I built The Pangean Orchestra around three instruments.

An Iraqi qanun. An Iranian santur. An Israeli tsimbl.

One zither family that left the Middle East, scattered, and grew apart until the people playing it were told they had nothing in common.

It kept going east and became the Chinese yangqin, which means foreign zither. The migration is recorded in the instrument's own name.

That is the name I learned it by, and it taught me something American training never did. A yangqin can drive an ensemble when there is no conductor in the room. So I put that family at the center and built outward.

Hence Pangean. Before the continents drifted there was one. Millennia passed and the differences became reasons to ignore what we shared.

Musicians came from the United States, Ireland, Brazil, India, Japan, Afghanistan and Iraq. Most had never met. Several shared no language but the one on the stands. We played Phoenix Symphony Hall in 2010.

USLOT Films left Los Angeles to document it. The film opens on Arizona's political fault lines before it introduces the musicians.

I was not making an argument about policy. I was making one about music, and you can hear the proof in four bars.