ARTS LEARNING CULTURAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP FUNDING. ...one of the most visionary arts initiatives of our time.

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1 Inspired by the exchange of ideas and traditions along the historical Silk Road, cellist Yo-Yo Ma established Silkroad in 1998 to explore how the arts can advance global understanding. Since 2000, the musicians of the Grammy Award-winning Silk Road Ensemble have led Silkroad s work to connect the world through the arts, presenting musical performances and learning programs, and fostering radical cultural collaboration around the world. ARTS Art and creativity can inspire joy and transcend difference; this power is critical to meeting both global challenges and those in our own neighborhoods. Through the performance and creation of music, Silkroad models making art for life s sake and encourages new forms of cultural collaboration....one of the most visionary arts initiatives of our time. WNPR LEARNING Silkroad works with schools, teachers, and artists to understand the roles that passion and art can play in learning. Across the globe, Silkroad programs engage communities and learners in conversations about how they encounter and contribute to the world. CULTURAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP Uniting artistic and entrepreneurial visions unlocks the potential to respond to community needs in unexpected, creative ways. Silkroad works with artists, investors, and cultural leaders to support collaboration between arts and business communities around the world. The Silk Road Ensemble vision of international cooperation is not what we read in our daily news reports. Theirs is the better world available if we, like these extraordinary musicians, agree to make it one. Los Angeles Times FUNDING Silkroad is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization supported by individuals, foundations, and corporations. Hyosung Corporation is Silkroad s Corporate Sponsor. Electronic press kit at bit.ly/silkroad_epk Inquiries: ben@silkroadproject.org Updated February 2017

2 If you want to change the world, you have to make a little noise. Silkroad: making culture matter. Classical musicmaking rarely achieves this combination of spontaneity and superb craftsmanship Washington Post Vibrant and virtuosic Wall Street Journal THE SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE Since 2000, the Grammy Award-winning Silk Road Ensemble has been at the core of Silkroad s work in the arts and learning. Under the artistic direction of Yo-Yo Ma and representing dozens of nationalities and musical traditions, Silkroad musicians model new forms of cultural understanding through performances, workshops, and residencies. Inspired by the exchange of ideas that occurred along the historical Silk Road, these global artists draw on the rich tapestry of traditions that make up our many-layered contemporary identities. By weaving together the foreign and the familiar, they create a new musical language. The Ensemble performs throughout the world, and has recorded six albums. Its new, Grammy Award-winning album, Sing Me Home, was developed and recorded alongside the new documentary feature The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble from Oscarwinning director Morgan Neville in worldwide distribution LAYLA AND MAJNUN Joyously rollicking crosscultural collaboration All Songs Considered Based on the 7th-century Persian love story, Layla and Majnun is an evening-length production by the Mark Morris Dance Group with music from the Silk Road Ensemble, Alim Qasimov, and Fargana Qasimova. The score is based on a 1908 opera by the Azerbaijani composer Uzeyir Hajibeyli, arranged for the Ensemble by members Johnny Gandelsman and Colin Jacobsen in collaboration with Azerbaijani singer Alim Qasimov. Layla and Majnun continues its worldwide tour in fall more at laylaandmajnun.org DISCOGRAPHY One of the 21st century s great ensembles Vancouver Sun Sing Me Home Sony Masterworks, 2016 A Playlist Without Borders Sony Masterworks, 2013 Off the Map World Village, In A Circle Records, 2009 New Impossibilities Sony Classical, 2007 Silk Road Journeys: Beyond the Horizon Sony Classical, 2005 Silk Road Journeys: When Strangers Meet Sony Classical, 2002 Silk Road Ensemble musicians also appear on Traditions and Transformations: Sounds of Silk Road Chicago (CSO-Resound, 2008) and The Silk Road: A Musical Caravan (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 2002).

3 I m always trying to figure out at some level who I am and how I fit in the world, which is something that I think I share with seven billion other people. Yo-Yo Ma To me there s no East or West. It s just a globe. Wu Man Nobody remembers who was the king when Beethoven lived. But culture stays. Kayhan Kalhor The challenge is keeping your roots alive. Cristina Pato... this film wants for nothing. Can a piece of music stop a bullet?... You question the role of art altogether. Kinan Azmeh New York Times From Morgan Neville, the director of the Oscar-winning documentary 20 Feet from Stardom and the critically acclaimed Best of Enemies, The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble tells the extraordinary story of Silkroad. This new feature-length documentary follows five members of the Ensemble as they explore the power of music to preserve tradition, shape cultural evolution, and inspire hope in worldwide distribution a joyous revelation... an emblem of what people can do in these fractious times when they live in concert with one another. Wall Street Journal More at themusicofstrangers.film

4 Press Contact: Heidi Koelz (617) FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma Will Perform in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and China in October and November 2014 The Groundbreaking Cross-Cultural Ensemble s Asia Concert Tour is a Highlight of Silkroad s 15th Anniversary The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma following a concert in Seoul in 2012 Taeuck Kang October 2, 2014, Boston, MA Between October 28 and November 10, 2014, the celebrated Silk Road Ensemble with renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma will bring innovative cross-cultural music to eight major Asian cities. Their musical journey will begin in South Korea, with a first-time appearance in Daejeon as well as a return visit to Seoul. Traveling to Japan, they will greet audiences in Nagoya, Osaka, and Tokyo before touching down in Taiwan for performances in Taipei and Kaohsiung, and finally China, for a concluding concert in Shanghai. As part of its 15th-anniversary celebration, Silkroad will share updates from the tour at #silkroad15. See the Silkroad website for a detailed Asia tour concert schedule. It is an honor for me to perform with the Silk Road Ensemble for friends both old and new in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and China, said Yo-Yo Ma, Silkroad Founder and Artistic Director. My fellow performers and I look forward to sharing music that springs from the cherished traditions of these cultures, and our joy in working together at the place where they intersect. As we celebrate Silkroad s 15th anniversary, we are grateful for the continuing opportunity to show how music can connect us and enrich our humanity to share with you how much culture matters. These concert programs are rich with compositions that celebrate the musical traditions of eastern Asia and beyond. Audiences will hear contemporary arrangements of traditional tunes, spirited percussion pieces, captivating solo moments by musicians such as pipa virtuosa Wu Man, and works by celebrated composers such as Jia Daqun and Gabriella Lena Frank, as well as the Ensemble s own Kayhan Kalhor and Kojiro Umezaki. Page 1 of 3

5 This Asia concert tour is a highlight of the 15th-anniversary season of Silkroad, the international cultural nonprofit founded by Yo-Yo Ma and directed by Laura Freid. To mark the anniversary, the Silk Road Ensemble is performing with Mr. Ma on three continents, giving concerts at prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall in North America and Amsterdam s Concertgebouw in Europe. Most recently, filming took place in Turkey for The Sound of Silk, a full-length documentary about the Silk Road Ensemble being directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville (20 Feet from Stardom), which will premiere in Lead Sponsor Hyosung Corporation and other institutional partners enable Silkroad to continue to promote innovation, education, and cross-cultural understanding around the globe. Silk Road Ensemble Musicians on This Tour Jeffrey Beecher, bass (USA) Nicholas Cords, viola (USA) Sandeep Das, tabla (India) Haruka Fujii, percussion (Japan) Johnny Gandelsman, violin (Israel/Russia) Joseph Gramley, percussion (USA) Colin Jacobsen, violin (USA) Eric Jacobsen, cello, conductor (USA) Kayhan Kalhor, kamancheh (Iran) Dong-Won Kim, jang-go, vocals (Korea) Ji-Hyun Kim, kayagum (Korea) You-Young Kim, viola (Korea) Yo-Yo Ma, cello (USA) Shane Shanahan, percussion (USA) Mark Suter, percussion (Switzerland/USA) Kojiro Umezaki, shakuhachi (Japan) Wu Man, pipa (China) Wu Tong, sheng (China) The Silk Road Ensemble Representing a global array of cultures, Silk Road Ensemble musicians co-create art, performance and ideas. Since 2000, the Silk Road Ensemble has been redefining classical music for 21st-century audiences. By drawing on the rich array of traditions that make up our shared cultural heritage, they create a new musical language a unique encounter between the foreign and the familiar that reflects our many-layered contemporary identities. The ensemble has been called vibrant and virtuosic by the Wall Street Journal, one of the 21st century s great ensembles by the Vancouver Sun, and a roving musical laboratory without walls by the Boston Globe. Audiences and critics throughout Asia, Europe, and North America have embraced these artists passionate about cross-cultural understanding and innovation. The group has recorded five albums, including the most recent CD, A Playlist Without Borders, and Live From Tanglewood DVD. Yo-Yo Ma The many-faceted career of cellist Yo-Yo Ma is testament to his continual search for new ways to communicate with audiences and to his personal desire for artistic growth and renewal. Mr. Ma maintains a balance between his engagements as soloist with orchestras worldwide and his recital and chamber music activities. In addition to founding and serving as artistic director of Silkroad, Mr. Ma is also the Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra s Negaunee Music Institute. He is a UN Messenger of Peace and a member of the President s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. His work focuses on the transformative power music can have in individuals lives, and on increasing the number and variety of opportunities audiences have to experience music in their communities. Page 2 of 3

6 Silkroad Inspired by his curiosity about the world and eager to forge connections across cultures, disciplines, and generations, cellist Yo-Yo Ma founded the nonprofit organization Silkroad in Through performance and the creation of new music, cultural partnerships, education programs, and cross-disciplinary collaborations, Silkroad creates unexpected connections, collaborations, and communities, working at the edge where education, business, and the arts come together to transform the world. Hyosung Corporation is Lead Sponsor of Silkroad, Additional Media Resources For information about Silkroad and the Silk Road Ensemble, and for high-resolution photographs, contact Heidi Koelz at or (617) For more information on the Silk Road Ensemble, visit silkroadproject.org/ensemble or Opus 3 Artists at opus3artists.com. ### Page 3 of 3

7 SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE The Hollywood Reporter September 19, 2015 'The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk road Ensemble': TIFF Review BY JOHN DEFORE A first-rate music film capturing a restless desire to communicate beyond the boundaries of any single idiom, The Music of Strangers watches as Yo-Yo Ma, a giant in the world of Western classical music, puts Bach and Beethoven aside to spend time with his multicultural Silk Road Ensemble. Documentarian Morgan Neville is on quite a roll here, debuting two films at TIFF while his widely praised Best of Enemies still lingers in theatrical release. Though this picture doesn't have the element of discovery that made his Twenty Feet from Stardom a box-office hit and Oscarwinner, it will play very well on HBO and is a rich enough experience to benefit from big-screen bookings. Many viewers will be surprised to hear the cellist speak of never having really committed to music, of having simply "fallen into" the career because his gifts were so obvious in childhood. (We see footage of Leonard Bernstein introducing the prodigy on TV at age 7.) Friend John Williams observes that, for a wunderkind, the challenge is finding ways to keep one's interest up, and early in Ma's career he began addressing that question, teaming with everyone from Hot Club legend Stephane Grappelli to the acrobatic vocalist Bobby McFerrin in his search for what Bernstein called a universal musical language. But Ma found an enduring outlet for his curiosity with the Silk Road Project, gathering virtuosos from Spain to Syria, putting practitioners of very different traditions in rooms together to see what kind of music they'd make together. Neville offers footage from the first meetings of the amorphous group, at Tanglewood in 2000, described at the time as a "Manhattan Project of music." It might have been a one-off experiment, we're told, but the events of the following year made it seem all the more important to build bridges between cultures that know little of each other. The film spends most of its time not on a history of this project frustratingly, we don't even get much insight into how new works are composed for the core performing group but on a handful of its most colorful members. We meet Wu Man, master of the Chinese stringed instrument called the pipa; Damascus-born clarinetist Kinan Azmeh; Iranian exile Kayhan Kalhor, who plays the bowed kamancheh; and the ebullient bagpiper Cristina Pato, "the Jimi Hendrix of Galicia." Viewers who are as curious about music as Ma is will wish, probably, for a little more examination of the exotic instruments we encounter here of how they work, maybe even how they evolved. But the mainstream-minded Neville is smart to focus on the players' stories, which often involve political unrest and reluctant immigration, and on following them around in the world. Kalhor's biography is most poignant: We're with him in May 2009 as he lives and teaches in Iran, telling the camera "I can't imagine moving abroad again." The next month, fallout over political protests forces him to do just that. Woven among these personal narratives, of course, are scenes of music from aching laments to boisterous party jams. This is not a performance film, so unfortunately we rarely hear a complete song. But the spirit of hybrid creativity is infectious enough to inspire the uninitiated to seek out the group's albums. They've made six so far and if the onward-and-upward tone of this idealistic doc is to be believed, they're a long way from stopping.

8 SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE Roger Ebert September 19, 2015 TIFF 2015: "The Music of Strangers" BY TIM HASSANNIA It s bizarre that almost no one has reviewed or talked about The Music of Strangers: Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble made by an Oscar-winning filmmaker, no less in any capacity during the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. What does that say about our appreciation for world music? I m not trying to condemn anyone here, because I d be just as guilty for not eating my cultural vegetables. Indeed, every time I brought up The Music of Strangers with fellow critic friends during TIFF the one conversational tidbit they had to offer was this Clickhole article. Hopefully, more people will actually watch Morgan Neville s film, because it s an in-depth look at a diverse group of musicians with unique origin stories. But its most insightful message is broader, bringing together their shared motivation: the very noble and ambitious mission of changing the world through music. That kind of visionary pursuit is what guides so many of the collective s members. It s why they wake up in the morning, why they keep making music, why they stay in a terrible, thankless profession that has only gotten worse over time. I hope this doesn t sound too cult-ish or wishy-washy, because in the minds of these musicians, bringing positive change is the one thing that keeps them going, and that s hard not to admire. That Neville is able to bring out these earnest confessions from so many of these musicians only makes the film s message that much more potent. These people have asked themselves: What am I contributing to the world with my music? Am I making it better? Or am I wasting my time? The film also works well when it shows the individual struggles of the musicians, like Iranian Kamancheh player Kayhan Kalhor s terrible tragedy following the Iranian revolution and Iran-Iraq war, when he lost his entire family. His desire to live in Iran as a free artist simply cannot be fulfilled due to the oppressive Islamic regime, and it s heartbreaking watching him discuss his homeland, as if it were one of the many family members he has lost. Another example is Galician bagpipe player Cristina Pato, whose impressive and thoroughly unique style enchanted the world, though she found it difficult to stay true to her roots while contributing something new and altogether different to the Silk Road Ensemble, which is based on the philosophy of incorporating a multitude of musical traditions to create something new and innovative. What makes The Music of Strangers so fun to watch, however, and which tempers the seriousness of its subjects, is the diverse range of performance footage at play. Some of it is archival, much of it is beautifully staged across multiple countries and environments. Neville is keenly aware of how to show the musicians kinetic energy onscreen, and he relies on this talent to keep the film consistently alive and moving.

