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Asian Youth Orchestra builds harmony across East China Sea

Richard Pontzious sees Asia's young musicians do their part for peace

Our timing could not have been worse. There we were, the 104 members of Hong Kong's own Asian Youth Orchestra, crisscrossing the mainland, performing in Beijing, Tianjin , Shanghai and Xian just as tempers were igniting and heated insults were being hurled at anything and anyone Japanese. We could hear the disturbance from across town as we walked into the Xian Concert Hall. A curious mix: Debussy, Berlioz and the cacophony of the Diaoyu Islands controversy.

Not the healthiest of environments for an orchestra whose members represent the best of Asia, not only from Hong Kong, but also from the mainland, Taiwan, Korea, Japan and beyond.

What danger might there be in introducing the members of the orchestra country by country and territory by territory, our normal practice at the end of a concert? The Japanese in the orchestra were visibly shaken by what was going on. At least one anxious mother called from Tokyo. Imagine the worry.

Proudly we stood, our audience of 1,200 in the sold-out concert hall in Xian, elsewhere up to 2,000 per concert, cheering us on: the 14 of us from Hong Kong, 30 from the mainland, one from Korea, 29 from Taiwan, another 16 from Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines, and of course 14 from Japan. If there was any reluctance or hesitation on the part of the audience, it didn't register in the applause.

The real test came in Japan, not only in Tokyo, where we played the final two concerts of our tour to sell-out crowds in Tokyo Opera City, but north of Tokyo, in Maebashi, where our members split up and stayed one by one and two by two with Japanese host families.

Again, imagine the anxiety and fear our teenagers and twentysomethings must have felt as their names were called and they were introduced to their host families.

For those whose emotions might have been stirred up by the unfolding chaos in China, this might have been seen as meeting, eating and sleeping with the enemy.

I spoke about these feelings in my remarks to our host, the governor of Gunma prefecture, and to the families who were opening their homes to us. Amid all the turmoil and talked-about hatred, this was our chance to come together, I said. One man at the back started to applaud and it spread throughout the room.

One day and a thrilling concert later, we could barely pull the families and orchestra apart as we said our goodbyes.

Six hours later, we stood on one of the beaches that had been swallowed up by the tsunami that followed last year's devastating earthquake. Behind us, scattered across now desert-like plots of land, were the decaying remains of a small fishing village, Arahama, no longer habitable. It was just 100 metres from where we were standing that 30 primary school children had raced to the roof of their four-storey school to escape the water and mud of the tsunami, watching in horror as their homes were enveloped and disappeared.

Some members of the orchestra - three flautists and 11 violinists, symbolising 3/11, the date of the quake - played the Japanese folk song on the wind-blown beachhead. Hongkongers, mainlanders, Taiwanese, a Thai, a Japanese, a Malaysian, a Vietnamese … I looked across the sand and saw one of our boys, a clarinettist from Xian, his head lowered. "I am praying for those who died and were lost here, that they may find peace," he told me.

The legendary violinist and conductor Yehudi Menuhin, who helped me create the Asian Youth Orchestra 22 years ago, said on more than one occasion: "Everyone wants peace. The caveat being, 'You do what I say and we'll have peace'."

Sadly, that's where negotiations seem to stand today between China and Japan. But having lived, worked and prayed with both sides, and having given both sides more than one chance to show their true colours, I have hope. Call it the power of music. Applause and effect. "That they, and we, may find peace."

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Across the East China Sea, a bridge built on harmony
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