By KUNA,
London : Simultaneous concerts in the UK and the US were being held Thursday to mark the anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks, it was announced here.
The performances were featuring musicians who lost loved ones in the atrocity, the organisers said.
More than 200 free concerts have been organised across the world on the seventh anniversary of the attacks.
Almost 3,000 people, including 67 Britons, were killed when terrorists hijacked aircraft and flew them into New York’s World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
London’s concert will take place in Grosvenor Square at the same time as performers take to the stage in the British Memorial Garden, in Hanover Square, New York.
The concerts were the brainchild of New York businesswoman Hakuro Smith, who in 2002 decided to try to turn September 11 from a day of anguish into “a day of music to celebrate our universal humanity.” Smith is leading the group of organisers of the concerts.
She said, “The September Concert is not a memorial event. It’s an opportunity for people to come together once a year and be united in hopes for peace and celebrate our universal humanity. Music has the magical power to do that.” Last Monday, the president of a project to build a national US memorial to those who died in the attacks said that it must be open by the 10th anniversary.
Speaking in New York, Joe Daniels said it was both “possible and essential” for the memorial and museum, which will be on the site of the World Trade Centre towers in New York, to be opened by September 11, 2011.
Daniels added that more than USD 350 million (197 million pounds) had been raised for the national memorial and museum, and the first steel installations went into the ground last week.