9 SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE Chicago Tribune March 7, 2015 Concert review: Cellist Ma, Silk Road connect the multicultural dots BY JOHN VON RHEIN We are getting old," sighed cellist Yo-Yo Ma at the start of the concert by his Silk Road Ensemble Friday night at Symphony Center, part of the multinational group's 15th anniversary tour. But nobody among the packed Orchestra Hall throng took that remark seriously. And why should they, given the lively interaction between Ma and 16 other accomplished Silk Roadies throughout a program of cross-cultural explorations that was part visual spectacle, part jam session, part showcase of Asian, Near Eastern and Western musical instruments combined in sometimes provocative new ways. Friday's program, a mix of new and previously heard repertory, was something of a homecoming for Ma, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's creative consultant, and his international all-stars, who had spent an entire season, , in residence in Chicago, where they collaborated with a host of local arts and educational institutions. The crowd greeted them like old friends. Every player got his or her turn in the spotlight in "Paramita," an ensemble arrangement by Chinese composer Zhao Lin of his own "Double Concerto for Cello and Sheng," which Ma and sheng (Chinese mouth organ) virtuoso Wu Tong premiered the previous month in New York. The piece is quintessential Silk Road, interweaving Ma's lyrical musings flavored with Chinese-style melodic glissandos and Tong's wistful flourishes through a field of delicate sonorities and piquant tone colors that could be the soundtrack for a Chinese historical epic. Mostly, however, the concert highlighted the spectacular virtuosity of individual players. None of them commanded attention quite as boldly as Silk Road's single female member, Cristina Pato, doubling on gaita (Galician bagpipes) and piano in "The Latina 6/8 Suite," a frisky quadripartite piece that links original music by Edward Perez with traditional folk material from Spain and Latin America, all of it in 6/8 time. I don't know which was more fun to watch and hear the piercing wails of Pato's pipes, her dancing or the easy fluidity with which she and her colleagues traded the intricate rhythms they produced on their diverse instruments, or sometimes just clapped out. Silk Road's bravura shakuhachi (Japanese flute) player Kojiro Umezaki's own "Side In Side Out" laid down a raga-like groove on drums and tambourine before the piece settled into an increasingly exuberant duet between the flute's breathy cries and the furious strumming of Yang Wei's pipa (Chinese lute). The full ensemble's swaying to the amplified beat made quite a sight. The duet that best epitomized Silk Road's aesthetic of creative brotherhood was "Jugalbandi," a quasi-improvised joint effort by two remarkable musicians, Sandeep Das on tabla (Indian drums) and Kayhan Kalhor on kamancheh (Persian

10 Silk Road Ensemble Chicago Tribune March 7, 2015 page 2 of 2 spike fiddle). Kalhor's haunting melodies moved in sinuous directions that evoked the ancient trade routes from which the group takes its name. Das likened his extrasensory rapport with Kalhor to what Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen enjoyed in a golden era of Chicago Bulls history: musical 3-pointers indeed. The fancy rhythmic riffs percussionist Shane Shanahan thumped out on his chest, belly, thighs and face had the crowd erupting in astonished cheers for Sicilian composer Giovanni Sollima's "Taranta Project." Much the same reaction greeted the terrific clarinetist Kinan Azmeh's "Wedding," a joyous evocation of a nuptial ceremony in a Syrian village, which closed the concert. If only the spirit of artistic sharing and peaceful coexistence the Silk Road Ensemble radiates so beautifully through its playing were somehow to permeate the trouble spots of today's world, what a different, and better, planet it would be.

11 SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE Boston Globe March 6, 2015 Silk Road celebrates 15 years of cross-pollination BY JEREMY EICHLER At one point when addressing the crowd at a packed Symphony Hall on Wednesday night, Yo-Yo Ma, standing with members of his Silk Road Ensemble, drew cheers with a simple but emphatic statement: We made it here. He was referring, it seemed, to the sheer feat of arriving in Boston from numerous international locales during the brutal local winter. But one could be forgiven for reading more into a passing comment. Ma founded the Silk Road Ensemble in 2000 to explore various types of music born of cultural cross-pollination, its name inspired by the ancient trading route that linked Asia to the Middle East. To put it mildly, a lot has happened in the world since 2000, and the globalist idealism present at the group s founding feels these days like a product of an earlier cultural moment. Yet the Silk Road s post-9/11 relevance, the importance of its artistic and educational mission, becomes more clear by the year. The cultural dialogue represented by its work may be seen, in its own way, as a forceful rejoinder to the events of the daily news. And happily, 15 years in, the group s creativity and restless curiosity appear undimmed, at least as judged by Wednesday s performance of its newest touring program. Many works bore the fruit of improbable cultural collisions Mahler and Kabuki theater, for instance, or Venezuelan joropo and Galician bagpipes but what s notable is also the way the music never dissolves into a kind of Esperanto goulash. The members of this polyglot band are too steeped in their own traditions to let that happen. Kojiro Umezaki s Side In Side Out swept all 17 players into music of, by turns, hypnotic rhythmic grooves, ritual stillness, and sheer exuberance. Giovanni Sollima s Taranta Project was a wild ride, with interludes of Joseph Gramley s virtuosic body percussion, Ma s cello in growling scordatura tuning, and freewheeling exchanges with three-fourths of the Brooklyn Rider quartet (whose members all play in Silk Road). Edward Perez s The Latina 6/8 Suite brought Spanish, Italian, and Latin American traditions into festive dialogue with help from Cristina Pato s eloquent gaita. Zhao Lin s sinuous Paramita had Ma and the Chinese sheng player Wu Tong in the spotlight. In Jugalbandi, Sandeep Das (tabla) and Kayhan Kalhor (kamancheh) offered a rhythmically complex yet meticulous improvisation, joined by fellow band members. And Kinan Azmeh s Wedding reflected on the joy of nuptials in an imagined Syrian village (and a cosmopolitan one at that, given the makeup of this all-star wedding band). The Damascus-born Azmeh, a clarinetist, dedicated the tune to those couples who had managed to find love in Syria during the last four years of war. The music s keening lines, and the audible commitment of all on stage, seemed to underscore the point.

12 SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE The Washington Post March 2, 2015 One of Yo-Yo Ma s second acts is a force in its own right BY ROBERT S. POHL Having traveled the globe, appeared with the world s leading orchestras and achieved virtually anything a solo cellist could dream of, Yo-Yo Ma has sought a range of second acts. One is the Silk Road Ensemble, a group of international musicians that Ma founded to explore various musical styles and traditions and mingle them with his own. Now, that once-experimental ensemble is a recognized force in its own right. On Sunday, the group appeared at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, presented by Washington Performing Arts, as part of Silk Road s 15th-anniversary tour. How time flies. Some pieces were more successful than others. Kojiro Umezaki s Side In Side Out, an attempt to encompass the entire Silk Road project, played more like an easy-listening pastiche, with a brief interlude performed on Japanese instruments. In all of the works played by the full group, the Western instruments tended to be far louder than their Eastern counterparts, a problem that even careful amplification could not overcome. Far more successful was Giovanni Sollima s Taranta Project, which combined a string quartet with a percussionist. Here, the two sides meshed perfectly, each allowing the other to fully unfold. Another highlight was Sandeep Das and Kayhan Kalhor s Jugalbandi. The two musicians come from different backgrounds India and Iran, respectively but their tabla, a pair of Indian drums, and kamancheh, a stringed Iranian instrument, complemented each other, with a violin and cello completing the sound. The piece begins quietly but builds on a repeated motif to a wild, satisfying conclusion. Closing the concert was Edward Perez s The Latina 6/8 Suite, a romp through Latin music, driven by the gaita a Galician bagpipe. Throughout, Ma remained a quiet presence in the middle of the action. It was time for others to shine.

13 SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE The New York Times February 20, 2015 Review: New York Philharmonic and Yo-Yo Ma s Silk Road Ensemble Join Forces BY JAMES R. OESTREICH At a time when symphony orchestras struggle at the box office and surefire audience draws are few, the cellist Yo-Yo Ma continues to work magic. The New York Philharmonic s three subscription concerts this week, in which the orchestra is joined all but displaced by Mr. Ma s Silk Road Ensemble, were sold out well in advance. And most of the Philharmonic s notoriously conservative subscriber base probably had no clear idea of what was in store. Even those who have followed the Silk Road Project from the beginning in 2000 had yet to hear how well the motley and exotic Silk Road Ensemble would blend with a full symphony orchestra. The project draws musical inspiration from cultures along the Silk Road, the ancient trade route between Asia and Europe. The ensemble, a shape-shifting band of performers from those cultures (and America), consisted here of 17 players, including Mr. Ma. As it happened, there was little question of blend since the Philharmonic was represented before intermission by only two players, briefly, and by its music director, Alan Gilbert. In the opening Fanfare for Gaita, Suona and Brass (2012), by Cristina Pato and Wu Tong, Joseph Alessi, the orchestra s principal trombonist, and Matthew Muckey, its acting principal trumpeter, provided milder responses to the raucous utterances of Ms. Pato on gaita, a Galician bagpipe, and Hu Jianbing on suona, a Chinese trumpetlike oboe. Then the visiting ensemble played a Silk Road Suite, with music of David Bruce, Kojiro Umezaki and Sapo Perapaskero, and selections from Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky s Sacred Signs: Concerto for 13 Musicians (2012). The Yanov-Yanovsky work was written for performance by the Silk Road Ensemble as part of a major commemoration of the 2013 centenary of Stravinsky s The Rite of Spring at the University of North Carolina. Five of its 10 movements were presented here, conducted by Mr. Gilbert. To judge from these, any borrowings from The Rite, or allusions to it, are subtle, and little of its violence remains. Mr. Gilbert also conducted the second half, starting with Strauss s Death and Transfiguration, which oddly, in a Philharmonic program looked in prospect to be an interloper here. Hearing it in place didn t make it feel any more at home. The program concluded with Osvaldo Golijov s Rose of the Winds (2007, revised 2014), which Mr. Golijov, in a preconcert discussion, described as a sort of study in communal activity, whether ritual, mourning, riot or protest. It incorporates field recordings of a Mexican service honoring the Holy Virgin of Guadalupe, and its use of shofars and wind instruments at the end brought the evening to a close as raucous as its beginning.

14 Silk Road Ensemble The New York Times February 20, 2015 page 2 of 2 There was no end of virtuosity among the Silk Road players, most notably Kayhan Kalhor, a consummate virtuoso and soulful singer on the kamancheh, an Iranian spike fiddle. Other stars were Kinan Azmeh, on clarinet; Mr. Umezaki, on shakuhachi, a Japanese bamboo flute; and Wu Man on pipa, a Chinese lute. In the end, the audience heard both more and less of Mr. Ma than it might have expected. He was onstage most of the evening, playing a subservient role within the ensemble, but his few substantial solos sang out proudly and eloquently. The audience, in any case, roared its approval.

15 SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE Harvard Arts Blog April 20, 2014 The Silk Road Ensemble and the biggest possible idea BY ANDREW CHOW Start with a virtuoso celebrity cellist and add instrumentalists from across the globe, and you could end up with We Are the World redux. Instead, the Silk Road Ensemble has been a breathtaking stimulator of cultural diplomacy, education and goodwill during the 16 years since it was founded. The musicians have not only carved out a niche of world music that simply did not exist earlier, but they have served as global leaders in bringing communities and cultures together. Ten members of the Silk Road Ensemble visited Harvard for the annual OFA Arts Leaders reception on April 16 to meet with student leaders in dance, music, theater, visual arts and writing. Through music and conversation, they gave students a glimpse of why their group is so powerful on a global level. The Silk Road Ensemble is fronted by cellist Yo-Yo Ma 76; he is the engine and the manic burst of energy that propels the group into uncharted territories. But for the ensemble s first performance an arrangement actually written for this particular event Ma sat patiently in the back of the group, listening to the many talented musicians around him solo and play off each other. Kojiro Umezaki entered first on his shakuhachi, a Japanese flute, and his solo morphed into a delicate section on the Chinese pipa by Wu Man. After Sandeep Das then set up a groove on the Indian tabla, rest of the group jumped in, chugging out background figures behind Cristina Pato s wailing Galician bagpipe melody. The ensemble may be anchored by Ma, but the talent and experience of each member means that anyone can take the reins at any time. Conversely, each musician can drop into a supporting role as well: The members are always listening and responding, learning and teaching. Since we re passionate people, we re constantly learning, Ma said. As soon as we learn something, we re ready to share it, because then you actually get to empty your mind so you can receive more knowledge. This selfless sharing impulse is apparent not only in their music performance which abounds with eye contact, physical movement and laughter but also in discussion. Members constantly referencing back to what others have previously said, making it clear that their listening ideal is not just rhetoric but influences their whole mode of interaction. It s amazing how unified the sound is, and percussionist Joseph Gramley admits that it took a while for the group to come together as a unit. After all, they have two huge goals: to create a harmonious, interdependent orchestra out of diverse musical parts, and change the world doing so. But the group is able to keep motives in perspective. We don t necessarily always start from the biggest possible idea, rather a place of personal passion, said violist Nick Cords. If we can infect the person next to us in the ensemble with that passion, the project just grows. After the event, I lingered to talk to the musicians, who were gracious and talkative. Ma was surrounded, and by the time I reached him 20 or so minutes after the event ended, he was still as energetic and passionate as he was at the start, going off about how new technologies can enact change and the difference between critical and intuitive thinking. You have the choice of inventing the solutions that brains like mine are too addled to deal with, he said excitedly. It is that choice and talent with which the Silk Road expands its crossroads every year, with the exuberant cellist at the helm.

16 SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE Times of Oman January 31, 2014 Songs of the Silk Road BY DR. PATRICIA GROVES World famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma and his Silk Road Ensemble treated music enthusiasts in Muscat to a cultural voyage across the historic trading route at the Royal Opera House Muscat last week. When we walked across the shining marble of the maidan through the arches of the Royal Opera House into the humming chatter of a crowd that was more numerous and excited than usual, we knew it would be an exceptional evening. The darkened stage was set for sixteen musicians against a backdrop of enormous Oriental gongs waiting to be struck. As the Silk Road musicians streamed on stage and took their seats, I noted three cellists, but it took me a while to recognise among them Yo-yo Ma, who had not set himself apart. This world-famous cellist was just part of the ensemble. From Opposite Ends of the Earth A tall Spanish lady with her hair pulled back in a gesture of command stood up, her voluminous mustard-gold skirt governing the floor as she strode out toward the edge of the stage. Her shoulders and torso were draped with the tasselled hangings of the proud Galician gaita or bagpipe that she carried like the limbs of the goat from which it was made. The lady was none other than Cristina Pato, a famous gaita virtuoso, composer and pianist who holds a doctorate from Rutgers in Musical Arts & Collaborative Piano. Across the proscenium, Cristina Pato faced Wu Tong, a Chinese musician of equal calibre with a small horn-like folk instrument, the suona, dating from the third to fifth centuries in Northern China where it was used on festive and military occasions as well as in requiems. High-pitched with piercing clarity and brightness, Wu Tong's suona proved to be a match for the resounding drone and domineering chromatic brilliance of the gaita. The two musicians from opposite ends of the earth shattered the cool silence of the great concert hall with high, clear notes, unearthly in sound, and such as few in the audience would have heard before. In time, their haunting calls were answered by an equally evocative refrain from the ensemble with melodic song woven wordlessly into the rhythms of the repartee between the gaita and the suona. Titled simply, Fanfare for Gaita and Suona, the composition was enacted as if East and West in the distant dominions of Asia and the far reaches of Europe were declaring from the mountain tops an emphatic 'Joy to the World'. Voice of ancient Japan; The Blue of Persian Turquoise On the heels of the opening triumph came Side Inside Out, an original composition by Japanese-Danish musician, Kojiro Umezaki, virtuosic master of the shakuhachi, an eighth-century bamboo flute with remarkable tonal colour that once was used in Zen Buddhist blowing meditation.

