Mission

The Daniel Barenboim Foundation supports transcultural dialogue through music education and concerts. The foundation strives to overcome frontiers and to contribute to important reforms and renewals. In this effort, music plays a key role: both as a universal language that can help to encourage mutual acceptance between people of profoundly different backgrounds and as an intuitive means of communication that has a major role to play in the prevention and reconciliation of conflicts.


The Daniel Barenboim Stiftung is the umbrella organization for the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and the Barenboim-Said Akademie with the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin. Its major activities include the management of all aspects of the international tours of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, various music and education projects primarily in the Middle East—such as the Barenboim-Said Music Center in Ramallah—as well as individual grant programs. The foundation believes that music has much to give to this region and strives to support a musical culture that will become a constituent part of its emerging civil societies. A welcome side-effect is not only to increase contacts between Israelis and Palestinians, but also between Palestinians living on the West Bank and in Israel. In addition, the foundation aims to provide talented musicians from Israel and Palestine a window to the world by supporting their further education in world-class academies and conservatories abroad.


The foundation was established in 2008 by Daniel Barenboim and is based in Berlin, where it is registered as a charitable foundation. The Daniel Barenboim Stiftung collaborates with an international network of foundations and partners. The Junta de Andalucía and the Spanish Government have been faithful and generous supporters through the Fundación Barenboim-Said in Seville. Additional support is provided through the Barenboim-Said Foundation USA and the West-Eastern Divan Trust UK.

Daniel Barenboim