Afghan Youth Orchestra to Perform in Washington and New York One of the best-known facts about music in Afghanistan, at least in the West, is that it wasn't. The Taliban banned it when they took power in 1996, beating musicians, burning instruments and destroying cassette tapes in the name of their severe and extreme vision of Islam. But with the Taliban's fall, musical life revived, if slowly, in the shattered country. Ahmad Sarmast, an Afghan native and an expert on his nation's music who was trained in Russia and Australia, opened up a rare entity in 2010: a music school for Afghan children. Now Mr. Sarmast and an American aide, William Harvey, want to send a youth orchestra to the United States to show the West that its sacrifice of lives and material in Afghanistan "is not gone in the wind," in Mr. Sarmast's words. Mr. Sarmast and Mr. Harvey, who spoke in an interview on Friday, are in New York this week to work on logistics for the trip and to drum up money and other support to pay for it. The current plan calls for concerts at the Kennedy Center in Washington on Feb. 7 and at Carnegie Hall on Feb. 12. Mr. Sarmast directs the school, the Afghanistan National Institute of Music. Mr. Harvey, a Juilliard graduate who directs a separate organization - Cultures in Harmony, which promotes unity through classical music with projects in various countries - teaches violin at the institute and conducts its Afghan Youth Orchestra. The institute teaches some 150 young people, about half orphans and street hawkers, Mr. Sarmast said. About 35 of the students are female, important in a country where women face obstacles to education. The young people study both Western and Afghan instruments (the orchestra includes some) and music theory from both cultures. Many of the Western instruments are donated, and the World Bank provides financial support. Tuition is free. The cost of the tour is expected to be around $500,000. The Carnegie Corporation of New York has promised $50,000, and the institute has submitted a proposal to the United States Embassy in Kabul for a $350,000 grant, which Mr. Harvey said was likely to come through. The current plan calls for 46 musicians to go, along with a dozen teachers, about half of them Westerners. Mr. Sarmast said a visit by the orchestra would provide a rare bit of good news about Afghanistan. "It will be showing to the international community about the love of the Afghan people for music and the positive changes for kids and for girls," he added. Mr. Harvey offered an anecdote in that vein. He said he was invited to play the violin at the wedding of Afghan friends and saw a little boy there playing with a plastic toy in the form of an automatic rifle. After the boy saw Mr. Harvey make music, he shyly tucked the toy rifle under his chin, like a violin.