17 Silk Road Ensemble Times of Oman January 31, 2014 page 2 of 2 Charmingly described as analogous to a recipe with musical spices from the Orient - a dash of Mahler's Symphony No 5 and other European orchestral works mixed with dance rhythms and vibrations from electronic music - this complex concoction emerged as a harmonious creation redolent of the many music cultures that inspired it. The usual canons of beauty were exploded by a fresh interpretation of classic Persian music by acclaimed kamancheh artist, Kayhan Kalhor. Ancestor of the violin, the kamancheh has a long neck rising from a bowl-shaped sound chamber made of a gourd wrapped in the skin of a lamb. As a bow is drawn across three silk strings, notes of haunting beauty are heard to resonate before taking flight. With origins in the land of the legendary poet, Omar Khayyam, the composition bears the atmospheric title, Blue as the Turquoise Night of Neyshabur, in reference to a city along the original Silk Road renowned for high-quality turquoise with a striking blue sheen. The score is 'a letter to the world written in music', set in the mystical time between the depths of the night and the radiant emergence of dawn. In a tribute to the music he played, Kayhan Kalhor wore a tunic the jewelled colour of Neyshabur's turquoise. Yo-Yo Ma & the Song of a Swallow After the intermission, the stage was set with a solitary chair. The expectation that Yo-Yo Ma might play apart from the ensemble went rippling through the audience. Sure enough, Yo-Yo Ma walked on stage with his priceless mahoganyorange cello gleaming under lights. The great cellist was not entirely alone. He was accompanied by the suona player, Wu Tong, whose hands were strangely empty. Wu Tong would sing the song of Zanzi, a girl with streaming hair and a slender neck, who soars like a swallow. Wu Tong sang this well-loved Chinese folk song in soul-shattering high notes that seemed to sail through skies of blue with infinite grace, while the cello gave wings the swallows of the world. The Great Cultural Confluence Another star of the ensemble was the Chinese flute (pipa) virtuoso and composer, Wu Man. This diminutive young woman is quite simply the world's premier pipa musician, drawing innovatively on traditions more than two thousand years old. The complex delicacy of her music has a power as great as that of the more dramatic instruments in the ensemble, such as the gaita and suona, or the shakuhachi and the kamanchen. Representing the fine rhythmic traditions of India, top-flight tabla player and composer, Sandeep Das led the ensemble in Tarang, a piece he created 'to bring common elements of rhythm from the Silk Road countries together' in ways he imagined merchants and travellers interacted in days of old. At the end of the concert, Maestro Yo-Yo Ma spoke for the first time, saying that he had "a little surprise" some members of the Royal Symphony Orchestra of Oman would join the ensemble for the encore. The world's most famous cellist graciously acknowledged His Majesty's vision and thanked him for the joy of playing with ROSO and the honour of being invited to Oman's magnificent Royal Opera House. Then, the richly expanded ensemble played a piece freshly composed for the occasion by Wu Man. There could not have been a more perfect way to end the evening than with an Omani element in the great cultural confluence of the Silk Road.

18 YO-YO MA SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE Times of Oman January 25, 2014 Yo-Yo Ma s Silk Road Ensemble enlightens music students BY SARAH MACDONALD World famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma and his Silk Road Ensemble treated music students in Muscat to a cultural voyage across the historic trading route at the Royal Opera House Muscat on Wednesday. The Silk Road Ensemble, a project started by Ma in 2000, brings together musicians and composers who play music and instruments from China to the Mediterranean, as well as other countries connected to the trade route. Sixteen members, including Ma, were in Muscat for a concert at the ROHM, and as part of their stay in Oman, they offered an educational programme for about 150 students. Several of the musicians spoke about the origins of their instruments and gave demonstrations of how they sound. The unfamiliar instruments included a Japanese bamboo flute, called the shakuhachi, a?chinese string instrument called the pipa, and the kamancheh, an Iranian string instrument played with a bow. "Through our instruments we talk to each other, we become friends, we become family. Music connects people and the Silk Road Ensemble is a very good example of how we become united," said tabla player Sandeep Das, who is from India. Ma told the students that as a Paris-born, New York-raised child of Chinese parents, his outlook on the world was different, since he had a variety of perspectives. All members of the Silk Road Ensemble share an interest in looking at the world from different points of view, he added, noting that through their music, they are able to transcend language and cultural barriers. "In music you travel a lot. One of the things I've tried to do is understand what is important to different people. It helps our individual and collective creativity," Ma said. The students, who were from the Royal Oman Symphony Orchestra, the Oud Hobbyist Association, The American International School in Muscat, Indian School Muscat, Sultan Qaboos University's?Department of Music, and those who study with local musician Abdullah Al Riyami, clapped and sang along at times, listened attentively to the sounds of the unfamiliar instruments, and asked many questions about the musicians' experiences. Wala Al Hinai, a viola player and music student at SQU, said the event complemented her education. "I love to learn everything about instruments, the old and new. I liked it so much and I liked what they played," she said.

19 Yo-Yo Ma Silk Road Ensemble Times of Oman January 25, 2014 page 2 of 2 Not all the participants were familiar with the Silk Road Ensemble, but that didn't lessen their appreciation of the event. Nibras Al Mullahi, a member of the Oud Hobbyist Association, had no idea what to expect when he arrived at the ROHM that morning, but was impressed with the music and presentation. "I was surprised to see what they were playing, but it was very nice and new for me. They showed us new instruments and different styles of playing and different rhythms," said Al Mullahi.?

20 YO-YO MA SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE Oman Observer January 24, 2014 Bringing the world together BY MAURICE GENT Yo Yo Ma started his life in the East and is now an American citizen. It has enabled this musician with a mission for bringing people together to carry his message worldwide. This weekend he brought it to Muscat and the Royal Opera House Muscat, where his highly talented group were met with great joy. Just to underline the point of universality musicians from Oman s own Royal Oman Symphony Orchestra were included in one presentation. He describes his comprehensive model as he strives to bring all people and all cultures closer together. Throughout my travel and performances across the world I have had the opportunity to explore a wealth of different cultures and musical voices from the immense passion and grace of Bach s Cello Suites to the ancient Celtic fiddle traditions in Appalachia, to the soulful strains of the bandoneon in one of Argentina s tango cafes. I have met and been guided by musicians, who like my Silk Road Ensemble colleagues share my wonder at the creative potential that exists where cultures intersect.. His musical model, he says, requires curiosity, collaboration and wholehearted enthusiasm. The music we play does not belong to one culture or that of the Silk Route region. Our interest is in exploring cultural diversity. This formula, he says, has allowed the group to play in an astonishing array of locations. His group has played in the United Nations Assembly Hall and the sacred space of Todai-ji Temple in Japan. He sums up the philosopy of his project as careful investigation, joining tradition with new knowledge and innovation. One of the great things for him, he says is forming friendships throughout the world. The response to him in Oman has been very warm indeed. I cannot recall quite such a warm and enthusiastic reception given to any other. One was left aghast wondering just when the applause would ever stop. His group has made both new friends and contacts in Oman, which will certainly endure.

21 SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE Pop Matters January 23, 2014 Review: The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma: A Playlist Without Borders BY BENJAMIN HEDGE OLSON What happens when you take ambitious, virtuosic musicians from nations across Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia and get them all to make music together? Shredding, that s what, and plenty of it. Led by everyone s favorite cello playing shred-master general himself, Yo-Yo Ma, The Silk Road Ensemble s A Playlist Without Borders is here for two reasons: 1.) melting faces via contemporary classical virtuosity fused with numerous different musical traditions found along the ancient silk road and 2.) chewing bubble gum; and let me tell you here folks, they left the bubble gum at home. The skill of these musicians is unquestionable, and is almost, at times, distracting. This is one of those records where you pretty much already know if you are going to be into it before you listen to a single incredibly well-played note. This is music for musicians and serious music nerds; other categories of people might be left in the dust while Yo-Yo and company make Dream Theatre sound like Brittney Spears. I can t help but compare this record to one of my old favorites: the 1990 collaboration between Phillip Glass and Ravi Shankar Passages. That classic record starts with the old East meets West premise, but you get the impression very early on in that record that that tired old dichotomy isn t going to help you much in wrapping your mind around Passages. The listener is forced to see, in a very natural and unforced way, that Glass and Shankar really have more in common than we assumed at first and Passages end up being far more than just two different musical traditions coming together Passages is downright gorgeous; the product of two fearlessly brilliant musicians fusing their music together, like the Skeksis and the Mystics in the Dark Crystal. A Playlist Without Borders often sounds a great deal like Passages, and I would be very skeptical if these folks claimed not to be fans of that collaboration. The Silk Road Ensemble is a more ambitious project than the Shankar/Glass collaboration however, and for that reason it is not as focused or consistent. Because this record fuses so many different styles and traditions, listeners will inevitably like certain parts more than others. Since I am a hopeless sucker for klezmer music and the accordion, the bits of A Playlist Without Borders that highlight accordionist Patrick Farrell make me chortle with pleasure like a guinea pig at feeding time. As I am also a hopeless sucker for traditional Indian music, the bits that focus on the tabla and other South Asian instruments also instigate enjoyment deep in my heart. People raised on Mozart and the Western classical tradition might find some of this stuff a little bit daunting and dissonant, but sometimes it is difficult to reason with those folks, and I don t feel very inclined to try. A Playlist Without Borders sometimes feels too ambitious; like The Silk Road Ensemble is trying to make some grand gesture about music being the international language. The thing is, although the gesture is indeed grand, it remains pretty convincing. After listening to A Playlist Without Borders several dozen times and having these dizzying compositions stuck in my head for days at a time, I am forced to the conclusion that shredding might, in fact, be the international language. This stuff will be pumping out of dorm rooms at the Berklee College of Music and Juilliard for years to come. Rating: 8/10

22 SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE ArtsNash March 24, 2013 Yo-Yo Ma and his Silk Roadies triumph at the Schermerhorn BY JOHN PITCHER Cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the musicians of his Silk Road Ensemble are like master chefs: They really know how to cook. Ma his Silk Roadies were at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center on Saturday night, dishing up some hot international fare. The entire program was arranged for an unusual mix of Western and non-western instruments. Naturally, the exotic sounds they made called to mind the far-away places once explored by Marco Polo. The concert opened with the Silk Road Suite, an extended multi-cultural tour de force featuring Galician, Sicilian, Turkish and Egyptian-inspired music. The first piece in the suite, Wandering Winds, was an improvisation that began with two of the ensemble s musicians playing a mournful duet on traditional Asian wind instruments a sheng (a Chinese vertical reed) and shakuhachi (a Japanese end-blown flute). These searching winds served as a kind of convocation, summoning the rest of the ensemble into the action. Pianist, vocalist and Galician bagpipe player Cristina Pato joined in, singing an impassioned lament that was matched in emotional intensity by Kayhan Kalhor playing the kamancheh a honey-toned, bowed Persian instrument. Ma is founder and artistic director of the Silk Road Ensemble, but he s not the group s frontman. On Saturday, he functioned more like a jazz-band leader, playing occasional solos but mostly stepping aside to let others bask in the limelight. One musician who shined brightly was Yang Wei, who managed to make his pipa or Chinese lute sound jazzy even when he played at blistering speeds. The Silk Road Ensemble specializes in playing a kind of crossover that mixes classical, jazz and world music. It s often prismatically beautiful, but much of the music is also rhythmically spiky and dissonant. Few of the tunes qualify as easy listening. That was certainly the case with the second piece on the set, Jia Daqun s The Prospect of Colored Desert. Arranged for violin, cello, sheng, pipa and percussion, this piece was filled with cello drones, violin slides and rhythmically off-kilter percussion. Ma and his players gave it a colorful and lively reading. The concert s first half ended with a commissioned work from jazz pianist Vijay Iyer called Playlist for an Extreme Occasion. As the title suggests, this work is episodic and intensely dramatic and virtuosic. There are extended sections in the piece that sound like traditional raga, and others that called to mind Terry Riley s minimalist musings. Pato was especially impressive in this piece, playing both piano and Galician bagpipes with color and emotion. Tabla virtuoso Sandeep Das provided dazzling rhythmic support. My favorite piece of the night was Colin Jacobsen s Beloved, do not let me be discouraged, which opened the second half. Throughout this piece, Kalhor played his kamancheh with the immediacy, spontaneity and feeling of a great singer. The Ensemble s string players provided him with gorgeous, shimmering accompaniment. The most intimate piece of the evening was Kojiro Umezaki s Seasons continue, as if none of this ever happened, which was written in response to the tsunami that hit Japan in Scored for solo Japanese flute and electronics, the piece is a heartfelt meditation. Umezaki played it with simplicity and immediacy. The concert ended with three pieces from John Zorn s Book of Angels. These works are a brilliant mix of avant-garde jazz and klezmer, and the Silk Road Ensemble played every note with exuberance. The thunderous ovation that followed resulted in two encores. The performance was a triumph of international cooperation. Now if we could just get the rest of the world to work together like that.

23 SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE Middle East North Africa Financial Network March 22, 2013 Silk Road still links East to West, thanks to Yo-yo Ma BY JENNIFER BRUMMETT RICHMOND, Mar 21, 2013 (Menafn - Richmond Register - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) - -For millenia, the Silk Road linked East to West, as well as to points in the middle. Much more than silk traversed the route from China to Europe. Ideas and culture were carried, along with silk, spices and other prized goods. Ships, trucks, trains and planes, even wired and wireless media, may have supplanted the old Silk Road, but without an interpreter, cultural exchanges can get lost in the chaos and noise. Yo-yo Ma, who brought his Silk Road Ensemble to the EKU Center for the Arts on Wednesday night, demonstrated that he is the master of modern cultural exchange. To those unfamiliar with his fame and accomplishments, you might have mistaken maestro Ma for "just another" member of the ensemble. The group appears organized to highlight the young talent that Ma has discovered and cultivated while introducing unfamiliar music and instruments to new areas of the world. In that regard, Ma is like composer, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, who brought his jazz ensemble to EKU last year. When you're already acclaimed as the world's greatest living cellist as Ma is, you don't have to worry about self promotion. The ensemble's 14 men and one woman proved that Ma is just as good at weaving together disparate instrumentalists and music as he is at playing the cello. Skeptics may have doubted whether the Silk Road Ensemble's music would be well-received by a central Kentucky audience, even in a university town. But, when a master like Yo-yo Ma is pulling or stroking the strings, literally as well as figuratively, any listener will relish the music. That is true whether the music comes from or is inspired by the cultures of China, Japan, India, Persia, Arabia, Turkey, Austria, Spain or England. The Silk Road Ensemble could be called a United Nations of music. And it is much more successful at weaving the world together in harmony than its political counterpart. That was the case Wednesday at the EKU center and a nearly full house couldn't get enough of the ensemble's music, even if many had never heard such sounds or seen such instruments before. Ma's ensemble proves that music, especially when exquisitely performed, can put any listener in touch with a timeless beauty not limited to place or culture. Even when most of the ensemble left the stage to one or two players, coaxing out light or slow, heavy or rapid rhythms from drums, strings, boards or bagpipes, they struck chords that could evoke response from any human soul. If anyone in the audience thought bagpipes are confined to Scotland, they learned that other cultures have their own variations.

24 Silk Road Ensemble Middle East North Africa Financial Network March 22, 2013 page 2 of 2 Ma seemed content to let the younger musicians he is mentoring take the spotlight. He face showed little emotion until the audience, which had been enthusiastic throughout the evening, rewarded the performers with a thunderous ovation at the concert's conclusion. Then he beamed with pride and pleasure. For their encore, the performers and audience seemed to meld together as those on stage and those standing by their sets clapped along to the music's rhythm.

