Can music pull the world back from the brink? In early 2008, I was working on the New York Philharmonic’s concert in Pyongyang, a project conceived to enhance the atmosphere of the six-party talks on the denuclearization of North Korea. At the time, observers and even many of the musicians themselves questioned whether any potential good would come of the effort. But for those present — a delegation of some 400 Americans including the orchestra, supporters and the largest contingent of foreign journalists to visit North Korea since Madeleine Albright’s 2000 visit as secretary of state — it turned out to be a profoundly inspiring journey.
What happened in Pyongyang, at minimum, was a group of Americans and North Koreans, citizens of sworn enemies, sat in a room together for a couple of hours and listened to Dvorak, Gershwin and, as an encore, the Korean folk song “Arirang,” which is part of the soul of every Korean on either side of the Demilitarized Zone and caused many members of the audience to tear up.
But it was so much more than that. The emotion of that shared occasion in the concert hall is forever etched in my mind, and, I am sure, in the memory of all who were there. Diplomatically, politically and socially, we were far apart, but because of the music, we were humanized for each other, even for a short time. That is real progress.
As we were leaving Pyongyang after two days of music and discussion, a senior orchestra administrator reminisced about the Philharmonic’s 1959 journey to the Soviet Union with Leonard Bernstein, noting that after that tour, it was still another 30 years before the Berlin Wall came down. I think the end of the North Korea story is not yet written.
Born in Buenos Aires, I was raised in London and embarked on a career in arts administration. My first job in the United States came in 1999, in the artistic department of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, then led by the conductor Daniel Barenboim. I witnessed the founding of his most consequential creation, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. Mr. Barenboim formed the orchestra with his longtime friend and intellectual partner, the Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said, who died in 2003. I arranged the first U.S. visit of the orchestra, which brings young Israeli, Palestinian and other Arab musicians together to make music.