The Pianist

The 29th International ?zmir Festival started on May 26 with a concert by the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra, founded by Italian maestro Riccardo Muti, who has been decorated with the greatest honorary medals of many countries. 

In the Yarmuk camp in southern Damascus, the notes escape a piano set in a scene of destruction and the children in Ayham al-Ahmed's little group sing of hunger and suffering.

The music in the Syrian camp, under siege for a year and wracked by violence, seems at odd with the brutality that is all around.