25 SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE The Advocate-Messenger March 22, 2013 Students from Danville region treated to musical experience BY JENNIFER BRUMMETT Gus Crow wasn t quite sure what to expect from the hourlong program Thursday by Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble. Except for the obvious, of course: The 13-year-old expected to hear awesome music. Gus was at Danville High School with his dad, Matthew Hallock, who thought it important for Gus to experience a program with musicians the caliber of Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble. It is an incredible experience to be in the same room (with them), Hallock said. I wanted him to get the feel of that. Students from throughout central Kentucky about assembled in Gravely Hall for a program that meshed music with world history and cultural study. Through music, stories and a focus on musical instruments, students (were) introduced to the historic Silk Road from Eastern Asia to Europe and how that trail bridged geographic and cultural boundaries, and its impact on today s society, explained Mandy Prather and Steve Hoffman of the Norton Center for the Arts, where the ensemble was performing Thursday evening. Prather and Hoffman added the school event that complemented the Norton Center performance was devised for numerous reasons. The special program: 1) provides an opportunity for regional students to get a deeper experience in a program that crosses disciplines and features some of the world s best musicians; 2) is used as a resource by area high school teachers to call upon world-renowned artists to deepen student experiences that meet state and national curriculum standards including history, arts and humanities, social studies and music education; and 3) furthers Centre College s Norton Center for the Arts mission to engage its visiting artists in our community and provide meaningful and relevant experiences that demonstrate the value and importance of the arts. An experience like this, with or without attending the actual evening performance, can have deep and long-lasting impact for its audiences, sparking passion, innovation and understanding of new ideas, they added. Young or old, educator or student, we all gain new insights into ourselves, past history and our futures when engaging with artists. The insights might not solve the world s problems, but they allow information to be processed in a different format than how we traditionally process information from a book or a lecture. In that respect, perhaps impact from activities like the Silk Road Ensemble lecture-demonstration do help address global and personal issues. The students attending the daytime program applauded enthusiastically when the ensemble especially Yo-Yo Ma took the stage. It immediately launched into a tune, and instruments not often seen in a traditional Western orchestral ensemble blended with the cellos, contrabass, violins and viola. The Silk Road Ensemble, which was founded by Yo-Yo Ma, started its journey in Japan. An instrument called the shakuhachi, an end-blown bamboo flute, was introduced to the assemblage. Kojiro Umezaki performed a brief number that was meant to remind listeners of a crane.

26 Silk Road Ensemble The Advocate-Messenger March 2, 2013 page 2 of 2 Next on the musical journey was China, and the first instrument introduced was a bawu, another flute-like bamboo instrument with a reed. Then the sheng was added, providing a sound reminiscent of both an organ and a harmonica. The pipa, a plucked lute, was next. As the pipa moved West, it became the guitar. The fifth instrument added was a popular drum from India called the tabla, followed by the kamancheh from Iran, a fiddle-type instrument that was smaller than a violin but played more like a cello, with it upright. Other instruments introduced to the students were a variety of percussion from countries such as Azerbaijan and Pakistan. Then Cristina Pato told the group about the gaita, the Galician bagpipe, which she said is the national instrument of bagpipe. The program ended with a Q&A and a final musical visit to the Silk Road provided by the world musicians onstage. One of the questions was, Do you ever get nervous? Yo-Yo Ma answered that one. Never, when I m surrounded by my friends. To which the audience replied, Awwwwww.

27 SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE Cleveland Classical March 19, 2013 Review: Tuesday Musical: Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma at E.J. Thomas Hall (March 14) BY NICHOLAS JONES The Silk Road, the ancient trade route between China and the western world, was active for two millennia from before Alexander to the late Middle Ages. Across that highway traveled not only silks and spices but also inventions from gunpowder to printing and ideas from mathematics to Buddhism. The Silk Road Ensemble, founded by American cellist Yo-Yo Ma over a decade ago, takes that East-West route as a metaphor for cultural exchange today, bringing western and non-western musicians into a vibrant, innovative, and deeply collaborative musical experience. The result is an evening of strange and wonderful sounds that might have delighted Marco Polo or Genghis Khan. Thursday s concert by the Silk Road Ensemble featured instruments I had barely known of before the Indian tabla (hand-played, variable-pitch drums with a wide range of timbres), the Chinese pipa (a tall, gourd-bottomed lute), the Persian kamancheh (a long bowed fiddle with amazing flexibility and a human-sounding tone), and the Chinese sheng (a complex mouth organ a sort of cross between a harmonica and a pipe organ). I had heard bagpipes before, but not the remarkable wailing gaita pipes from Galicia in Spain. Prominent in many of the pieces was a shakuhachi, the expressive, note-bending Japanese end-blown flute, beautifully played by Kojiro Umezaki. There were also instruments familiar to me violins and viola, piano, double bass, drum set, and various other orchestral percussion devices. Oh, and there were also two cellos. Yo-Yo Ma greeted the audience with his usual geniality, calling himself half-seriously, the second cellist in the group. Mr. Ma is, of course, not merely the second cello. It is partly his fame that gives this global experiment its draw. And it is his charisma and musicianship that attracts such masters as Yang Wei on the pipa, Kayhan Kalhor on the kamancheh, and Christina Pato on the gaita and piano (interviewed in this website last week). But this is not a group riding on Mr. Ma s coat-tails. They are in their own right superb musicians, and, as a collaborative ensemble, they command a powerful variety of sounds, genres, and musical effects. It seemed strange, however, that of the sixteen players, Ms. Pato was the only woman. The music ranged from quiet solos to complex polyrhythmic passages of extended motivic development, to exuberant, all-out rock-band romps. Nothing was old, nothing was predictable. Among my favorites was a piece by New York-based jazz composer Vijay Iyer called Playlist for an Extreme Occasion. The playlist idea (as in ipods) was a contemporary take on the concept of the Baroque suite a set of independent but related movements, each with its own character. There was a bagpipe solo; a piano section with quiet meditation as in a melody by Keith Jarrett; and even a section featuring the multi-voiced Chinese mouth organ. A selection of four pieces based on gypsy (or Roma ) music sounded oddly familiar; in the classical world, we have often heard Haydn and Liszt writing such tunes. But who would have thought that gypsy music would include a

28 Silk Road Ensemble Cleveland Classical March 19, 2013 page 2 of 2 thrilling solo on the tabla, an instrument from India? It made sense, when we realized from the program notes that the gypsies began their long diaspora in Rajasthan, in northern India. More importantly, it made great musical sense, especially in the hands of such a master drummer as Sandeep Das. The program ended with a high-energy piece by the American John Zorn, more known as an avant-garde composer than in the genres of world music. With its echoes of klezmer, Zorn s Suite from Book of Angels had a melancholy festivity that made a perfect vehicle for virtuosic solo work. The concert was presented by the Tuesday Musical Association at E. J. Thomas Hall in Akron, which was full to the brim with a very appreciative audience, including a number of young people. Members of the ensemble had spent the day with school children, generously sponsored by the outreach funds of the Tuesday Musical Association. I wonder how many youngsters in local bands and orchestra programs will now trade their clarinets for shakuhachis. Or perhaps Educators Music will soon find themselves with a sudden demand for kamanchehs? Though the evening was fascinating, enjoyable, and informative, I kept wishing that we could have heard the Silk Road Ensemble in a smaller venue, without the intrusive amplification that the big hall made necessary. I suppose that, as usual, economic necessity drives the need for a group like this to be presented in cavernous halls like E. J. Thomas. The subtle timbres and the improvisatory collaborations of these fine players deserve to be heard by the ear itself, like the best chamber music.

29 SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE Indiana Daily Student March 18, 2013 Yo-Yo Ma reunites with The Silk Road Ensemble for tour BY CAROLYN CROWCROFT Renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma and members of The Silk Road Ensemble took to the stage at the IU Auditorium and were welcomed by the auditorium s sold-out crowd Monday night. The ensemble, founded by Ma in 2000, performed six classical pieces that reflected the musical and cultural diversity of the ensemble s 16 members. The group opened with Side In Side Out, composed by Japanese musician Kojiro Umezaki, who plays the shakuachi, a Japanese flute, in the orchestra. The number featured Umezaki as well as other members of the group and provided an energetic start to the night. A fun-loving energy translated to the performance while the members addressed the audience. Cellist Eric Jacobsen playfully referred to himself as the other cellist in the group and expressed how happy the ensemble was to be back in Bloomington. The second piece, Atashgah, was written by another ensemble member, violinist Colin Jacobsen. The piece was inspired by Jacobsen s visit to Iran in 2004, when he heard Iranian kamancheh player and Silk Road member Kayhan Kalhor play. The piece was written to feature the kamancheh as well as Western strings. The next musical performance followed with Silk Road Suite, which featured four movements: Rustem, Rajasthani Traditional, Kali Sara and Turceasca. The piece featured a number of composers, and ensemble member Sandeep Das acted as arranger on Rajasthani Traditional. The ensemble s fourth piece, Playlist for an Extreme Occasion, was written for them in 2012 by New York composer and jazz pianist Vijay Iyer. In keeping with the group s mission to promote the appreciation of culture and the arts across the world, the Silk Road Ensemble performed a Japanese piece, Tsuru no Ongaeshi. Meaning Repayment from a Crane, the song was composed by Umezaki and inspired by a classic Japanese story of the same name. The performance ended with Suite from Book of Angels, a compilation of various short pieces by American composer John Zorn that the group put its own spin on by arranging them itself. Kalhor s arrangement made its debut during the recent concert tour. The Silk Road Ensemble features members from 20 countries all over the world, including Asia, Europe and the Americas. The group, under Ma s artistic direction, strives to explore contemporary music from each other s countries and celebrate both the similarities and differences that encompass world music. Together, The Silk Road Ensemble has toured around the world and recorded and released five albums. The 2011 record Off the Map received a Grammy nomination for Best Classical Crossover Album. The attraction of Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble was enough to get people from outside Indiana to turn up to the IU Auditorium.

30 Silk Road Ensemble Indiana Daily Student March 18, 2013 page 2 of 2 Christine Kim, a student at the University of Minnesota, said she decided to come after her friend, who goes to IU, offered her tickets. I like Yo-Yo Ma, Kim said. He s an enthusiastic musician. I really want to hear his music. The auditorium s full house also held music lovers who shared the ensemble s appreciation for world music. Junior Elizabeth McClary is an India studies and East Asian languages and cultures major at IU. She said she is fascinated by world cultures, which in part drew her to the show Monday night. An event like this is right up my alley, McClary said. I like fusion music, and I think projects like this are really interesting.

31 SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE Akron Beacon Journal March 17, 2013 Review: Silk Road Ensemble exudes joy at Tuesday Musical concert BY KERRY CLAWSON Thursday night, the Silk Road Ensemble brought world cultures together in an exhilarating synthesis of music at E.J. Thomas Hall. The acclaimed international ensemble, led by cello virtuoso Yo-Yo Ma, last performed in Akron in 2004 with Tuesday Musical and has since played as part of the summer Blossom Music Festival. Tuesday Musical patrons heard Ma perform solo at E.J. Thomas Hall in 2007, and Thursday night they packed even the upper balcony to hear more of Ma in collaboration with 14 other master musicians from around the world. It was a signature program for Tuesday Musical, celebrating its 125th anniversary, and the whole concert felt like a celebration, from the full-throttle abandon of Roma gypsy music to the joy of Playlist for an Extreme Occasion, written by jazz pianist and composer Vijay Iyer last year for the ensemble. The Akron performance marked the start of the Silk Road Ensemble s six-city concert tour that ends March 23 in Nashville, Tenn. The affable Ma let his colleagues do most of the narration, referring to himself as the other cellist in the group along with Eric Jacobsen. Earlier, Ma had excused himself from an afternoon outreach program with 500 students at E.J. Thomas Hall because he wasn t feeling well. By Thursday night, though, he appeared to be in fine form. The Silk Road Ensemble integrates the sounds of string instruments familiar to Westerners, including the contrabass, cello, viola and violin, with ancient woodwind and string instruments from Europe, Asia and the Middle East. The close-knit, East-meets-West ensemble blended as one with masterful fluidity and its smiling members exhibited an obvious joy in sharing their cultural traditions. The Silk Road a historic series of land and sea trade routes that allowed interaction among cultural groups serves as a metaphor for this ensemble, which strives to connect artists and audiences around the world. The Akron program began with Side In Side Out by shakuhachi (Japanese flute) player Kojiro Umezaki, which he wrote to feature an assortment of instruments from the 15-member ensemble. The eclectic piece, being played for an audience for only the second time ever, introduced a number of the instruments distinctive sounds and featured an extended duet between Umezaki and Yang Wei on pipa, a plucked Chinese lute. The music shifted gears for the more intimate, mysterious Atashgah. The ancient-sounding strains were written by violinist Colin Jacobsen after he visited kamancheh player Kayhan Kalhor s homeland in Iran and visited a 3,000-yearold fire temple, or atashgah. Jacobsen said the ensemble s goal was to capture a sense of time and place, and for a whole evening, they swept the Akron audience to other worlds. That included the lusty folk music of the Roma, or gypsies of Romania, played as part of a Silk Road Suite that had lively Galician bagpipe player Christina Pato, the only woman in the group, dancing and yelling out with exuberance. Who would have thought that you could jam on the bagpipe? The charismatic Pato did just that in the wildly jazzy Playlist for an Extreme Occasion, where she actually played the bagpipe and piano simultaneously. The piece also

32 Silk Road Ensemble Akron Beacon Journal March 17, 2013 page 2 of 2 featured the unexpectedly exciting tones of Hu Jianbing on the sheng, a seventeen-pipe Chinese reed instrument that has sustaining, organ-like sounds. Indian table player Sandeep Das said performing Playlist allows the ensemble to improvise, creating a different musical recipe every night. In one of the most beautiful moments on the program, the dynamic Umezaki served as the narrator for Tsuru no Ongaeshi, telling the ancient Japanese folk tale Repayment from a Crane. It was a treat to see the flute player and Ma, with the help of percussionist Shanahan, bringing this story to life through their instruments, beginning with the sound of snow falling. Have you heard the sound of snow falling? Umezaki asked. In this tale, a crane caught in a trap is freed by a man and the crane transforms into a girl, who goes to the man s house. As the girl knocked on the door, Ma went tap-tap-tap on the body of his cello. The girl, who is adopted by the man and his wife, secretly weaves a magical, magnificent fabric to help her new parents out financially, but at great cost. This celebration was a night of contrasts, ending the program with the ensemble presenting variations on avant-garde composer John Zorn s Suite from Book of Angels. Layers of funky, syncopated rhythms were performed in arrangements done by ensemble members Shane Shanahan (percussion), Shanir Blumenkranz, who wasn t present, and Pato. The Silk Road Ensemble offered two encores, the first a duet between virtuosos Kalhor and Das, where the two were deeply attuned to each other in rhythmic dialogue. For the final encore, whose title was not announced, the whole ensemble jammed, with the beaming Ma switching to percussion.

