Nader Abbassi: And it will just keep on moving Give the maestro a hand Profile by Yasmine El-Rashidi

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"When I walked into the building, and I heard the opera, the sounds of the piano and the string instruments, and sounds I'd never heard before I found my life. I found this was really my life."

Nader Abbassi is well aware of what the public thinks of him.

"I know, I know," he laughs, "they think I just stand up there waving my hands like this and like that, and that if I stopped it wouldn't make a difference!"

He is right about the hand-waving part -- it is, in essence, his professional trademark. Once his hands fall still, however, so does everything else.

Abbassi is a maestro -- principal conductor and artistic director of the Cairo Opera Orchestra. His dancing hands are literally what bring the Cairo Opera House auditorium to life.

"People don't really understand what a conductor does," says Abbassi. "They don't know that he is everything; every instruction comes from him. If he doesn't give the attack signal for each part of the performance it can't come together. In sports, the athletes line up and the referee blows a whistle and the line of swimmers, for example, all dive in and go. Without the whistle what would happen? The conductor is the one that signals the orchestra and performers to go. Without the conductor it would never start."

And even if it did, without him the performance would have no life.

"The conductor instructs the expression, the dynamic, the tempo," Abbassi says. "The right hand is for tempo and the left for dynamic. The conductor is the difference between a colourful performance with life and expression and one without."

Sitting in his office at the highest point of the Opera House grounds, Abbassi swivels in his black leather chair. From the window behind him, the slightly sloping Opera House grounds are exposed. The domes of the various halls loom in the background while palm trees sway gently in the uncharacteristically cool May weather.

"It's wonderful, isn't it," he offers, smiling, swirling his head to admire the view. He speaks of his profession with both pride and passion and his voice seems to embody the energy with which he has soared within his profession.

"I played the bassoon, I played the piano, I composed music, I sang opera and eventually I used my experience of all of it to become a conductor. The conductor works with the singers on how they say things, not just what they are saying, and with the orchestra on every aspect of their performance. The conductor and his hand movements," Abbassi continues. "It is really the language of the opera. The conductor is the energy [of a performance]."

"In opera everything works together. To bring the opera to life all the different sections of the opera -- the maestro, the singers, the dancers, the orchestra -- all have to come together. If they don't, the performance is flat."

"In life you have to be doing what you really want to be doing. What you love," he explains. "If you do that then you will always do your best. And if you do that," he continues, "you will always be passionate."

"It's very easy not to follow what you love," Abbassi says. "Especially in a culture like this, where there are norms. It's very easy to get discouraged. To be the best and most professional you can be you have to be doing what you love."

For Abbassi the calling was clear.

"I was about eight or nine when I started," he says. "I was always singing and dancing. My parents used to have a lot of parties and they would always call me to perform for their guests. My family was quite different in that way," he continues. "I have a big, big family," he laughs. "One of those Egyptian families with lots of cousins."

Abbassi laughs some more. He seems surprisingly light and uncomplicated.

"Usually at big family occasions like the Eid you find all the children playing games. We were a bit different, we used to play in art."

He elaborates.

"I used to prepare a stage, put all my cousins in a line, like this." He draws lines in the air with his finger, "And I would do a gala concert with all of them."

"And I would always finish the concert. You know, do the closing! I never stopped singing. Everyone encouraged me really."

In which regard Abbassi appears to have been extremely lucky.

"My father loved music. He was very European in the way that he lived. He went to the Lycée Français, he loved jazz and musicals. And my mother loved opera. Because I grew up with it, music seemed like a natural part of life. I couldn't have imagined a home without it."

Nor, eventually, a life.

Abbassi auditioned for a place at the Cairo Conservatoire where, at 14, music came to describe the perimetres of his existence.

"A friend told me about the academy," he says. "Nevine El- Kellany -- she was at the dance school there. So I went for the audition and I must tell you it was a magical day."

It was a day that changed his life.

"When I walked into the building, and I heard the opera, the sounds of the piano and the string instruments, and sounds I'd never heard before I found my life. I found this was really my life."

Abbassi is animated. His hands begin to dance and he appears to flow out of his chair. "It was incredible. It really was my life in front of me. I couldn't sleep until I got the results of my audition."

He was accepted.

