"Beethoven for the Indus Valley broadcasts Beethoven's call in his Ninth Symphony to "Be embraced, Ye Millions!" At a time when the world needs urgently to focus on our common humanity, your community of musicians and humanitarians is a musical beacon calling us all to embrace each other, in the service of the neediest and most vulnerable among us. I will be there with you in spirit."
- Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Beethoven's Ninth symphony resonates in the most human ways with the plight of the millions of our fellow human beings who have been affected by the disaster in Pakistan.

This symphony, far more than a call to hope, below its musical surface, is as transcendent a call to recognize our interconnectedness as a global society as was ever fashioned in words or music. Written in an earlier time of global discord and conflict, Beethoven’s music and Schiller’s text create a new possibility of cultural embrace, of West and East, of European and Islamic musics embracing and enriching each other. There is no more fitting way for us in the musical community to give voice to the acute need, suffering and to give voice to the hope, of the millions of voiceless men, women and children affected by this tragic disaster. Beethoven’s music and Schiller’s words – “Seid Umschlungen, Millionen!” (Be embraced, You Millions!) speak to the hope and urgency utterly central to the responsibility that we, as a global community, must heed today. Tomorrow will be too late.