Two batons and a harmonic convergence

Last May 1, Hisham Sharaf marked President Bush's declaration of the end of major hostilities in Iraq by setting out on his own mission. The director of the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra (INSO) began driving around Baghdad to the houses of every member of the beleaguered orchestra to tell them it was time to get back to making music.

"I told them we must return, we must put culture and art back in Iraqi peoples' lives. We must show the world we are a cultured and peaceful people," says Mr. Sharaf. The streets were still not safe, and all three of the orchestra's performing venues had been bombed or looted and burned. But no musicians refused. The Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra (INSO) was reborn.

More than seven months later, the clarinetist and music teacher was in the White House Wednesday, discussing over lunch the symphony and the future of Iraq with the man who toppled Saddam Hussein. "It was unbelievable," says Sharaf, smiling. "I had never seen any president before, not even Saddam," who had disregarded the Iraqi orchestra and its classical strains. "But there I was," he adds, "talking about music and Iraq with the president of the United States."

For many of the 63 members of the INSO who visited Washington this week, finding themselves performing in America - or simply explaining a traditional Iraqi instrument to wide-eyed schoolchildren - was one of those experiences that renewed their faith in the unexpected turns of life.

Take Luay Habeeb Yousif. The young violinist had to close his eyes and open them again Tuesday night to reassure himself that he was indeed sitting on the concert hall stage of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts with world-renowned musicians like cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

"Every musician dreams of sitting alongside such professionals and learning from them," he says. "It's my dream to acquire that level." He was also able to perform for an uncle he hadn't seen since he was nine, when the uncle and his family left Iraq for Michigan. The family had occasionally sent money back to Iraq to allow him to continue with the violin. Now they were seeing the results.

But Mr. Yousif says he has another dream that came true this week. When the INSO joined the National Symphony Orchestra on the Kennedy Center stage Tuesday, the stars of the show were not just the Iraqi musicians, whose trip was sponsored by the State Department. Also starring were the tar, the oud, the santur, the daf, the zarib, and the balaban.

Those traditional Iraqi and Kurdish instruments are what gave an hour-long concert featuring classical Western and Iraqi music its distinctive and exotic air. The string and wind instruments - the oud, for example, is a bass lute, the balaban a Middle Eastern relative of the oboe - produce music rich in quarter notes that is unlike any found in Western classical music.

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