07:00 pm
Tiago Moreira da Silva Conductor
The Afghan Youth Orchestra comes from a country where music is banned entirely. After the Taliban took power again in 2021, the young musicians were forced to escape. Their music school was closed down, instruments were destroyed. They found asylum in Portugal – from there, they are working against oblivion. Their programme is about loss, indestructability, hope. Each work is deeply rooted in the cultures of Afghanistan, standing for humanity and resilience: from Sufi chants to powerful arrangements for symphonic orchestra and traditional Afghan instruments. The concert culminates in the setting of a Persian spring poem, as a message of hope.
“You can cut off the flowers, but you cannot stop spring.” (Pablo Neruda)
Young Euro Classic thanks Pedro Carneiro and the eleven participating musicians of the Jovem Orquestra Portuguesa for their valuable support.
Before the concert, the European Composition Award 2025 will be presented by the State Secretary for Culture, Cerstin Richter-Kotowski.
The Afghan Youth Orchestra in Exile (AYO) is part of the first and only music school of the country, the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM), which was founded in Kabul by Dr. Ahmad Sarmast in 2010. Among the ensembles at the centre of this institution’s work is also the Afghan Women’s Orchestra (AWO) “Zohra”. The ANIM’s mission was to offer talented and underprivileged children coeducational training in classical Afghan and European music, regardless of their gender, their social class or ethnic background, and also to offer them a comprehensive general education. The Taliban takeover of power in Afghanistan, however, violently ended the successful work of the ANIM. The school was closed and looted; music-making in all its forms was prohibited. The young musicians had to flee their homeland and found a new home in Braga – Portugal being the only nation to offer them asylum. In 2023, part of the AYO in Exile performed at the Beethovenfest in Bonn. In the summer 2025, the ensemble will be heard as a full orchestra in Germany – for the first time since the Taliban returned to power.
Tiago Moreira da Silva is currently the artistic director and chief conductor of the Orquestra Clássica da FEUP, the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, and the Banda Filarmónica de Amares. He has conducted at prestigious international venues such as Carnegie Hall (New York), the Kennedy Center (Washington DC), Victoria Hall (Geneva), Queen Elizabeth Hall (London), Rossini Theatre (Pesaro), and at the United Nations’ Palais des Nations (Geneva). Alongside the Afghan Youth Orchestra in Exile, he has collaborated with renowned ensembles such as the European Union Youth Orchestra, the Orchestre de Chambre de Genève, an ensemble of the Barenboim-Said Academy, the National Youth Orchestra of Germany, Trickster Orchestra, and Orchestra Olimpia. Additionally, he has conducted various orchestras and chamber ensembles in Germany and Portugal. Tiago Moreira da Silva was awarded second prize at the First International Academy and Orchestral Conducting Competition in Cascais and received the distinction “Best Conductor of the Event” at the XVII. Certame Galego de Bandas de Música.