“I often wonder how musicians with the gift of sight manage to coordinate so many things at the same time: they have to look into the score, at the conductor and play instruments. To me it sounds like a very difficult task, demanding enormous concentration. When I play I am totally immersed in the music and only the music. Or maybe it’s just different for people who see and those who don’t…” says Shaimaa Yehia, the visually impaired violinist in the Al Nour Wal Amal Orchestra.

Shaimaa adds that many sighted musicians she has encountered in the course of her career have often responded to her wondering about this; they explain that “it all depends on the way one is taught, perceives and practices music. There is no difference between sighted and blind musicians. Music will always be there; it’s about how you concentrate, how you direct your focus,” Shaimaa reports them saying.

She tells me more about her love of classical music and how it always speaks to her, triggers her emotions, soothes and intrigues her, and how when she was eight years old she was fascinated by the violin’s sound and began her creative journey at the Al Nour Wal Amal music institute.

Her many memories and experiences are embedded in music. She points to challenges and thrills she finds in Johann Strauss’ The Blue Danube, delights she has uncovered in Béla Bartók’s Suites for Orchestra, unique encounters with Beethoven, the joy she gets from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker. She talks about her fascination with Mozart, a composer who “gives great importance to all strings, brings the best out of the first and second violins, with the latter ones carrying the most fascinating melodies,” as Shaimaa, who plays second violin, puts it.

Today in her early 30s, Shaimaa’s journey with music has become her life story, which in many ways resembles the stories of over 40 other members of Egypt’s unique orchestra, consisting of visually impaired and completely blind women: the Al Nour Wal Amal (or Light and Hope) Orchestra.