Apple Hill Center For Chamber Music - Playing For Peace

Playing For Peace

Central to the mission of Apple Hill is Playing for Peace, an innovative outreach program founded in 1988 that focuses on social change and conflict resolution through music. Apple Hill travels to areas where there is a history of conflict or mistrust - in the Middle East to Turkey, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, and the West Bank/Palestine; to England, Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland; to the Greek and Turkish areas of Cyprus; to the Caucuses area of Russia; and to many US cities, including New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Dallas, Memphis, Los Angeles, and San Francisco - performing concerts and leading chamber music workshops.

Playing for Peace is considered a unique model for cultural exchange, promoting friendship, understanding, and basic human contact between people in areas of the world beleaguered by long-term conflict. The goal for this program is to offer everyone a unique opportunity to transcend national and cultural boundaries and create meaningful bonds of friendship and understanding while participating in an exceptional pedagogical program that encourages leadership and the development of confidence, creativity, and ambition.

The principal tenet of Playing for Peace is this: At the chamber music workshops, musicians are assigned to play in small ensembles alongside musicians from conflicting communities. For example, Arabs study and perform music with Israelis, Catholics with Protestants, Greeks with Turks, and African Americans with Caucasian Americans. We coach each ensemble in the skills of chamber music - listening, watching, adjusting, sensitivity, and being flexible – the same skills needed to work and function effectively in the world. The participants learn not only to play music but also to communicate and connect with each other in ways that may not be possible in their home countries.

In the early 1990s, Apple Hill started an on-site residency program for Playing for Peace students as part of the existing Summer Workshop. The program offers free tuition as well as room and board for residencies up to five weeks. Participants are once again placed together in chamber groups, coached every day by our renowned faculty, and the experience culminates with a public performance. Apple Hill extends not only musical coaching but mentorship as well. During their residency, the participants experience the warm family atmosphere of Apple Hill and become part of the larger camp community, sharing meals, chores, and social events, creating a unique musical as well as human community.

Over the years, Apple Hill has formed partnerships with music programs and institutions around the globe as part of the Playing for Peace program. These include US embassies, universities, schools, conservatories and youth orchestras in countries such as Ireland, Turkey, Cyprus, and Jordan, and domestic partnerships with Project STEP in Boston; Dallas Young Strings in Dallas, TX; Community MusicWorks in Providence, RI; and schools in San Francisco, Los Angeles, the Baltimore/Washington DC metro area, and Memphis. Through matching scholarship programs with these organizations, students are able to attend Apple Hill. Participants now arrive from NH, every US state, and around the world to make music with each other in an atmosphere that promotes diversity, creativity, and understanding through excellence in musicianship.