33 SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE AnnArbor.com March 17, 2013 Yo-Yo Ma, Silk Road Ensemble bring a world of amazing music to Hill Auditorium BY SUSAN ISAACS NISBETT Some time ago, a pianist buddy of mine went to the train station to pick up a cellist she was to play with. Unable to find her, she went to a gas station nearby and asked if anyone there had seen a woman with a cello. What s a cello? asked the person she questioned. Post-superstar cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who may be the best proselytizer ever for an instrument, that s an outmoded question. And with shows like Saturday evening s by Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, the questions: What s a kamancheh? What s a shakuhachi? What s a gaita? may be equally done for. Promoting the cross-fertilization of the world s cultures, musical and otherwise, is the goal of the Silk Road Project Ma has directed since he founded it in Saturday he and ensemble members from 8 countries were on hand not only to play for rapturous patrons in a sold-out Hill Auditorium, but to receive the University Musical Society Distinguished Artist Award, which goes to Ma and the Silk Road Project this year. This year marks the 18th that UMS has given out the award to individuals and ensembles of international stature who also have strong ties to the performance scene here. And Saturday s concert was part of a broader event, the Ford Honors Program and Gala, proceeds from which support UMS education and community engagement activities. The concert marked Ma s 11th UMS appearance; the Silk Road ensemble last appeared here for two performances in Like the world travelers they are, Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble are never twice the same. So the opening Silk Road Suite, an ensemble staple that introduces the players and their instruments in a sort of musical road trip, had new elements since their last visit here, like Giovanni Sollima s La Camera Bianca. And no one could have minded rehearing its riotous and rhythmically exhilarating conclusion, the Turceasca that is the signature piece of the amazing gypsy band Taraf de Haidouks. With the addition of Cristina Pato, a bagpiper like no other she plays and looks like a siren; that girl can wail! the piece took on a wilder character yet. It s probably true that a lot of folks in the audience came to see (and hear) Ma. And see him and hear him we did. But it was Ma as Member of the Band who was on stage, just jamming and having a wonderful time, as were they all. That wasn t really a disappointment in this musically rich concert. In part, that s because as much as we like to hear Ma as soloist, we do know what a cello sounds like and looks like. Ditto a violin, a viola or a bass. But the bamboo flute (shakuhachi), with its sound of the wind, is less familiar. So, too, the Persian kamancheh, an upright fiddle with a plaintively beautiful sound that s different from the strings in our Western orchestral family. And there s the sheng, a mouth organ like a mini-cathedral you can play; and the pipa, a Chinese lute; and the India tabla drums.

34 Silk Road Ensemble AnnArbor.com March 17, 2013 page 2 of 2 And the Silk Road Ensemble offers a chance to hear them all, Western and Eastern, alone and in concert, in music that draws on traditional sources and on the talents of composers within the ensemble and without who make new works for them so that the beat goes on. It s the conjunction of all these instruments, the rubbing up against each other of traditions as diverse as American jazz and Indian ragas (as in Vijay Iyer s Playlist for an Extreme Occasion ), that give spice to so many of the compositions the Silk Road Ensemble plays. In Jia Daquin s The Prospect of Colored Desert, percussionist (and University of Michigan music faculty member) Joe Gramley, mallets in hand at the xylophone, created a magical foundation on which pipa and sheng and cello and violin joined together in a sort of operatic dance a Chinese operatic dance. One wanted to see the film that would go along with the music. The evening s most beautiful work, perhaps, was ensemble member Colin Jacobsen s composition Beloved, do not let me be discouraged, in which the Persian kamancheh, and its extraordinary player, Kayhan Kalhor, played a starring role. Slowly, other instruments, including Jacobsen s violin, add their voices to the kamancheh s longing, songlike melody, ringing variations on its theme until the tempo quickens and we suddenly find ourselves rehearing the song as an upbeat folk tune from what country, who can tell? and then with jazzy accents. Three pieces from John Zorn s Book of Angels, arranged for the ensemble by three of its members (Shane Shanahan; Johnny Gandelsman; and Pato), concluded the concert; fabulous to listen to, they also told you just about everything you needed to know about the group. Like how sensuous and sultry their music can be when, in playing the music of a downtown New York composer, they use bamboo flute and kamancheh and pipa and bass to turn Hill into a sort of imaginary Silk Road night club for a moment or two. Like how a pipa player can trade plucking his instrument for clapping his hands like the best flamenco backup man why not, when a player like Pato is turning her bagpipe into the best trumpet ever, all the while belly dancing to the beat? You ask: if bamboo flute and bass, and pipa and Western percussion can all get along, and invent new stuff so that they make good music together, why can t we do the same in the world? That may be just the point of the Silk Road Ensemble. And it may be why, in a wild round-dance of an encore, Ma was happy to trade his cello for a tambourine.

35 SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE Cleveland Classical March 12, 2013 Tuesday Musical: Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble conversations with Yang Wei, Johnny Gandelsman & Christina Pato BY MIKE TELIN When cellist Yo-Yo Ma decided in 1998 to launch a collaborative enterprise to promote artistic exchanges between cultures, he named it The Silk Road Project after the 4,000-some miles of ancient trade routes that for two millennia linked parts of Asia with Europe and encouraged the trading of art, knowledge, philosophy and religion as well as silk and other commercial goods. Two years later, The Silk Road Project spawned The Silk Road Ensemble, a collective of some sixty performers and composers from more than twenty countries. Fifteen musicians from eight of those countries, including Yo-Yo Ma, are currently on tour to six cities in the United States, and will perform on the Tuesday Musical Association Series at E.J. Thomas Hall in Akron on Thursday, March 14 at 7:30 pm. We spoke with three of them, pipa (Chinese lute) player Yang Wei, violinist Johnny Gandelsman and gaita (Galician bagpipes) player Christina Pato (who will also play piano) to ask how they first became involved in the Silk Road Ensemble and to glean some of their insights into what makes it tick. Born in Moscow, violinist Johnny Gandelsman came to the United States in 1995 to study at the Curtis Institute of Music. He was introduced to Silk Road through friends Colin and Eric Jacobsen and Nicholas Chords. We played chamber music together and had a lot of reading parties. Colin and Nick were part of the first Silk Road Ensemble workshop in 2000 at Tanglewood. Then Gandelsman filled in for Colin Jacobsen for a Silk Road appearance at the Folklife Festival in Washington D.C. the following year. After that he became more of a consistent member and Eric joined the Ensemble shortly after that. By they were all members. Gandelsman, Chords and the Jacobsen brothers would go on to form the acclaimed string quartet Brooklyn Rider and the Knights Chamber Orchestra. Random occurrences led Spanish-born Christina Pato in the direction of Silk Road. But that is the way things usually happen. I was studying at Rutgers University, earning my doctorate in collaborative piano. Osvaldo Golijov came to give a master class, and I was the pianist assigned to the master class. His music was very beautiful but afterwards we started talking about my other life as a bagpiper. This was in 2006, and a few months after that he invited me to a workshop that the Silk Road Ensemble was doing at Tanglewood. Pato says that was the turning point in her life. Golijov decided to include the bagpipe in one of the pieces he was writing for the ensemble, and her first concert with Silk Road took place at Carnegie Hall in Born in China, Yang Wei began playing classical Chinese instruments at the age of six, and came to the United States in On the recommendation of composer Bright Sheng, one of Silk Road's advisors, he was invited for an audition. I remember receiving my audition music by FedEx at my home in Chicago. I played it for them over the telephone and they said, 'Thank you'. Then they called back and said, 'OK, you're in.' Wei started in 2000 with the Tanglewood workshops where he was surprised to meet so many composers from China. Wei looks forward to performing the repertoire on this Silk Road Ensemble tour. There is one cool piece of Gypsy music called Turceasca, arranged by Osvaldo Golijov & Ljova, and I like it very much. It s very energetic and the rhythms are so interesting. The fun thing for me is that there will be a string quintet.

36 Silk Road Ensemble Cleveland Classical March 12, 2013 page 2 of 3 The first time he played the piece he says it was difficult to figure out what was happening. But after listening to the quintet play it a few times he began to understand the mindset of the piece. I look forward to working with them again. He has became very fond of traditional gypsy music and he looks forward to playing the tunes Kali Sara and Rustem. For me these are really interesting. When I was learning these pieces I related them to jazz. I think these are the most rhythmically energetic pieces I have learned. As members of the ensemble, all three of the musicians came to admire Yo-Yo Ma's role as its catalyst and source of inspiration. Yo-Yo has such a great musical sense, Wei says. I remember playing a traditional piece for him and what he told me was not only about music but about what my body was doing while I played. We are all open because he is so open. He's seen so many kinds of music. The importance of education is very strong and the ensemble is constantly scheduling educational activities. Watching Yo-Yo work has been an inspiration to all of us. He is constantly there worrying about everything, Pato says. Even in the middle of a long tour, he arrives at schools at 9 am to make things happen. He works with all the children and brings joy and happiness. It's great to have a mentor like him. Gandelsman mentions Ma's inspiring ideas on collaboration. Yo-Yo often talks about how if you're working with someone and you get to know something that is important to them and learn from their culture, you are much closer to understanding and to be able to truly collaborate. We have had a chance to visit each other's homes. Some have had the chance to visit Iran and the home of kamancheh player Kayhan Kalhor. That was a life-changing experience for people like Nick and Colin. What has Gandelsman learned most from the experience? That s a big question. We ve learned to be open to each other's cultures, and we've learned how to collaborate. We've also learned about programming concerts and how to communicate with the audience. Before I became a member of the Silk Road Ensemble, being able to stand on stage and talk about what we are doing was not something that I felt comfortable with. Being part of the ensemble has changed Christina Pato's life in a meaningful way. We all came [to the group] through organic connections. For example, in my case Osvaldo saw something in me that he wanted to share. She says that the creative environment, which has a sense of sharing, creating and freedom, gives them all the ability to connect to one another as musicians. Because I have always had this [dual] life, one as a collaborative pianist and one as a folk musician, the ensemble really showed me that I could feel the same freedom in traditional music that I now feel in contemporary music. Joining Silk Road has expanded everyone's musical horizons. It has been a great opportunity to meet so many musicians, Wei says. We all listen to and accept one another. Although Gandelsman grew up in a musical family, what he learned through Silk Road has transformed him. When I came to the States I would have never thought that I would be able to go on stage and improvise in a Persian mode, or play with an Indian tabla master and actually know a little bit about what he was doing. So I would say it s been a decade of learning and continuously being surprised. It was a beautiful turning point, Pato says, because in the ensemble everyone is encouraged to bring what they think is musically interesting. We try to create something together, which makes it the most democratic ensemble that I know. Christina Pato Up Close Christina Pato grew up the youngest of four sisters and began playing the gaita, the traditional Galician bagpipes, when she was four years old. She says the gaita plays a very important role in Galician society. It s like the national instrument. When I was four, my sisters were already playing the instrument, so it was the typical thing of the youngest sister always wanting to do whatever your sisters are doing. And when my sisters started to play the piano I did too.

37 Silk Road Ensemble Cleveland Classical March 12, 2013 page 3 of 3 Pato reminds us that bagpipes can be found all around the world: wherever there was a shepherd there was a bagpipe. She points out that everybody has a completely different image of what a bagpipe is, and that many people in North America only have the Celtic image in their mind. She laughs; People do have preconceived notions about what it means to be a bagpiper. I just did a show yesterday with my band and for the first five minutes you could see the audience thinking, What is that? She adds that many audience members are often confused to see a woman playing the bagpipes. But is it unusual for Galician women to play the pipes? Pato answers with a quick NO! In the city of my birth there are around 100,000 people, and 10,000 are enrolled in the bagpiper school. It is a very popular instrument; every time people are together there is a bagpipe. The thing that keeps me connected with the instrument is that for me the sound is very powerful in a beautiful way. While many people play the instrument, finding consensus about the age of the instrument is not easy. Now that really depends on whom you ask, but it is certainly measured in thousands of years. Although there are documents that go back to the 13th century, she says that date only marks when the instrument began to appear in the history books. Christina Pato is also a lover of jazz; That is the beautiful thing; being part of the Silk Road Ensemble has taught me a lot about improvisation. After moving to New York, she re-connected with a long time Galician friend, Victor Prieto, a jazz accordionist, which is not a common instrument in jazz either. She says that Prieto gave her the needed strength to start her jazz career. I always tried to connect to jazz through my piano playing as well. But, I happen to play the bagpipes and I happen to love jazz so it s really about putting all of the things I love together. Pato enthusiastically points out that there are a lot of Silk Road Ensemble members on her new CD, Migrations: Roots & Jazz in NYC. Inspired by her Silk Road experiences, Pato founded the Galician Connection festival in her home region of Spain. The festival s focus is mentoring young musicians by bringing together established musicians from many cultures. I think it s because of Yo-Yo s inspiration; he is one of the most generous artists I have ever met. She says his way of sharing music was very inspiring to her. He always giving us the opportunity to keep working on our own paths. Like the Silk Road Ensemble, we all come from different cultures and musical languages.

38 SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE AnnArbor.com March 11, 2013 Yo-Yo Ma talks about Hill Auditorium program, Silk Road Project - and UMS BY SUSAN ISAACS NISBETT Have culture; will travel. When superstar cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble return to Hill Auditorium Saturday evening both to play and for Ma and the Silk Road Project to receive the University Musical Society Distinguished Artist Award as part of the 18th annual Ford Honors Program it s with 15 musicians from 8 different countries. Their packs will be fully loaded with musical traditions from Japan to Persia, India to Italy, and hybrids from everywhere in between. If the ensemble s programs take their cue from the mixing of cultures on the ancient Silk Road, they also reflect the cross-fertilization our present world permits. said Ma in a recent phone interview from Cambridge, Mass. You get musicians like Iranian kamancheh virtuoso Kayhan Kalhor, Galician gaita player Cristina Pato and Indian tabla master Sandeep Das coming together. You get a composer and shakuhachi player like Kojiro Umezaki Danish father; Japanese mother; raised in Tokyo, teaching in California on the same bill as John Zorn, a downtown American composer whose Suite from Book of Angels the ensemble has arranged. And you get highly interesting contradictions. So basically, here s something weird, so on the one hand a lot of the music we play comes from very ancient sources, said Ma, but the other part is that the oldest piece of music of music we re playing is 13 years old. We like mixing tradition and innovation. They sit well together. The idea of constant evolution in culture is as necessary as in nature. Ma notes that four of the pieces on the current program originated with ensemble members. The contemporary part of our program is a testament to the fact of our present world, he said. And, as he wrote aptly in materials about the group, What better introduction to the Ensemble than through music inspired by our world travels together and the friendships we have formed along the way? Ma, who functions as the ensemble s artistic director, founded the Silk Road Project in 1998 to encourage deeper understanding of other cultures and beliefs. It has been a time-consuming and highly satisfying adventure, he said. It makes me aware of all the things that I don t know, he said. For one thing, I m sorry to say I m the oldest guy in the group by probably a good 15 years, a generation apart. And that s really a great thing. It keeps me evolving. The evolution has fed back not only into the ensemble but into Ma s more traditional classical music making. For a while, I was playing fewer concertos because I was spending so much time on the survival of the group. I had to pay a lot of attention to that, so I couldn t play a lot of concertos. Now I m playing a lot more concertos again, and what I discovered is that I am no longer satisfied with saying, This is how I did it. My ears are better. Maybe I play a little more out of tune. But I demand that the ear and the physicality of the playing are a better match. My ear is demanding more. I will not play a phrase because the notes are there and I m OK with it.

39 Silk Road Ensemble AnnArbor.com March 11, 2013 page 2 of 2 "Where s the love? What s driving this phrase? Is there enough impetus, energy; am I in the right state of mind? We get lazy because we have it technically, and we stop thinking about why it is there. I m more demanding now. I see that in working out the style of a piece, I have to ask all those questions. Saturday s program marks Ma s 11th appearance in Ann Arbor under UMS auspices. The performances include orchestral dates, solo recitals and two 2009 concerts with the Silk Road Ensemble. He is thrilled to return and to be the recipient, along with the project he directs, of the UMS Distinguished Artist Award. UMS and the University of Michigan are extraordinary, he said. It s a community of students, teachers and professors and just, you know, brilliant people who know how to be individuals but also how to work in a group, he said. So, in that sense, in terms of value-driven excellence, it s such an honor to be associated with that institution. We try to be the same as an arts organization.

