berlin, inherited that and continue to work toward what it asks of those who carry it.

Writing is an additional form of accountability. In 2025, musicians across the orchestra wrote a set of Principles together, a shared reference for how, starting with the Committee, they work and speak with one another.