The only grand piano in the Gaza Strip was played in public for the first time in a decade, following a complicated international restoration effort to fix the instrument after it was nearly destroyed in an Israeli airstrike.
About 300 people attended the performance on Sunday, staring in awed silence as Japanese and local artists performed for them. For many, it was the first time they had ever heard a piano performed live.
“Playing this piano is feeling like playing history,” Japanese pianist Kaoru Imahigashi said. “It’s amazing. I felt the prayer of peace for many people.”
The piano’s story goes back many years, mirroring in many ways the story of Gaza.
The Japanese government donated the piano about 20 years ago, following interim peace accords between Israel and Palestine. At the time, Gaza was envisioned as becoming the Singapore of the Middle East.
Palestinian Ministry of Culture official Fayez Sersawi said he was responsible for receiving the piano, which was placed at a large theater in the newly built al-Nawras resort in northern Gaza.
He said music festivals were a regular activity before the beginning of the second Palestinian uprising against Israel in 2000.
In 2007, the resort closed the theater and the swimming pool and scaled down most activities after Hamas, a Muslim militant group, took control of Gaza by force after winning legislative elections.
Under Hamas’ rule, many forms of public entertainment, including bars, movie theaters and concert halls, have been shuttered.
An ensuing Israeli-Egyptian blockade, meant to weaken Hamas, and severe damage after a three-week war with Israel in January 2009 closed the resort altogether.
The piano was silenced and sat unused until 2014, when an Israeli airstrike during a third war with Hamas destroyed al-Nawras hall. The piano was found unscathed, but rickety and unplayable.
After the piano was discovered, the Japanese International Cooperation Agency, which sponsors development programs in Gaza, got involved.
The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that a piano was donated to the Palestinian Authority in 1998. Workers from the cooperation agency took the serial number and contacted Yamaha, its producer. The company confirmed that the instrument had been manufactured in 1997 or 1998.
“Everything matched,” said Yuko Mitzui, a representative of the cooperation agency.
On Sunday, the rapt audience listened eagerly and clapped at the end of each performance.
Imahigashi stroked the keys smoothly as opera singer Fujiko Hirai performed the Japanese folk song Fantasy on Sakura Sakura.
It was the first time that Yasmin Elian, 22, attended a piano concert.
“I liked how people interacted” with the artists, she said. “This encourages me to learn piano.”
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
A passerby could hear the cacophony from miles away in the Argentine capital, the unmistakable sound of 2,397 dogs barking — and breaking the unofficial world record for the largest-ever gathering of golden retrievers. Excitement pulsed through Bosques de Palermo, a sprawling park in Buenos Aires, as golden retriever-owners from all over Argentina transformed the park’s grassy expanse into a sea of bright yellow fur. Dog owners of all ages, their clothes covered in dog hair and stained with slobber, plopped down on picnic blankets with their beloved goldens to take in the surreal sight of so many other, exceptionally similar-looking ones.
‘UNWAVERING ALLIANCE’: The US Department of State said that China’s actions during military drills with Russia were not conducive to regional peace and stability The US on Tuesday criticized China over alleged radar deployments against Japanese military aircraft during a training exercise last week, while Tokyo and Seoul yesterday scrambled jets after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols near the two countries. The incidents came after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi triggered a dispute with Beijing last month with her remarks on how Tokyo might react to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. “China’s actions are not conducive to regional peace and stability,” a US Department of State spokesperson said late on Tuesday, referring to the radar incident. “The US-Japan alliance is stronger and more
RSS