40 SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE The Bershire Eagle June 26, 2012 Silk Road brings it home at Tanglewood BY ANDREW L. PINCUS LENOX -- It's been 12 years since the Silk Road Ensemble had its birth at Tanglewood, Yo-Yo Ma told the audience, "and now we're teenagers, so watch out!" Like teenagers, Ma's 17-member troupe was rambunctious on its return to Tangle wood on Friday night -- rambunctious, athletic and just about manic. All that energy, all that drumming, all that jamming, vocalizing and danc ing, all those improvisations, all those costumes and colorful shirts, all those whoops, wails and wiggles: whew. Twelve years ago, the Silk Road Ensemble was a ragtag workshop group. Honed by residencies (including returns to Tanglewood) along with scholarly and educational activities, the performances have developed into a polished, almost slick show, complete with amplification and lighting effects. Teeming virtuosity marked each performance. Probing movie cameras -- they came from the West Coast and Europe, Ma said -- furnished a distracting side show of their own. The Ozawa Hall program, repeated Sunday night, informally opened the Tanglewood season. As is usual for this international assemblage of performers, composers and arrangers, the repertoire ranged across the old trading route from southern Europe to China. The most riveting piece came from India: "Shristi," by the Indian tabla (drum) master Sandeep Das. He joined four other percussionists in his re-creation of the story of Shiva's creation of the universe. The driving yet intricate rhythms suggested a crowded, joyous universe, not the largely empty one given us by astronomers. Another piece, "Ascending Bird," based on a Persian folk melody, retold the Icarus-like Persian story of a bird that flies into the sun. Globalization existed in myth long before corporations discovered its benefits. Actually, the evening's nine extended pieces eluded categories such as "most riveting." Most were arrangements of traditional pieces, and -- especially in these wild, often improvisatory performances -- all seemed to be in an exotic language sometimes as much modern as ancient, Western as Eastern. For example: The Sicilian Giovanni Sollima's "Taranta Project," a commission, mixed a traditional string quartet with heavy percussion, which led to a bout of frenetic body-drumming by Joseph Gramley. Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky, an Uzbek, composed an unearthly "ghost" trio, "Qasida," for Ma, on the cello, and Kayhan Kalhor, a master of the kamancheh (Persian fiddle). The "ghost" was a tape of Kalhor's own melodies, on which the live players improvised. The finale was "Turceasca," an arrangement of Gypsy tunes that got more and more crazed until pandemonium set in. For a bonus, a bagpiper (female) and player (male) of the sheng, or Chinese mouth organ, faced off in a witty lovers' spat. Quiet moments were few, but when they came, Wu Man, soloed beguilingly the on the pipa (Chinese lute). In spoken interludes, Ma paid tribute to Tanglewood for its "rootedness and openness" in welcoming his troupe both then and now. These are qualities, he said, that the Silk Road Ensemble also embodies. Don't forget the energy.

41 SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE Harvard Gazette September 27, 2011 On the Silk Road again BY COLLEEN WALSH Musicians, Business School students mine their shared traits It wasn t your average day in the expansive Spangler lounge at Harvard Business School (HBS). The sounds of a Galician bagpipe, a conch shell, a tambourine, and a host of other instruments shattered the hall s typically hushed atmosphere to the delight of a large lunchtime crowd of potential future entrepreneurs and CEOs. Clad in a dark blue pinstripe suit, HBS Dean Nitin Nohria happily plunked himself on the floor, the only place left to sit, and quickly began tapping his foot to an infectious beat as members of the Silk Road Ensemble partook in a brief performance and discussion with the audience. The event was part of the ensemble s weeklong residency at Harvard. Affiliated with the University since 2005, the group, made up of internationally renowned performers and composers from more than 20 countries and led by celebrated cellist and Harvard alumnus Yo-Yo Ma, moved to its North Harvard Street headquarters in Allston last year. The residency is part of a five-year collaboration between Harvard and the Silk Road Project, a nonprofit inspired by the cultural traditions of the ancient Eurasian Silk Road trade routes that connected east with west. The project promotes learning through the arts. For the next several years, the ensemble will present a series of performances, workshops, and collaborations with local arts, cultural, and educational institutions. In collaborating with HBS, the ensemble hopes to engage with and learn from future business leaders focused on social entrepreneurship. It also aims to explore the intersection between the worlds of business and the arts, and the notion of cultural entrepreneurship. The idea for it grew out of a meeting between Laura Freid, the Silk Road Project s chief executive officer and executive director, and Nohria, who discussed the importance of common interests and the meaning of creating value in society, said Ma, the project s founder and artistic director. We always say that in music the tip of the iceberg is the sound, but what s behind the sound is the music, which is actually values, said Ma. He said that the ensemble will work with the Business School and other Schools at Harvard to identify those values. Then the things that you do, Ma said, are the things that make those values visible. During the week, the ensemble also helped Harvard undergraduates to create music. Last Saturday, student composers met with members of the ensemble and were introduced to some of the group s instruments, including a gaita, a Galician bagpipe; a shakuhachi, a Japanese bamboo flute; and a jang-go, a Korean hourglass drum. The young composers then worked overnight creating compositions based on either traditional melodies from India or Galicia, Spain. On Sunday, the students reconvened to work on their scores with support and input from ensemble members.

42 Silk Road Ensemble Harvard Gazette September 27, 2011 page 2 of 2 For freshman George Meyer, being up all night was a small price to pay for creating a composition with the help of such gifted musicians. Meyer, a talented violinist from Nashville who has a classical music background but is also steeped in the bluegrass tradition, called the collaboration thrilling. They have composers who are working on their own pieces with the group right now, so we got to work with them as we were doing the same thing. It was intense, said Meyer, but very fun. It s a fun challenge to deal with something as loud as the bagpipes and as soft as some of the other instruments like the kamancheh, a bowed Persian instrument. Some student performers also learned pieces from the group s non-western repertoire, which they will perform with the ensemble during a sold-out concert at Harvard s New College Theatre tonight at 7, an event presented by the Office of the President. Ma and Homi Bhabha, director of the Mahindra Humanities Center, will give a pre-concert talk on neighborliness and the arts. One of our guiding principles at the Silk Road Project is that the best teachers are also the best learners, said Freid. So it has been truly rewarding to watch the fluid dynamic of teaching and learning unfold this week in our collaboration with Harvard undergraduates. We were especially excited to work with students in creating new arrangements for the ensemble. In this way, we are hoping to encourage the student body to become an active part of our roving creative laboratory. Later this week, members of the ensemble will also take part in a class called The Arts In Education: Learning In and Through the Arts at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The class is taught by Steve Seidel, director of the School s Arts in Education Program. The group will return to Harvard in January for an intensive workshop.

43 THE SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE The New York Times June 9, 2011 Trolling Heaven and Earth for Sounds BY JAMES R. OESTREICH As cultures blend, as art forms meld with one another and with science and other disciplines, all is convergence, and the cellist Yo-Yo Ma is somehow at the center. Two years ago, in a program directed by the former dancer Damian Woetzel, Mr. Ma played unaccompanied Bach as children cavorted onstage. A year ago, in another program directed by Mr. Woetzel, Mr. Ma and other members of the Silk Road Ensemble performed, among other things, the Song to the Moon from Dvorak s Rusalka, with the rising soprano Emalie Savoy. All those elements and more came together in the program that opened the Central Park SummerStage season on Tuesday evening called Night at the Caravanserai: Tales of Wonder but they were put to different uses. In the earlier evenings, presented by the World Science Festival at Alice Tully Hall, the music was something of a sideshow for tributes to scientists: in 2009 Edward O. Wilson, a sociobiologist known for his studies of ant populations (the children ringing the stage as Mr. Ma played were meant to be ants), and in 2010, the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking. In this concert, too, with the loose theme of stars and other heavenly bodies, the music was subsidiary, in this case to the goal of raising awareness for Silk Road Connect, a pilot educational program of the Silk Road Project in New York public middle schools, which just completed its second year. The program arranges school visits by musicians and other artists, and provides a curriculum and teacher support, all intended to spur interest in the arts and foster interdisciplinary connections. Accordingly, the main events here were little plays developed and presented by sixth-grade classes from four schools: Pedro Albizu Campos School in Manhattan, Edward Bleeker Junior High School in Queens, Frederick Douglass Academy III in the Bronx and Granville T. Woods Middle School in Brooklyn. Mixing storytelling, theater, music, dance and visual art in varying proportions, most were pageant-like affairs with messages proclaiming the value of peace of mind, the beauties of multiculturalism and multilingualism, and the like. But while the other groups may have thought harder and ventured more, the Brooklyn contingent pretty much let it rip with an entertaining display of rhythm and dance, and not much story attached. As host, the actor Bill Irwin achieved a balance of sixth-grade and adult humor. Other guests included the always amazing vocalist Bobby McFerrin, who bantered with instrumentalists on their own terms, producing plausible imitations of percussion, pizzicato cellos and trumpet. The splendid trumpeter was Marcus Printup, whose wife, Riza Hequibal Printup, a harpist, also appeared. Jhumpa Lahiri read a charming mythology of eclipses. The visual artist Kevork Mourad drew quick, evocative sketches and was shown in the act in video projections. And Mr. Ma worked with one of his latest collaborators, the dancer Charles Riley, a k a Lil Buck, who applied a remarkable mix of street dance and classical ballet moves to The Swan, by Saint-Saëns. The rest was vintage Silk Road. (The ensemble was joined by the Knights, a group with some of the same members.) Notable soloists included the Galician bagpiper Cristina Pato and the Indian drummer Sandeep Das. The riotous mash-up of a finale End of Day with Taps, Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and I Gotta Feeling harked back to Mr. Woetzel s comment at the outset about the joy of learning through the arts.

44 THE SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE The New York Times June 3, 2011 Arts and Ideas Festival Extends Reach Across Borders BY JAN ELLEN SPIEGEL BRINGING Yo-Yo Ma to the International Festival of Arts and Ideas, which begins its annual two-week run here next weekend, has been one of Mary Lou Aleskie s goals since she became the festival s executive director in Every year I would call and say, Gee, is there any chance blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? she recalled. So this year I didn t call and they called us! The timing was not only right for Mr. Ma and a dozen members of his Silk Road Project a cross-cultural melding of musicians, contemporary compositions, musical traditions and instruments it was also perfect for the festival s opening night. But Ms. Aleskie took it one more step. She persuaded the festival board to raise the extra $300,000 needed to move the performance to the New Haven Green and present it at no charge. Mr. Ma s reaction? Very cool, he said recently from Chicago, where he had just landed for work with the Chicago Youth in Music Festival. I think there s tremendous value to have things be free or at such low cost you re not preventing people from coming. That would be my favorite way to make music. Equally important, he added, was being able to dovetail Silk Road s mission using music to unite disparate cultures, build community and provide education that is entertaining but not preachy with the festival s similar cornerstone. It speaks to our ideals, he said. It challenges our performance chops, and it s something we all believe in. With Mr. Ma as the headliner, the festival, now in its 16th year, has emerged as a must stop for far-flung artists, performers and thinkers who embrace its mission to make global arts and ideas accessible in a format that is far more than a string of dozens of performances. The events some free, some ticketed include music, dance and theater performances; bike and food tours; and exhibitions and panel discussions, all united, however loosely, under this year s theme, Across Borders, Beyond Time. We try to let the most interesting opportunities and projects take the lead, said Cathy Edwards, the festival s director of performance programs, who, along with Ms. Aleskie, literally scours the planet for participants. There s always a thematic zeitgeist that unites those works. It s not too hard to find. The Silk Road Ensemble will be appearing with musicians from the United States, India, Japan, Israel, Iran, Spain, Switzerland and Canada. One piece on the program combines music of Spain and Japan using a gaita (Galician bagpipes) and shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute). Another blends Arab music with American jazz. Mr. Ma will also speak at a forum on the cultural importance and connections of the real Silk Road, the ancient trade route. Nearly a dozen forums will be presented at the festival, including one exploring warfare, which will complement a rock opera on the subject and a series of films on the Iraq war. Panels on African-American experiences will be coordinated with black heritage walking and biking tours and art exhibitions in a project called Freedom s Journey. That project will also link Freedom Trail sites throughout the state reinvigorated to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War to a poetry project coordinated by Elizabeth Alexander, the poet featured at President Obama s inauguration.

45 The Silk Road Ensemble The New York Times June 3, 2011 page 2 of 2 It s a big, huge bouquet every year, said Ms. Alexander, who is chairwoman of the African-American studies department at Yale University and a longtime festival fan and participant. She especially noted that organizers had taken care to incorporate homegrown arts and ideas as more than warm-up acts for the big international names. In a smallish city, to have a festival in which you couldn t possibly do everything and that just gives that kind of abbondanza feeling is exciting. During the 2009 and 2010 festivals, Ms. Alexander conducted public conversations with artists last year with the acclaimed choreographer Bill T. Jones, founder of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. Mr. Jones will be returning, this time with his company and two pieces: Serenade/The Proposition, which melds past and present in the writings and speeches of Abraham Lincoln, and Body Against Body, three works that he and his partner, Mr. Zane, performed in the 1970s. Mr. Jones revised the duets for the festival, though they still reflect their original theme of identity politics then largely unexplored, but even now potentially too provocative for some audiences. He said he congratulated the festival for having the will and the courage to be right in the eye of the discourse. But, mindful of the festival s egalitarian audience goals, he added: I hope they get an education and a thrill. That s how we get them back again. The festival will be the final stop for the current tour of The Cripple of Inishmaan, a dark comedy about a boy growing up in Ireland under difficult circumstances that will be integrated with the two festival forums on Irish arts. The play s director, Garry Hynes of the Druid and Atlantic Theater in Galway, said she was thrilled to be part of the festival, noting its synergy between arts and the community. Theater doesn t exist just in isolation, she said recently from Ireland. It s a social process. It creates a sense of community between the audience and a company of actors, and when that s good, there s nothing better. This year s wealth of boldface names, and arguably the strongest international presence ever, comes as the festival attempts to recapture momentum after two difficult years. In 2009, rain washed out a number of events, leaving organizers with a $400,000 deficit in their $3 million budget. Last year, the budget was reduced to $2.5 million, which forced the elimination of the free opening night concert. But with ticket sales accounting for only 10 percent of the budget, and foreign governments and arts ministries footing much of the bill to showcase their cultural offerings, the festival has not wavered from its goal of presenting the unusual and in some cases the downright odd, like a three-hour performance of Chekov s Ivanov staged two years ago in Hungarian. I mean, c mon. Right? How many people really would be willing to do that? Ms. Aleskie asked. That s our charter. That s what we do. This out-of-the-mainstream mentality is exactly why Jack Hitt, a New Haven-based writer turned storytelling performer, is having the premiere of his one-man show, Making Up the Truth, a memoir of outrageous, but true, tales. Growing up in Charleston, S.C., home of the Spoleto Festival, Mr. Hitt said he knew the standard operating fare of most festivals. New Haven has smartly chosen to stay outside the kind of routine festival selection, he said. They do a nice job of pulling talent from the A list and then the X list. The trick, Ms. Aleskie said, is finding a way to balance the sheer entertainment of the performances with the serious ideas behind them. Our philosophy is that it doesn t have to be either/or, she said. It s very much about the ampersand. It s arts and ideas. The International Festival of Arts and Ideas, free and ticketed events at locations throughout New Haven, June 11 through 25. For full schedule: ART-IDEA ( ), (203) or artidea.org.

