When President Donald Trump fired the Kennedy Center’s longtime president and chairman in February and installed himself as chairman, two musicians who had been artistic advisers to the center and the National Symphony Orchestra, opera star Renée Fleming and rock pianist Ben Folds, resigned, and one fourth of the orchestra’s subscribers canceled their subscriptions in protest.  

But Gianandrea Noseda, the orchestra’s director and one of the world’s most sought-after conductors, stayed on, extending his contract in March by four years, and will serve as music director and principal conductor until 2031, the orchestra’s centennial year. He says he has more to accomplish with the NSO, and for the most part he has received praise for providing stability during a time of upheaval.  

“I respect people who think differently,” says Noseda, an admirer of the late, politically active Leonard Bernstein, who composed the music for the opening of the Kennedy Center in 1971 and was known to court controversy. “But today is not the time to make speeches. I have responsibilities.” 

Noseda is music director of another orchestra, though, and one that is purposely political – or, more specifically, geopolitical. That ensemble is the Pan-Caucasian Youth Orchestra, or PCYO, made up of 80 young musicians from three Caucasus nations, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and five neighboring countries, Ukraine, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Moldova. The PCYO performs every September in Georgia, as a central element of a music festival in Tsinandali, about 65 miles from the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. Georgia is considered a safe, hospitable country, but the region is rife with conflict, and the traditional enmity between, say, Turkey and Armenia, seems utterly irrelevant when young people from those countries make music together. Thus, the PCYO is not merely an orchestra, but a peace project. 

The festival attracts world-class soloists and chamber ensembles from all over the world – this year, pianists Sir András Schiff and Nikolai Lugansky, cellist Misha Maisky, and the Jerusalem Quartet were among the performers. Many of these A-list artists come to support the humanitarian mission of the festival, and are invariably impressed with the level of playing of the orchestra. Noseda has been music director of the PCYO since its inception in 2019. Because of COVID, the ensemble was suspended in 2020 and 2021. In five seasons at the helm, Noseda has helped mold the PCYO into a professional-level orchestra, a feat all the more remarkable considering it is open to musicians from only a handful of countries. 

Billboard caught up with Noseda at the Tsinandali Festival, held this year between Sept. 4 and 14, and spoke to him and members of the PYCO about music and coexistence. 

The PYCO concerts this season featured symphonies of Shostakovich, Beethoven, Mahler and Brahms, and concertos of Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Beethoven and Dvořák, with Lugansky, Maisky, violinist Marc Bouchkov, pianist Behzod Abduraimov and cellist Pablo Ferrández as soloists. The Brahms symphony – No. 3 in F major – was originally slated to be guest-conducted by Kent Nagano, but Nagano had to cancel for health reasons, and Noseda stepped in, late in the game. He was impressed with the results. “From the quality of the rehearsal, I thought I knew what to expect,” Noseda says, “but the performance went even beyond my expectations.” The concert, in the festival’s 1,200-seat seat covered amphitheater, drew a standing ovation. 

Musicians in the PCYO are between the ages of 18 and 28. A half-dozen members – violinists Ailin Akyner from Kazakhstan; Grigori Ambartsumian from Ukraine; Ece Canay from Turkey; and Dominic-Lucian Drutac from Moldova; along with cellist Lale Efendiev from Turkey; and double-bassist Alexander Vasilioglo from Moldova — gathered in a practice room for an interview with Billboard. The musicians spoke adoringly of Noseda, who, they say, has all their names committed to memory, despite the considerable turnover – 30 percent of the musicians this year were newcomers. “It’s like he’s looking through the eyes of every single orchestra member,” says Canay. 

