Introducing Mosaics

Dear friends, supporters, and partners of Polyphony,

Like you, we’ve been facing the uncertainty and social distancing that COVID-19 has imposed on us for a while now. We at Polyphony, like many others, were initially in shock and put our activities on hold – music lessons, performances, seminars, and more – until we figured out what is safe and what is possible.

Being naive, we thought it would be only a few weeks until things got back to normal. We know now that was far from true. After this realization, we reached out to our team, our teachers, and partners to discuss how to proceed under the current challenges.

To our surprise and great satisfaction, we discovered that the majority of our teachers continued to stay in touch with their students. Of their own accord, teachers conducted online lessons with Conservatory students without an expectation of compensation or waiting for us to coordinate and organize.

Our teachers at large are exceptional Jewish musicians coming from Tel Aviv and its surrounding areas. Normally, teachers would drive to Nazareth once or twice a week to teach young Arab students from Nazareth and nearby communities.

When we asked the teachers why they continued to teach, they responded that they care and didn’t want to let the current circumstances slow their students’ progress or let their investment over the last years go to waste.

When we reached out to our partners at the Minerva Institute for Humanities, the Institute for Dialog, and the Israeli Music Conservatory in Tel Aviv, with whom we jointly run our seminars, we were highly moved and encouraged by their concern about continuing the Scholar-in-Residence Ensembles program. They already had ideas and suggestions about how to proceed in light of the current restrictions. It didn’t take long before all 20 Arab and Jewish students were back in touch. All lectures, dialog sessions, and music-making have proceeded in very creative and exciting ways.

One aspect of our programs was more challenging to resume than others: performances. Our polyphonic sounds and voices resonate best in the concert hall, touching the hearts and minds of our audience. This is something that cannot be replaced, and this is where the idea of a weekly video series came to life. We hope it will become an alternative platform to share our activities, music, and massage with our community all over the world. Each Sunday, we will share short videos of our activities and performances and hopefully, this can bring you some comfort and happiness.

We are proud and encouraged that in these uncertain times, all members of the Polyphony family remain committed to the mission, and keeping our voices of hope and harmony strong.

Please stay safe and healthy and remember to take care of each other. We hope you’ll join us each week for performances, updates, and more.

In hope and harmony,

Nabeel