The Washington Post may have dubbed it a “show concert,” but the audience in Washington, D.C. was clearly moved by the music-making of the Iraqi National Symphony in its American debut this week. “The mournful strains of the balaban (a distant cousin of the oboe) and the haunting screech of the oud (the forerunner of the lute), [made] a captivating premiere at the Kennedy Center,” says Alec Russell, and the Post failed to make mention of the hundreds of Iraqi expatriates who lined up all morning in the snow just to get tickets, or the rousing ovation of the (mostly) non-partisan crowd.