The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra aims to promote equality, harmony and understanding between musicians, against the backdrop of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Orchestra was founded in 1999 in Weimar by conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim and author and scholar Edward Said. In its first incarnation, it was a workshop for Israeli, Palestinian and other Arab musicians, and that grew into the now world-renowned orchestra.  Named after a set of poems by the great Romantic writer Goethe, the orchestra is not, says Barenboim, for peace but ‘an orchestra against ignorance’.