"My Russian professor told me I would be playing the bassoon. He said I was too old for the piano. I must admit," he smiles, shaking his head. "I really hated it at the beginning. My professor told me that if I wanted to become a professional musician I had to practice for a minimum of four hours, and that if I was not able to do it I should just get out of the class. It was in front of the whole class, and I cried. But then I said okay, this is a war between me and him, and so I practiced eight hours a day. I spent all day practicing the bassoon to show him."

Abbassi smiles at his teenage stubbornness.

It paid off; in the second year at the academy he played in the Mozart Concerto, a rite of passage usually reserved for the Baccalauréat-age students.

"I made huge progress," he says. "My relationship with my professor changed. He believed in me, saw I had what it takes, and he started choosing me for all the parts. All day I practiced; with him, with myself, with the orchestra. Then I started travelling around with the orchestra to perform."

He begins to speak more quickly, and with the inflexions of French.

Then he did what no others had done before -- in his second year he began working towards a second degree.

"I always wanted to study piano, and they told me that if I studied composition I would study the piano, so I did, with Gamal Abdel-Rehim. And I got two diplomas -- in bassoon and composition."

Abbassi persevered with the profession, despite it not being fully recognised by the family around him.

"My family supported me in that they never said 'no, you can't do this'. But they didn't really feel that it was something serious, something professional."

"I used to go to them every year and say I got full marks in this, or that and my mother would say yes, very good, what would you like to eat, there's molokhiya in the kitchen."

It was an attitude that was soon to change. At 20 Abbassi was taken under the wing of the English bassoon player Roger Birnstingl who had come to perform at the Gomhouriya Theatre.

"He told me bluntly I had to go to Europe to continue."

After completing 18 months of army duty while simultaneously juggling money-making gig, playing jazz at a hotel piano bar, teaching at the Conservatoire, and travelling around the country with the Symphony Orchestra, Abbassi flew off to Geneva where he auditioned and was accepted into the masters programme of the Conservatoire de Genève.

"After four years I took the first prize in the virtuosite -- the equivalent of the doctorate -- in the bassoon. When I was still studying bassoon I decided time was passing too fast and I wanted to stay longer, so I applied to study opera singing at the Conservatoire." He pauses, fumbles in his black leather messenger bag for cigarettes and a light.

"The director," he promptly resumes, "kept laughing when I told him I wanted to audition to sing. I was finishing my last bassoon exam, and now I wanted to sing? He laughed at the audition when he announced me. He said 'now, Egyptian man will sing Isis and Osiris'."

They both laughed, as did the audience and judges. But of 23 applicants Abbassi was among the chosen three. He stayed longer, his seven-year extension culminating with a doctorate in opera singing.

During those seven years Abbassi earned his living as first bassoonist for the Geneva Chamber Orchestra, and occasionally played with the Swiss Romande Orchestra.

"Then my professor told me to audition for a concert at the Geneva Opera House, and because I was a basso profundo -- which is vary rare -- I was taken."

"I loved it, loved it, loved it," he says. "To be up on stage, to be part of the lighting, and costumes and mise-en-scène. I left the orchestra for the opera and stayed there for nine years, and I was asked then, by the Swiss, to apply for nationality."

It was granted immediately and Switzerland became his professional home.

The performances continued, and offers for auditions kept popping-up. One of them from the then head of the Cairo Conservatoire Samha El-Khouly. It was a call to compose.

"I hadn't practiced composition for a long time so I went to Germany, to a friend's house in the countryside and I wrote, and applied, and won, and I loved it. So I did more and more, and then I was commissioned to do a piece for the Geneva National Ballet Company. It's a huge orchestra, so I flew to France for a quick summer course, worked like hell (12 hours a day), made the recording, and discovered how fantastic it was to conduct."

"All my studies in the orchestra, bassoon, singing, composition -- when you conduct you give to the orchestra all your experience."

"I came here to do the recording," Abbassi says. "And I found that the Egyptians were really hungry for the knowledge I had gained through my studies. I found that I could give them a lot. I was lucky to have had the opportunities I had, and I started to think that maybe this was the time to come back and share it with my country."

Eventually he did just that, though it took a year and a half for him to finally accept the position of artistic director and principal conductor at the Cairo Opera Orchestra.

"I've been here seven months," he says, "and it has been hard. Everything needs revamping, we need more people, we need more planning, need to work harder. It will take time," he smiles.

His first performance came as quite a shock.