Noseda is by no means the sole reason for the achievements of the PCYO. The young artists receive coaching from a staff made up almost entirely of first chair players at major orchestras. Italian conductor Claudio Vandelli travels from city to city throughout the region to audition prospective new members. Vandelli, who is quite possibly the most astute talent scout in the business, also selects the young orchestral musicians who perform at the midsummer festival in Verbier, Switzerland, from around 1,500 applicants per annum. He estimates he hears around 300 applicants each year for the PCYO, but that orchestra is officially open to eight countries (Uzbekistan may next year become the ninth), whereas the young artists at Verbier represent at least 60 different nationalities. Vandelli says occasional exceptions are made for the PCYO, to fill some key slots – this season, for instance, one of the bassoonists was a young woman from Spain. And every year one or more Russians have been discreetly invited to participate. 

Asked whether there was any political tension within the PYCO, the six members in the interview panel were unanimous: never. “We are all aware of the mission here,” Canay says. Some musicians carry scars of war. Ambartsumian, the Ukrainian violinist, says he lives in Dusseldorf with his mother and brother, and has not seen his father, who remains in Ukraine, for three years. On the day of the Russian invasion, he says, “we were awakened at 5 in the morning by explosions. A bomb destroyed our neighbor’s house next door. Even after I moved [to Germany], I couldn’t sleep calmly for months. Any sound – a ring, a clock – could trigger me.” 

“Sometimes I would like to talk about these kind of things with my friends here,” says Efendiev, the Turkish cellist, “but, like Grigori, they might have PTSD, and I want to be respectful.” 

The historic Tsinandali estate, where the festival takes place – a bucolic 12 acres of parkland that the French novelist Alexandre Dumas compared to paradise – seems the perfect refuge for young people from countries in conflict. Georgia has a long history of invasions over the millennia – most recently in 2008, when Russia seized 20% of Georgian land in a five-day war – but the country is peace-loving, and maintains a warm and tolerant spirit. Here, Muslims, Jews, Catholics and Orthodox Christians coexist. Mosques and synagogues are meters away from one another. 

Georgia has been free of armed conflict since 2008, but there is anxiety about further Russian intervention. Between last year’s festival and this year’s edition, the pro-Russian anti-West political party, Georgian Dream, won a general election that was criticized for irregularities by international observers. Following the election, negotiations by Georgia to join the European Union were suspended, despite the initiative’s popularity. Throughout Tbilisi, the street signs and names of establishments are in Georgian and English, and pro-EU graffiti is omnipresent. On October 4, Georgian Dream solidified its power by sweeping local elections. Tens of thousands of Georgians rallied in Tbilisi to protest the results, and police used water cannons to push back protesters who tried to storm the presidential palace. 

Georgian Dream was a topic of private conversation at this year’s festival, but only once did the controversy bubble to the surface. Hungarian-born pianist András Schiff, known for political outspokenness – he has refused to perform in Russia since the invasion of Ukraine – gave a solo recital on September 6 at the festival’s 600-seat chamber music hall. He apologized for speaking to the audience in English, but said he cannot converse in Georgian, then added, “I could speak to you in Russian, but I might get into trouble.” The comment was greeted by some members of the audience with applause. 

Though some Georgians are anxious about the future, George Ramishvili, founder and chairman of Silk Road Group, a media conglomerate, conveys nothing but optimism. Ramishvili is the principal architect of the Tsinandali Festival.  He has already made large investments – the amphitheater, chamber hall, and a hotel with practice rooms for the PCYO were all his doing – and his next project on the Tsinandali estate is a $5 million indoor concert hall, designed by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma. On Sept. 15, the day after the festival ended, Ramishvili presided over the opening of another Silk Road property, the Telegraph, a new luxury hotel in Tbilisi, complete with a jazz club and a rooftop “Rolling Stone” bar. To mark the opening, Nik West performed on the rooftop and the Stanley Clarke Trio gave a concert at the jazz club. 

Noseda also exudes optimism, and says of the festival, “we are already planning the next three years.” To underscore that the PCYO mission of coexistence is working, he confirmed the juiciest bit of gossip at this year’s festival – namely, that two PCYO musicians, one Russian and the other Ukrainian, had become romantically involved. “Isn’t that beautiful?” he says. “That is the way the world should work.”