46 SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE Vancouver Sun April 12, 2011 Road music rambunctious Silk Roads Ensemble creates celebratory mood BY DAVID GORDON DUKE The latest North American tour of Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble ended in Vancouver Sunday evening. A very full Orpheum Theatre got into the celebratory mood almost at once, for what proved a rambunctious evening of multicultural exploration. It's no surprise that this diverse complement of musicians, who play instruments from Europe, Asia, the Middle East and beyond, require tailor-made repertoire. The program began with Silk Road Suite, a quartet of disparate works by ensemble members that samples varying aspects of the group and ends with a showcase for Cristina Pato, a highintensity virtuoso on the Galician bagpipes. The remainder of the program presented works by contemporary composers grappling with the considerable challenges of multi-ethnic scoring. One of the most truly engaging pieces was by Kayan Kalhor, whose Silent City is conceived for western strings plus Kalhor's own instrument, the Persian kamanche, with just a judicious touch of percussion. This extended work begins in an understated atmospheric wash of sound, then progresses to a mood of stately melancholy before ending with an uptempo coda. Kalhor's work proved convincing and natural, the performance impeccable. Gabriela Lena Fran's new Chayrag!: Rough Guide to a Modern Day Tawantinsuyu is a series of miniatures for three strings -violin, cello and Chinese pipa -and two busy percussionists. Well made and often witty, it ends up being rather conventional music for such an unconventional group. A shakuhachi solo featured Kojiro Umezaki in a beautifully nuanced performance before the final work, the fourmovement suite Air to Air by Osvaldo Golijov, took us back to music for the entire ensemble. Golijov is a practised composer with an extremely clear idea of his music. The suite has its sentimental aspects, but is assured, focused and engaging. The finale, based on an 18th-century Sardinian protest song, is nothing short of a rout - much intensified by another stellar contribution by the irrepressible Cristina Pato. A set of encores raised the temperature even higher: great work from one of the 21st century's great ensembles.

47 SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE The Straight April 11, 2011 Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble is an honest cross-cultural exchange BY JESSICA WERB Imagine a potluck where, instead of your usual tuna-casserole- and tabbouleh-salad-toting neighbours, Michelin-starrated chefs appear on your doorstep, and you ve got a sense of the delights offered up Sunday night by the Silk Road Ensemble. A collective of renowned performers from across the globe, assembled under the artistic direction of cello phenomenon Yo-Yo Ma, the group s mission is to engage in cross-cultural exchanges and commission new works for eclectic groupings of instruments. It s all very noble-sounding, but it was plain to see that, at the heart of it, it s also about having a bloody good time. When the 15 members of the current iteration of the group strode onto the Orpheum stage for the final performance of its West Coast tour, Ma humbly entering last, the ensemble immediately launched into an intoxicating arrangement of a traditional Persian folk song, Ascending Bird. More delightful than the work s driving, ecstatic beat and repetitive, glissando-filled melodic lines was the apparent delight the musicians took in performing it. On instruments ranging from the Persian bowed kamancheh, played by Kayhan Kalhor, and the Japanese shakuhachi flute, played by Kojiro Umezaki, to the more familiar violin, these technically astounding artists performed with a joyful abandon that was irresistible. It was a rollicking start to the program, which moved between moments of introspective contemplation, as in virtuoso pipa player Wu Man s work Night Thoughts, and sensual abandon, courtesy of the alluring Cristina Pato s arrangements of traditional Galician bagpipe tunes. (Incidentally, who knew bagpipes could be so incredibly sexy?) Particularly engaging was Kalhor s composition Silent City, a work for string quartet, kamancheh, and percussion that commemorates the Kurdish village of Halabja in Iraqi Kurdistan, the site of a government-led poison-gas massacre in The piece, much of which is improvised, begins with a dull, haunting drone that slowly, over time, blossoms into melancholy phrases and, eventually, bustling optimism: a city returning to life. Also of note was composer Osvaldo Golijov s culture-mashing Air to Air, which employed the entire group and taped sounds to invoke, by turns, a Sicilian protest song, prayers to Our Lady of Guadalupe and songs from the Christian Arab Easter service. The final work on the program, it ended in a frenzied kind of mating dance between the shakuhachi and Galician bagpipes, filling the hall with a joyful cacophony. Those looking for flaws might be tempted to label the Silk Road s music as a superficial exercise in world music that exoticizes the cultures from which it draws but really, only a humourless grump would do so. To see the ensemble live is to see music-making the way it ought to be: collaborative, earnest, and, above all, joyful. In a word: delectable.

48 SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE Los Angeles Times April 5, 2011 Music review: Yo-Yo Ma and his Silk Road Ensemble stop off at Walt Disney Concert Hall BY MARK SWED An inquisitive, restless cellist, to say nothing of classical superstar and highly sociable musician, Yo-Yo Ma can sometimes seem a serial collaborator. He premieres modern classics - such as Elliott Carter s Cello Concerto and Lou Harrison s Rhymes With Silver - but quickly moves on, letting other cellists turn them into repertory works. A crossover sensation, he joins up with tango masters, country musicians or rock stars, ever ready for the next commercial opportunity or White House gig. Fortunately, Ma s Silk Road Ensemble has been different. Formed in 2000, this collective now has musicians from more than 20 countries and more than 60 commissions to its credit. It is going strong musically as well as in its mission of music ambassadorship. Midway through a Texas and West Coast tour, Ma and 13 Silk Roadies dropped into Walt Disney Concert Hall Monday night and cooked. The essence of the Silk Road Project, the umbrella organization of the ensemble, is sharing, and this is something these musicians do exceptionally well. First, they are all special. Second, they seem to like each other. Third, they like to try things out. Fourth, they know how to party. The U.S. dominated. Ma, bassist Jeffrey Beecher and the Brooklyn Rider string quartet, along with three percussionists, formed the basic Western undergirding. World musicians included Wu Man, the celebrated Chinese virtuoso of the plucked pipa; Kayhan Kalhor, an eloquent Iranian exponent of the bowed kamancheh; Shanir Blumenkranz, a laid-back oud player (and jazz musician) from Brooklyn; Kojiro Umezaki, a showy and spectacular master of the shakuhachi, an ancient wooden Japanese flute; and Cristina Pato, a red-hot Galician bagpiper. In combining a handful of Asian, Middle Eastern and Galician instruments within a larger Western group, the Silk Road Ensemble can t entirely avoid Orientalizing, sometimes using the pipa or shakuhachi, say, for little more than color. To bring instruments and musical traditions together, the natural instinct is to look for common ground, and the danger of watering down musical traditions cannot always be escaped. The program was typically all over the map, this ensemble s Silk Road is one Marco Polo would not have recognized. The first half was based on works from individual musical traditions. A haunting evocation of a Kurdish village, Kalhor s Silent City married his honeyed kamancheh with silken, so the speak, strings and soft percussion. Wu played a transfixing solo pipa tune reconstructed from a 9th century Buddhist fragment she found in a cave. Pato danced and bent tones on her gaita, the Galician bagpipes. After intermission, the ensemble turned to pieces by two of America s most enthusiastically multicultural composers. Gabriela Lena Frank s Chayraq!: Rough Guide to a Modern Day Tawantinsuyu short movements for violin, cello, pipa and two percussionists - includes charismatic couplings between the plucked strings of Ma s cello and Wu s pipa, as well as succulent sighs in the strings and bowled percussion. That was followed by somber solo for Shakuhachi that had been written in 1923 to commemorate Japanese earthquake victims and that served its solemn purpose movingly once again.

49 Silk Road Ensemble Los Angeles Times April 5, 2011 page 2 of 2 Osvaldo Golijov s Air to Air, which ended the program, is an over-the-top instrumental adaption of parts of his Ayre, a song cycle he wrote for Dawn Upshaw. Too many cultures here are courted to count in exuberant arrangements of Christian-Arab and Muslin-Arab melodies intended for musicians with different and distant backgrounds. Golijov ends with an 18th century Sardinian protest song. Umezaki, blowing his shakuhachi, and Pato, blowing her gaita, turned it into a contagious, boundary-breaking mating dance. The Silk Road Ensemble vision of international cooperation is not what we read in our daily news reports. Theirs is the better world available if we, like these extraordinary musicians, agree to make it one.

50 SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE San Francisco Classical Voice April 5, 2011 Music From the Silk Road BY MARIANNE LIPANOVICH It s a fantastic opportunity to hear music from the Ensemble s newest Grammy-nominated album, Off the Map, as part of its Texas and West Coast tour. True to the defining characteristic of the Silk Road Project, the music draws on musical traditions from around the world. It challenges audiences to look at their definition of classical music in an entirely new light. One of the highlights definitely has a local flavor, though. That would be the brand-new multimovement piece from composer Gabriela Lena Frank, a Berkeley native. With the intriguing title of Chayraq! Rough Guide to a Modern Day Tawantinsuyu, the piece has its origins in the music of the harvest fiestas, religious ceremonies, and festivals of the indigenous people of Latin America, as well as in Frank s own Peruvian and Chinese heritage. Other pieces certainly take the audience further afield. Osvaldo Golijov s Air to Air combines indigenous Mexican prayers with Christian-Arab and Muslim-Arab melodies, along with a protest song from 18th-century Sardinia. You ll also get a chance to hear compositions by other members of the Ensemble, with everything from percussion and ninthcentury Buddhist melodies to new arrangements of the traditional dance music of Galicia... in other words, a typical Silk Road Ensemble mix. The performers who compose the ensemble itself may vary for each tour, but the group is always characterized by its sheer exuberance. Generally performing without a conductor, and thus without the standard hierarchy considered normal, this lively and unrestrained group of extremely talented musicians clearly delights in the music it performs. And in the words of Laura Freid, CEO and executive director of the Silk Road Project, Above all, the musicians have fun, and it shows. They love performing together. They all have their own careers independent of the Silk Road Ensemble, but they make time to come together because it s a meaningful experience for them learning and sharing what they ve learned with each other and with audiences. And it s just that learning and sharing that makes it meaningful for the audiences, as well. They may have a different take on classical music, but it s something any music lover will find worth experiencing. And who knows? You may discover you have an unexpected fondness for ninth-century Buddhist melodies.

51 The 27 DE MARZO 2011 Entertainer YO YO MA TALKS WITH LP REPORTER ANGELA COVO ABOUT HIS MUSIC, PASSIONS AND VISION pg 8-E

52 8-E marzo 27, 2011 Creator of Silk Road Ensemble reveals his passions By Angela Covo More than the world s greatest virtuoso cellist, Yo-Yo Ma is truly the virtuoso human being. He is a generous soul on an extraordinary quest, seeking answers to profound questions and making the connections to share with all of us. In fact, I m sure he said the most important part of a performance is sharing something. But the words that reached my heart came a few minutes later. When you don t share you re spending lots of energy keeping it but when you share, it s as if you ve created a muscle, and it builds more capacity, he said. In just a few minutes, it was clear that when Ma looks at something, he sees, and he s mastered the elusive talent of knowing the right questions to ask. I wondered what one thing spurred him to create The Silk Road Ensemble, a magnificent collaboration between musicians as far flung as China and Galicia, uniting the sounds of different cultures and traditions into glorious joyful song. But this is not a wild tapestry of music that Ma is weaving. The common thread, the piece that joins the musicians today, comes from a somewhat distant past when these cultures did brush against each other on the Silk Road. The historical link is significant, because it connects us as well to a distant ancient past that lies buried within. The story of the Silk Road is as rich as the commerce that made it grow and connect the east to the west, comingling flavors and colors and sounds serendipitously, that had never been mixed before. And for hundreds of years, not only exchanging goods like silk, but ideas, traditions and culture. Ma explained from the beginning that ideas in his head often have a long gestation period. The Silk Road Project finally came together as a nonprofit organization in 1998, opening our minds and hearts to the echoes of cultural exchange from the past and allowing us to envision new connections But the very important questions often take time to ponder and nurture, and this grand experiment connecting humans, those who play as well as those who listen, through music, deserved all the time in the world. Well, I was born in Paris to Chinese parents, and we moved to New York City when I was about four or five, Ma said, to explain away the quirk of taking his time to consider something. The thought occurred to me that he was his own virtual melting pot. Bu he said it much better: I guess I m my own spice rack. And indeed, Ma has recorded more than 70 records in thirty years, and earned at least 16 Grammys in diverse categories, including separate best crossover awards for playing the tango, and bluegrass, and Latin music on an album called Obrigado Brazil. Ma s ability to stretch musically not only led him to create The Silk Road Ensemble, but to play with Santana, James Taylor, or Sting. For Ma, music is a universal language, not a classification on a chart. It wasn t until he played with Bobby McFerrin, however, that he learned what he considers the most important performance lesson of his life. He was fearless, and his message was to be yourself, Ma said. Ma loves the live performances above all. Live performances create magical moments, he said. They are not replicable, and not only does the experience share the voices, but the people and the moment. Ma has had magical moments in 1962, just 7 years old, he played for President Kennedy. As he became more and more accomplished on the cello, he traveled all over the world, recorded and played with hundreds of artists. He is the UN Messenger of Peace, and he received the National Medal of Arts in But last month, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest national honor that can be bestowed on a civilian. It was a surreal experience, Ma said. Barbara Bush was there with her two sons, and taking pictures of everybody. Among the other honorees was former President George Bush, Maya Angelou, great scientists and thinkers. It was an incredibly moving moment. and also obviously a great honor," he said. Like a great tragedy, it spurs you to go on and do more work harder, with more passion; Ma observed that all the honorees were lovely people, people who were aware of others. Awareness is part of being, and a way to get a sense of who we are, he added. The upcoming performance is just one night. Ma explained this performance offers something very special. It s an invitation to travel around the world, without having to get on the bus to hear the sounds of a thousand galloping horses, to learn the story of a little girl who waits for her grandmother who never comes, to hear how Christian Arabs would sing at Easter, he said. All the beauty of tradition and culture is the result of a successful invitation, Ma said. It challenges your way of thinking and gives a certain freedom and suddenly you find others living the same experience connecting, Ma wants San Antonio to know he has real connections here as well. I want them to know my father-in-law was born in San Antonio, he explained. Ma is married to the lovely Jill Hornor and they have two children, 25 and 28. But that s not all. It turns out he is related to Eva Longoria. A genealogical study discovered Eva Longoria and I share a relative somewhere in the last one hundred years, really.