"I had to replace one of the best conductors in the world at Aida at the pyramids. It was very difficult. It's a huge stage, a huge orchestra, and there are some of the best singers in the world. It was scary, but it went well. I've been a singer, and a musician, and so I can relate."

But Aida went well, as have the performances that followed. Abbassi, it is said, has brought new energy to the opera.

"Most people who take this position have been much older. But when you're young, you have energy, and you pass that on to the orchestra, and they play with that same energy. But it is not at all easy."

It is not easy to take on such a role, and it is made more difficult if you are returning as boss to former colleagues.

"In the beginning it was very difficult. Now they know. Once rehearsals start I'm very serious, very strict, and they respect that. They respect it and give me my position, calling me Maestro at rehearsals and joking with me and calling me Nader when we're finished."

"Coming back after 17 years is odd," he says. "For most people who leave, in the start you refuse your country and compare everything and why Europe is better. Then after a while you switch; you begin to appreciate and like Egypt as it is. Switzerland is clean, and quiet, you work hard, you earn, you have the same routine life. The view from my apartment will never change -- it is the same as it was 200 years ago and it will remain that way. Cairo," he laughs, his hands beginning to dance, "it's busy, telephones, outings, traffic, friends. Here every day there is a problem which means every day there is change. It keeps you alive, you feel that every day you are doing something with life."

The only thing that weighs him down, he says, is that in a sense every day is a battle.

"It's not our music," he says of the classics that make up the majority of the Opera House repertoire." It is far from our mentality, and so you need to think not once, but one thousand times before you choose a piece to perform. In Japan and other countries the cultural scene around opera and classical performances is full. It stems from the education. It needs to be part of the system that children are taught an instrument and taught to appreciate classical music. We have very talented musicians and they are a treasure. But it's not enough to just have the potential. We need to invest to get back. We need to give all our energy to make it the best; to make the best stage and get the best people and create the best atmosphere. Director Samir Farag is very much of this belief too. You hear a lot that people don't come to the opera, so why should the opera spend. Well it should be the other way; we should spend so that they come."

"We need to look at life and the value of it and the value of the little things that happened in our day," Abbassi says. "I've received some letters from people in Kafr Al-Sheikh and Menoufiya," he says. "They saw my Scheherazade performance on TV, and they were writing to say that they loved it and want to see more."

He seemingly jumps -- leaning forward towards the desk, sitting straighter and with somewhat more animation in his communication. "Who are these people and where did they study? If you do a concert and out of 1,000 people one is inspired, that's magnificent."

A black-stone key of life rests on Abbassi's chest.

"It is the key of the Nile, and of life," he says, fiddling with it. "Life is something we pass through. We don't need to complicate it with problems because everything is so small when we think of it in the context of life. All this government paperwork, and the problems people try to make for each other. It means nothing."

He speaks softly.

"At the New York Planetarium you see the earth, and you see it get smaller, and you see the other planets come into the view, and then they all get smaller, and then the stars, and some more, and then it all gets smaller, and you see that we are just one tiny spot among billions and billions and billions."

He pauses, his eyes wide, sparkling, his hands in perpetual motion.

"We are completely nothing. So these papers," he says, holding up release forms and memos, "I find these funny."

He finds the seriousness with which people take themselves funny too.

"I believe in destiny. That things happen for a reason. You know, you get very upset over something that you wanted to do and couldn't, but then later you realise that if you had done it, it would have been catastrophic. I know that we get signs and that we are led and that life takes us where we need to go. There's no point in getting angry and upset."

"People find it hard to understand why I'm so calm. When you initially arrive to a place as director people are insecure and they talk about you. I've had people come and tell me that this person is saying this and this person is saying that, and they expect me to get angry. I really don't care though. It's their problem not mine. If someone is talking about me it's not my energy that's being wasted. Besides," he smiles, "wherever you go not everyone will love you."

What is important, Abbassi believes, is staying true to oneself; investing energy in the things you love and according to principles in which you believe.

"We are tiny, and the person next to us is tiny. Why get upset with what someone says, or with something you hear? Why get angry because of traffic? You need to learn to look at things and be able to say that this is the way it is. Egypt is this way, Switzerland is that way. Why complicate things?"

"Your work takes up so much of your time that you should love your work so much that it is not really work, it's life. If you do this you succeed and find peace. You find harmony and equilibrium. In this culture music is not taken so seriously and not respected, but it is my life, and so I do it and don't care what people think."