Fingers hover above home keys poised to spell out commentary on another week of bad news. Two presidents say their armies are ready for war. Negotiations fail. The economy still fails. Hope falters over the things that usually, and rightly, earn attention...

And then something wonderful happens.

Music rides the Yerevan night and pushes cynicism to a welcomed distant place (at least for awhile), where cares of the big stuff are displaced by Armenia’s Little Singers’ version of “In the Mood”.

The inaugural Open Music Festival couldn’t have come at a better time in Armenia’s summer of discontent. In a week when our president hinted that the ice is still plenty thick between Armenia and Turkey, and in days when “settlement” is outside the vocabulary of the Armenians or the Azeris, there is at least music.

Thursday night’s opening gala was a reminder that sometimes a maestro’s score makes more sense than diplomacy “road maps”.

The National Chamber Orchestra of Armenia, earns its “National” title in this series of 23 concerts to which it is host, as from now until late September Yerevantsis and visitors to the capital will have occasions to escape within the roofless walls of the Moscow Cinema amphitheater. The orchestra reflects the best of what is right about Armenia – a reminder that talent is unbound and culture has the capacity to hold a country together when little else unifies it.

The dream of Principal Conductor Aram Gharabekian, OMF is realized through the support of corporations whose leaders’ politics may differ but whose understanding of social responsibility shows their better side. It enjoys the support, too, of Diaspora benefactors and of the United States Embassy.

The opening gala featured a child – 12-year old kanonist Narek Kazazyan – who performed like an adult and adults – two noted actors and two veteran musicians – who performed like children. (The latter featured actors Harutiun Movsisyan, Raphael Kontanjyan and classical soprano Araxia Davtyan and jazzman/conductor Martin Vardazaryan who joined the orchestra “playing” toy instruments for Haydn’s “Toy Symphony”.)

Favored pop singer Aramo did a scat version of Bach’s “Aria” that is best graded as “ambitious” and a new vocal composition by honored composer Eduard Mirzoyan, while compelling, was a palliative on an otherwise festive menu of music. The energy of the night, though, rode the 22-member Vahagn Dhol Ensemble’s beat on its opening fanfare. And when the drummers joined the orchestra and the 44-member “Little Singers” and the audience of about 800 for Strauss’ “Radetzky March”, maestro Gharabekian had a choir of professional children behind him, a choir of amateur clappers in front of him, dhol beaters in between and his NCO family at his flanks.

The music of the late, great classical composer Aram Khachaturyan was played on the same bill with the very present (and in the audience) great jazz-fusion composer Tigran Mansuryan.

An Italian – Mario Stefano Pietro Dar Chi – played his native instrument, the bandoneon. A German soundman – Guido Kacher – accepted the sizeable challenge of turning concrete and open sky into an intimate hall. “Music Diplomacy” anyone?

Let disharmonic reality return when the songs have been sung and played and when the maestro who is bigger than the diminutive frame that holds him goes off to dream again. Till this summer fades, at least there is music.