Five Continents Marathon Peace Concerts 2020

Music has the power for mutual understandings regardless of people of different nationalities, religions, politics, languages, cultures, and histories.

Harmony for Peace and Hope has worked with colleagues from all over the world to organize concerts with our prayer for “a peaceful world of free from nuclear arms with global environmental protection for the children’s future.”  In 2016, we held the Hiroshima Music Summit for Peace.  Concerts and symposiums were held based on the theme of “establishing peace and friendship among the young people of the world through the music played in Hiroshima.”

Now, we would like to call upon people to hold “the Five Continents Marathon Peace Concerts 2020”.  People from Asia, Europe, Africa, Oceania, and the Americas will join in the movement to deliver peace messages with music like the torch relay runners of Olympic games.  For this opportunity, we would like to propose starting this movement from Hiroshima, Japan, and, in the end, this will be concluded in the city of New York where the Beethoven’s Ninth will be performed by the choir of people from all over the world along with UN orchestras in the New York city in the presence of the Secretary General of the United Nations.　

Music and arts have been essential to the people through the period of post-war restoration.  The city of Hiroshima was in a state of indescribable despair as it started its course of restoration after the war.  Hiroshima used to be a beautiful city with rich in verdure before the war, but it was said that no trees or grasses would grow there for 75 years.  Musicians have mourned their classmates who passed away because of the atomic bomb and many choral groups have held concerts for consoling the deceased.  The city has been, in fact, restored its peaceful state with trees and waters of the rivers much sooner than expected.  With these experiences we had in the last war, we would like to deliver our hopes for restoration to those countries, which may still be suffering from the horrors of wars.  We do believe that issues such as nuclear arms or current global environments can only be solved when the people of the world would cooperate together.

We do believe in the power of music.  We will appreciate it if you would participate in this project of the Five Continents Marathon Peace Concerts 2020.