Think of it as the soundtrack to Peace Being Made.

Inaugurated in 2009, the Lindenbaum Music Festival is an annual, week-long gala in Incheon, South Korea, that celebrates and promotes the idea of peace on the Korean Peninsula through classical music. At this point in history, when North and South Korea are actually talking to one another, the idea is intriguingly resonant.

This year's festival, with the theme "One People, One Harmony," kicks off Sunday and runs through August 12 — when the finale "Peace Concert" takes place at nearby Camp Greaves, hard to the Demilitarized Zone. Tokiyushi "Toshi" Shimada, music director and conductor of New London's Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra and the Yale Symphony Orchestra. will conduct the "Peace Concert" with an ensemble comprising students from the Yale Symphony as well as young musicians from South Korea, China, Japan and Tunisia.

"It's very exciting and very humbling to be part of it," Shimada says, speaking by phone shortly before flying to South Korea. "To get to play in this atmosphere and at this time is inspiring."

The venue has great personal meaning to Shimada, a Japanese national. His father worked for the United Nations out of Tokyo and oversaw supply shipments to UN troops stationed at the DMZ.

"Growing up, I heard so much about this place, and to actually be able to perform there is amazing," he says. "To think, after so long, that maybe there's hope for peace? I'm sure my father would be so happy."

Shimada says the invitation to be part of the festival came from the Lindenbaum artistic director Hyung Joon Won.

"He approached us about a collaboration because he said he'd heard so much about the high artistic reputation of the Yale musicians. To be part of their effort to promote peace and to do so with so many talented players — not just at Yale but gifted young people from all over — sends a very important message. Music IS the universal language," he says.

Shimada says that, although North Korean musicians were invited to participate in the Peace Concert as members of the orchestra, and the government accepted the letter, they didn't answer.

"That's the reality of how it works," Shimada says. "It takes a long time. But they did accept the letter, and that gives us hope for the future."

The program to be performed by Shimada's ensemble includes Leonard Bernstein's Candide Overture; the world premiere of Tod Machover's Fence-a-Dance; Dvorak's Symphony No. 9 (from the New World); and Arirang Fantasy (an arrangement of a centuries-old Korean folk song that's popular on both sides of the border. Shimada says it's the Korean equivalent of our "America the Beautiful").

As a former protege of Bernstein, Shimada says including the Candide Overture makes a lot of sense.

"In 1990, Lenny started the Pacific Music Festival to reflect his wish that peace will come through music," Shimada says. "That festival takes place in Japan, but Won was there and inspired and decided to start the Lindenbaum Festival in the same spirit."

The connection between Japan and Korea adds another element to Shimada's involvement. He explains, "Most of the people who come to (Lindenbaum) remember that Japan occupied Korea before World War II. For a long time, Japanese were not highly regarded in Korea. Now the two countries are on friendly governmental terms, but some of the older folks are still bitter. I wanted to be part of this festival in some small fashion as a peace-maker from Japan."

Shimada is also eager to point out the thematic relevance of the rest of the musical program. Machover's Fence-a-Dance was composed specifically for this occasion, he says. Machover, who is director of MIT Media Lab's Opera of the Future group, wanted to incorporate musicians of all cultures performing together to further a global ideal of unity.

"There's the huge fence at the DMZ," Shimada says, "and I believe Tod was literally envisioning people dancing around the fence in liberation."

Of the Dvorak selection, Shimada says, "It's the New World Symphony, of course, and the musical theme of the slower movement is sometimes known as 'Goin' Home.' I thought of many South Koreans who might want to visit relatives in the North and that desire to go home seems particularly appropriate."