THE FUNDACIÓN BARENBOIM-SAID

​My first class with Vicente at the school holiday camp complete, I get in a cab to the Barenboim-Said Fundación. The sun shines hot and bright, and the streets of the Polígono Sur are quiet.

I’m moved by what I’ve seen in the school. As I head to the taxi, I consider taking photos of the streets around me, the most immediate way to communicate Polígono Sur’s reality. But I’m reluctant. For approximately fifty thousand people, this area is home, and likely the only home available to them. That they are getting on with life here deserves respect.

Neighbourhoods like Polígono Sur were constructed in most major Andalusian cities from the 1940s, and most parts of Europe have their own versions: neighbourhoods on the edge of town into which the underprivileged were channeled, developed in the 1940s but exploding in the 1970s, and, from the looks of it, with no significant building investment since then. Fifty-year-old apartment blocks, with no maintenance evident and built cheaply to begin with, house an average of seven people per dwelling, quarantined from the city by a riverbed, a ring road and train tracks.

The taxi may as well be Cinderella’s carriage bearing me from Polígono Sur to Seville’s
extravagantly beautiful city centre. Through its window I see for the first time the city’s cobbled streets, massive parks, countless facades in white, gold and terracotta, horse-drawn carriages, and iridescent tiles. The line between these two parts of Seville is the most profound culture shock I experience on my travels.

The Fundación is in a tiny cobbled square which also houses the public entry to the Real Alcázar, the tenth century palace still used by the Spanish royal family, and which has a view of the Giralda, Seville Cathedral’s astonishingly tall bell-tower. My taxi pulls into the square through a massive stone arch, does a brief circuit of the central orange grove, and lets me out, still covered in the dust of the school yard, in this fairytale arena. I push the Barenboim Said Fundación’s doorbell.

Joseph greets me. He’s a thoughtful and intense person, wholly dedicated to excellence and
access in music education, which is his focus at the Fundación. Every stage of musical life is somehow covered with a Fundación offering managed by Joseph or one of his colleagues: early childhood music projects like the one I’ve been attending; a school of 135 kids where everyone receives a violin or cello and daily lessons; an orchestral academy; public workshops; teacher training; professional performance opportunities such as those provided by the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, and more. There are over two thousand participants a year.

Joseph tells me about an interview he once saw with conductor Gustavo Dudamel, being asked why he encouraged so many people to learn an instrument when there weren’t enough professional orchestras to employ them all. Dudamel’s response: “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand the question.” A perfect answer to a misguided question suggesting that the only value in learning music was its earning potential. The fact that the Fundación, in its beautiful setting, already has a well-developed relationship with Polígono Sur, a place of limited opportunity, shows why Dudamel’s words have stayed with Joseph.

We go upstairs to meet Muriel Páez Rasmussen, the Fundación’s Managing Director. Within five minutes, it’s clear she’s the kind of person that could probably do a pretty good job of running the world, if only somebody gave her a crack at it. But instead she’s here, and, like Joseph, has been for twenty years — she says she still feels lucky. Both she and Joseph talk at length about the experience of working with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and Maestro Daniel Barenboim.

While an orchestra of Arab and Israeli musicians has always had its tensions, things are even more difficult in 2025, both for the musicians within the orchestra, and those working to resource it. I ask about the music school in Ramallah and Muriel says it’s all still running; most of the teachers the Barenboim-Said foundations provide now have such long ties there, they’ve chosen to stay. She and Joseph advise me to watch ‘Knowledge is the Beginning’, which documents the lead-up to the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra’s 2005 performance in Ramallah.

Joseph sends me the link and Mel and I watch the documentary in our apartment (just over the tracks from Polígono Sur). I cry three times.

While I know not everyone agrees with Barenboim’s stance on Israeli-Palestinian relations,
especially in Israel, one thing in the documentary is very clear: Barenboim appears painfully aware that speaking his mind will come at a personal cost. He’s frightened. At one point, he even says so.

I don’t think the fear is for his person. It’s for knowing that speaking what he feels to be true will not win him unreserved adulation. And as a conductor at the height of his powers, who’s had his share of standing ovations, he could be forgiven for resting on his laurels, rather than making art that is clearly challenging him and others. A journalist rather scathingly asks him what it is he expects to achieve by performing a solo piano recital in Palestine - world peace? Barenboim’s answer is very simple.

“One the one hand, I came to stretch a hand, and play a little music, because that’s what I can do,” says the Maestro. “On the other hand, I came to learn.”

Back to school for me tomorrow, in the Polígono Sur.