Photo: Anna Svanberg/Nobel Prize Outreach.
The Dream Orchestra started with just 13 members. Now there are more than 400, including this group performing at a Nobel Foundation event in Gothenburg, Sweden, in December 2023.
Sweden has long been a country that took in refugees, but what I know from family members there is that Sweden doesn’t always do a good job helping immigrants integrate and feel at home. That’s why the orchestra leader in today’s story stands out.
As Mostafa Kazemi, originally from Afghanistan, recalls, the conductor told him that of course he could play an instrument even though he thought he couldn’t. “He’d been in Sweden for a matter of months,” Catherine E. Shoichet at CNN reports. “No one had talked to him like this before.”
The long and interesting article about the Dream Orchestra begins, “Ron Davis Álvarez stood on a train platform in Stockholm, stunned by what he saw. The Venezuelan orchestra conductor was visiting Sweden as part of a university exchange program. … He watched throngs of people getting off trains, their faces drawn and exhausted. Volunteers raced past him to hand out bananas and water to the new arrivals.
“ ‘I was completely in shock, seeing all of these young boys arriving,’ Álvarez recalls. He asked someone what was going on.
“The answer: ‘They are from Syria and Afghanistan. Many of them are unaccompanied. They traveled here alone.’
“ ‘What will happen to them?’ Álvarez asked. No one knew. …
“Álvarez was there watching, and he had an idea. That idea would change his life, and the lives of hundreds of others he hadn’t met yet. …
“It wasn’t long before Álvarez was back in Sweden. He’d been tapped as the artistic director of El Sistema Sweden, based in the coastal city of Gothenburg. … As he began his new role, the memory of what he’d seen months earlier on the train platform remained seared in his mind.
“El Sistema Sweden’s work was focused on younger children enrolled in Swedish schools. The youth he’d seen pouring into the train station were already in their later teenage years. It’s an age when many might assume it’s too late to learn an instrument.
“Álvarez knew it wasn’t. And he knew he had to try to help them. … With a handful of instruments on loan, he visited schools to drum up interest. Eventually, he recruited a group of 13 youth from Afghanistan, Syria, Eritrea and Albania. He dubbed them the Dream Orchestra.
“ ‘I remember coming into the room and there were a lot of girls and boys, and I was nervous,’ Álvarez says in a short film about the orchestra featured on its website. … Many of the Dream Orchestra’s members had never played an instrument before they joined. They came from different countries. They didn’t speak the same languages. …
“Mostafa Kazemi lights up when he recalls the day he met Álvarez in 2016.
“ ‘Which instrument do you play?’ the conductor asked him.
“ ‘I can’t play,’ Kazemi replied.
“Álvarez’s response was confident and unflinching: ‘Yes, you can. Come and pick which one you want.’
“Kazemi, originally from Afghanistan, was 16 years old at the time. He’d been in Sweden for a matter of months. No one had talked to him like this before. So a few weeks after the Dream Orchestra began, Kazemi became one of its first members. He picked the cello. …
“The small ensemble rehearsed on Fridays and Saturdays. Those were Álvarez’s days off, and also a time when he knew it was important to keep young people occupied and off the streets.
“At first, teaching the group wasn’t easy, Álvarez recalls. He was used to instructing younger Spanish-speaking students who came from similar backgrounds. This would require a different approach.
“Álvarez spoke English, and some of the other members of the Dream Orchestra did, too. But still, misunderstandings were frequent, even comical at times. Body language was key to overcoming those obstacles. So was finding a way to connect more deeply with each person – to learn what music they liked and where they came from and who they were.
“Another key part of Álvarez’s approach with these older students: giving them the confidence to make mistakes.
“I tried to build confidence – first the confidence of the sound.’ …
“ ‘Ron was full of energy all the time,’ Kazemi says. ‘And that made us want to do more and more and more. We were practicing at home. I even brought some more students. I told my friends. … And everyone told their friends, and everyone came to orchestra.’ …
“Now, eight years later, the Dream Orchestra has more than 400 members from nearly 20 countries who speak around 20 languages between them. …
“As [Álvarez] sees it, politicians and world leaders could learn a lot from this music ensemble.
“ ‘I see the orchestra like society,’ he says. ‘When you are in an orchestra, you need to learn how to hear each other, how to listen to each other, compassion, how to empathize.’
“That’s not to say there haven’t been challenges over the years. Some students at first struggled with taking direction from female conductors and teachers, Álvarez says, and tensions have boiled over at times between members of the orchestra whose home countries have a history of conflict with each other.
“Some conductors might direct their orchestras simply to play on and ignore these difficulties. Álvarez says he addresses them directly. He wants the orchestra not only to be a safe space, but a place where its members can grow and learn to live together.
“ ‘We are all people that need to respect each other. It’s difficult because you cannot erase this history, but you can rewrite the future,’ he says.”
More at CNN, here. No firewall.
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