53 marzo 27, E Cristina Pato and the Galician gaita A member of the Silk Road Ensemble, Pato explains her instrument and evolution as an artist, particularly how making music with the Silk Road Ensemble helped resolve her musical dilemma. By Angela Covo Angela.covo@gmail.com To understand the beautiful, sometimes haunting sounds that emerge from Christina Pato s instrument, one has only to listen. The gaita is a traditional folkloric instrument of the region of Spain, Galicia, where Pato was born. It was growing in popularity when I was a little girl, after Franco, she explained. People were returning to their roots, expressing the cultures of the regions again, because for so many years, they were not allowed to, she said. Pato is also an accomplished pianist she received her doctorate in collaborative piano at Rutgers University, But I love the gaita, she explained. About seven years ago, Pato came to the United States to study at Rutgers. During the course of her By Lucia Almanza luci.almanza@gmail.com After a long, but successful journey of American Idol (AI), Karen Rodriguez made it to top 12 and leaves happy and excited for what comes next. I made it so far! To know that I made it to top 12 from about 30,000 people who auditioned through MySpace and adding the thousands and thousands of city auditions and to know that I was in the group of the best season of American Idol really makes me happy, said Rodriguez. Ashton Jones also made it far taking the top 13 spot of this year s AI. Jones is thankful for what she has learned from American Idol believes it will bring her many opportunities. I m very excited for what s to come. I have no idea what s going to happen, but I feel it in my spirit that it s something great, said Jones and study, she had a Master Class with Osvaldo Golijov, the Argentine composer, who was creating a piece for the Silk Road Project. We talked and he learned about my gaita, and later he introduced me to Yo-Yo Ma at Tanglewood, and I started to play with The Silk Road Ensemble, she explained. Like echoes of distant Silk Road connections, Ma, Pato and Golijov reflected the connections from hundreds of years ago. The Silk Road Project would be just a little richer now, with the extraordinary music of this artist and her instrument. The gaita is a kind of bagpipes it is an ancient instrument with roots as far back as the Romans, Greeks and Celtics, except the gaita is imbued as well with the cultural influences of the northwestern corner of Spain. The Silk Road Project was a magical situation for Pato, because for her entire musical career, she felt somewhat torn between two drastically different directions. On the one hand, I was a classical pianist, on the other I played the traditional bagpipes, and all this time I had been trying to find a language, music, that would connect these two worlds, she explained. added, Now it s time to take everything that I learned, everything that I ve done, move forward in my life and grow as an artist. Both contestants showed a strong stage presence during the competition and felt the strong support from all the judges, especially from Jennifer Lopez. Jennifer said I was perfect and has always been like a big sister to me throughout the whole show and always rooted for me and I m just very happy that I got to have her there and of course because she played Selena and that s you know my idol and I have been admiring Jennifer Lopez ever since then, said Rodriguez. Jones said the best advice she received as she was leaving came from Jennifer Lopez. Jennifer always had something real to say that came straight from her spirit. She always told me You re amazing. You re going to go far. (Courtesy photo) It was important for me to discover what language I was going to use, because it would represent everything I am, she said. The Silk Road Ensemble came to be that common ground she was seeking. Pato has played the gaita since she was four years old; she has her own style and approach. Like Yo- Yo Ma, she is intrigued by the sound and the language of the music, not the genre. The gaita is from the earth, it is Don t stop. I know you got something. I see it. I see it. It s coming. And then last she told me, You know, it s all about the songs in the music business. Even when you get that first record, make sure it s a hit before you put it out because that s what American is going to notice. So it was the best advice that she could give, said Jones. Jones finally auditioned to AI thanks to her mom who motivated her to go for it this year and Rodriguez was encouraged to do the same by her sister as she was logging in to her MySpace account. AI has changed their lives and has left them with a taste of the dedication and hard work it takes to have a career in the music business. Being on that stage was great. It s something that I ve been dreaming about for a while. It s just so crazy to be there and to be able to sing in front of so many people in America and to be able to perform for the judges a very powerful instrument, but it is also very versatile, she explained. With Golijov s piece, Air to Air, the understanding of cultures comes through in the choice of instruments, she said. Even she was surprised at the result. You tend to play always what comes from tradition, and this was different, she explained. It is so easy to see how we are all connected and speak the same language when it comes to the music. The energy builds during a performance, and I value the energy that flows between me, the audience and the other players, that is a moment of pure magic, Pato said. The sense of continuity and the joyful sound of the combination of instruments in the Silk Road Ensemble is very meaningful to Pato. Not only do we enjoy playing together we learn so much from one another because of the instruments, which creates even deeper connections, she said. The first female professional bagpiper from Galicia, Pato says it is not the most feminine instrument, but it has become very popular in her country and many more women are playing it now. Pato is thrilled to be playing with Yo-Yo Ma, and is also exploring jazz and improvisation. She is based in New York City and lives with her husband, a Spanish professor at the United Nations. At the end of the day, Pato says her joy comes from sharing. Communicating with each other through the music and sharing it with everyone - this is what makes me happy. To learn more about the artist and her instrument, visit www. cristinapato.com. American Idol, an unforgettable experience for Top 12 Karen Rodriguez and Top 13 Ashton Jones every weekend especially when one of the judges is your idol that kind of brings it to the next level, said Rodriguez. Jones agrees and expressed the power she felt when she was on stage. For some reason every time I got on the stage I felt like I can conquer the world. The confidence and everything just came out, said Jones who added, When I get on the stage, it s something else. The things that stuck out to me were the lights, the cameras, the 30 million people watching, the audience, the judges and the stage. It was just an amazing experience and I hope to continue to do it. Many opportunities are coming toward these two contestants and they are ready to work hard to reach their dreams of becoming successful singing artists in the short future. Rodriguez wants to stay in touch with her fans through her twitter: krodriguezai10 and hopes to accomplish what Selena accomplished. I want to do an album in both English and Spanish, and just do what Selena accomplished in her short amount of time. You know she did everything. I d also love to be part of a charity. Anything that I can do to give back would be great, said Rodriguez. Jones hopes to buy her mom a house and have an amazing career in music. I don t want to go back to working jobs that I don t want to work. I just want to show the world who I am and spread the love and faith, said Jones. There are 11 remaining contestants left on American Idol. We re literally best friends. My advice to them is to never listen or read any negative comments about you because it s discouraging. Stay focused and positive feeding great energy and faith into your spirit because in the end that s what s going to make you a great artist and performer, said Jones.

54 YO-YO MA & SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE The Capital Times August 23, 2010 Yo-Yo Ma's ensemble unites world of talent BY ROB THOMAS The Silk Road was a two-way street, where goods and ideas from China and India traveled west to the Mediterranean, and vice versa. Cellist Yo-Yo Ma has brought that notion of trade to the realm of music with his Silk Road Ensemble. At its Madison show, the last of its 10th anniversary tour, the 15-piece ensemble resembles less a road than a bustling town square, where musicians from many nationalities combine their influences in a joyful, ongoing conversation. For example, "Air to Air," a piece commissioned for the Ensemble, ricocheted from traditional Arab-Christian melodies to Romani gypsy music, then to a prayer song from Mexico before winding up as a protest song from 18thcentury Sardinia. Another, the bombastic "Ambush From Ten Sides," built waves of crescendos and sounds of battle over the top of an ongoing musical dialogue between Jon Mendle on steel guitar and Kojiro Umezaki on a traditional Chinese lyre-like instrument called a shakuhachi. If it sounds didactic, as if the audience needed degrees in geography and world history as well as classical music appreciation, rest assured that Sunday's show was wonderfully thrilling and accessible. Ma is the driving force behind the ensemble, but on stage he seemed like he was among his colleagues rather than the leader of the band. Rather than being at the center of the 15 musicians, he set his cello up somewhere on the right, among them. What helped make the most famous cellist in the world seem like just one of the band was the amazing musicianship that ran throughout the ensemble. Cristina Pato, her gaita (a Galician version of the bagpipes) coiled around her like a green serpent, dipped and swayed as her haunting dirge-like sound drifted over the polyrhythms of her composition, "Caronte." The mournful "Caronte" quickly gave way to the joyful "Ascending Bird," which is built on a Persian folk melody but had almost a bluegrass tinge to it as well. On "Wine Madness," Chinese musician Wu Tong played the strange-looking sheng, a mouth organ capable of making single and multiple notes. The second half of the show featured the gorgeous and intricate "The Taranta Project," as well as the jaw-dropping percussion piece "Shristi" by Indian tabla player Sandeep Das, in which each of the percussionists had to stay within a certain cycle of beats as they improvised together. Many of the pieces in Sunday's show touched on a theme of transformation, whether it was the souls crossing the River Styx in "Caronte" or the two armies that clashed to create China in "Ambush From Ten Sides." Similarly, the Ensemble is taking a planet's worth of musical influences and creating something new and exciting out of them. This tour may be over, but the conversation continues.

55 SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE Chicago Tribune August 22, 2010 Ma's Silk Road group treats Ravinia throng to a multicultural jam session BY JOHN VON RHEIN The Silk Road Project began a dozen years ago as a way to study the global circulation of indigenous musical impulses and traditions. Over time it evolved into an enormously popular caravan of cross-cultural performance and education, an extended celebration of transnational voices belonging to one world. Chicago, which has a history of grand visionary projects, was a natural pit stop for the Silk Road Ensemble, which is why the celebrated cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the group's artistic director, chose our town as the first city in the world to host and collaborate with his band for an entire season, On Friday Ma took his band of fellow musical Marco Polos to Ravinia for the first time, where they shared a largely new program of their unique creative cross-cultural musical connections. The crowd that packed the pavilion and sodden lawn (where a giant video screen had been installed for the occasion) was as diverse as the repertory. Register with Chicago Tribune and receive free newsletters and alerts >> As the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's creative consultant, a position he assumed in January at Riccardo Muti's behest, Ma is busy exploring new ways to reach out to local at-risk and incarcerated youth through music. But Friday's concert, part of what was billed as the ensemble's 10th anniversary tour, was not so much about missionary work as preaching to the already-converted. It did so in exhilarating fashion, with a thundershower adding its rumbling vibe to the musical mix. In recent years the Silk Road Ensemble has been drawing ever more on works by its resident performers and composers; more than half of the pieces heard on Friday were of such nature. At times I would have liked to hear something a bit more modernist-edgy to offset the prevailing slickness, but the amplified energy level was so high, the verbal play-by-play by Ma and colleagues so apt and the ensemble playing so amazingly tight as to silence any grumbles. Cristina Pato's "Caronte" and Colin Jacobsen's arrangement of "Ascending Bird," works derived from ancient Greek and Persian myths, respectively, morphed into one terrific opening number. The haunting wail of Pato's gaita (Persian bagpipe) and the piercing cries of Kojiro Umezaki's shakuhachi (Japanese flute) joined in a kind of duel before the final pages, a wonderfully scratchy, Near Eastern-style hoedown. "Wine Madness," an arrangement by Wu Tong and Liu Lin of a 3rd century Chinese folk song, opened with lovely modal sighs and shimmers from an 11-string guitar, violin, cello, tabla (Indian drum) and sheng (Chinese mouth organ, played with virtuosic abandon by Wu) before it, too, switched gears, ending in a fast, jazzy final section punctuated by Sandeep Das' awesome tabla playing.

56 Silk Road Ensemble Chicago Tribune August 22, 2010 page 2 of 2 Osvaldo Golijov, the CSO's former resident composer, is a virtual poster child for multiculturalism and has been deeply involved in Ma's efforts from the beginning. His "Air to Air" (2006) jumps all over the map, from Christian-Arab and Arab-Muslim melodies to a section incorporating actual voices from the Chiapas district of Mexico, to a riotous setting of an 18th century Sardinian protest song. Not the least of its pleasures was watching and hearing an explosive face-off between Pato on gaita and Wu on sheng. Upping the ante still further, "The Taranta Project" by the Sicilian composer and cellist Giovanni Sollima, put four string players and percussionist Joseph Gramley through a hard-edged jam session highlighted by Gramley's heady scat-singing and body-slapping. In one particularly wild passage, Ma scrubbed his cello so furiously that you thought he would saw the instrument in two. Das returned to the spotlight with an original work, "Shristi," whose percussive rhythmic drive, derived from intricate layering of complex Indian beat-patterns, evokes the creation of the world by the Hindu god Shiva. The sheer timbral variety he achieved on the tabla contributed to its hypnotic effect. For a grand-slam finale before encore time, the full ensemble brought back a "greatest hit" from its CSO residency: "Ambush from Ten Sides," arranged by Wu Tong and Li Cang Sang from an ancient Chinese piece about warring armies. Staccato bursts of sheng and the harsh strumming of Yang Wei's pipa (Chinese lute) were perhaps the most vivid effects of onomatopoeia. The Ravinia throng went wild.

57 SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE Chicago Classical Review August 21, 2010 Downpours cannot dampen Silk Road Ensemble s milestone celebration BY DENNIS POLKOW Chicago has played a central role in the development of the Silk Road Ensemble from its inception a decade ago to the present. Several of its performers have been Chicagoans and/or have deep area connections. Also the group spent a year here premiering works, giving concerts and workshops during the citywide Silk Road Chicago project, recording two albums with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Finally, Silk Road s artistic director and guiding light, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, was appointed creative consultant to the CSO late last year by incoming music director Riccardo Muti. Friday evening s Ravinia concert was a celebration not only of the tenth anniversary of the Silk Road Ensemble, but also felt like a reunion of close friends, so intimate was the connection between the audience at a capacity level on the lawn despite heavy downpours and the musicians. The repertoire was largely retrospective, as befits an anniversary celebration, and most of the pieces were well known to the audience so much so that there was a palpable expectation of what was coming next, almost like a greatest hits concert by a major rock band where familiar riffs, rhythms and power chords would be greeted with cheers and mayhem. Indeed, it often felt as if the Silk Road Ensemble has become the Grateful Dead of classical and world music, a jam band for longhairs. The group entered in darkness, Ma included, with Cristina Pato entering from one side, offering a crooning high dirge on the Gaita, a Spanish take on bagpipes, answered by recorder and eventually pipa and three percussionists in the Pato original Caronte, which became a Haydn Farewell Symphony in reverse with ensemble members entering one by one and then performing the popular group arrangement of the Persian folksong, Ascending Bird. Interspersed with such smaller pieces were a couple of large-scale works commissioned by the group, the most effective of which was Osvaldo Golijov s four movement Air to Air, which seeks to cross-fertilize various national styles with Western classical music by using said styles of collage-like soundscapes where Western strings are used almost as a narrator or tour guide along the way. Particularly clever was Golijov s juxtaposing of Arab Christian and Arab Muslim music in a manner where one is almost indistinct from the other, so common in the cultural vocabulary. By contrast, Giovanni Solima s The Taranta Project seemed to substitute novelty and long, episodic improvisational stretches for a sense of meaningful structure, but the crowd ate up the self-indulgent rock solo-like beat-boxing interludes like candy. Tabla player Sandeep Das s Shristi, a Silk Road favorite, served as the penultimate selection, each percussionist given a rhythmic pattern with a different series of beats from Indian classical music to stay within, serving as an Eastern take on Varèse s Ionisation. The grand finale was the group s arrangement of the Chinese solo pipa tour de force Ambush From Ten Sides which portrays two ancient armies in battle and their coming together for what becomes the Han dynasty. This piece, which gives the spotlight to pipa player extraordinaire and Chicagoan Yang Wei, was heard and recorded here with full orchestra, but the enthusiasm and energy of Friday s performance was such that the work also manages to be a stirring affair as a Silk Road Ensemble piece.

58 YO-YO MA & SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE Milwaukee Journal Sentinel August 20, 2010 Eclectic musical evening excels Yo-Yo Ma's global group melds past, present perfectly BY ELAINE SCHMIDT Imagine a hybrid plant thriving on ancient, mixed roots while producing vibrant, fresh leaves and flowers. That image is the visual equivalent of Thursday evening concert by Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble. Playing to a packed Pabst Theater, the ensemble of extraordinary musicians gave a thrilling, compelling performance of the music that is its stock in trade - pieces composed in the past decade that are built upon ancient sounds and melodies. At first glance, the group doesn't make a lot of sense. It's difficult to imagine just what sort of music requires Galician bagpipes, ancient Chinese and Japanese wind instruments, a raft of percussion instruments, and string instruments from the world of classical music. The music is as eclectic as the collection of instruments on the stage. Cristina Pato's "Caronte" opens with the haunting sound of the Galician pipes, bending pitches in over a drone of low strings. The piece unfolds into something of a highenergy jam session, with Pato on the pipes and Kojiro Umezaki on the shakuhachi (a traditional Japanese flute) trading licks in front of the band. A piece titled "Wine Madness" found Wu Tong creating an absolutely gorgeous, lyrical sound on a sheng, a Chinese free-reed instrument. The evening unfolded with Sandeep Das' "Shristi," a delightful, percolating piece for four percussionists playing instruments from different corners of the world, and a gripping arrangement of the Chinese piece "Ambush from Four Sides" and other equally fascinating pieces. Built on the unexpected, the program included a lengthy, complex percussion riff by Joseph Gramley that found him abandoning instruments, sticks and mallets in favor of foot taps, body slaps and finger snaps. Yang Wei brought the fire of flamenco guitar to the ancient Chinese pipa and Das made the tabla wail. Ma and the musicians, an ensemble of 15, played with technical discipline, improvisatory freedom and rambunctious musical expression to create an unforgettable evening that wedded past and present with disparate-yet-related cultures into something both global and tremendously fun. The ensemble answered a standing ovation with two encores.

59 YO-YO MA & SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE Cleveland Plain Dealer August 16, 2010 Yo-Yo Ma and Silk Road Ensemble make journey to Blossom rewarding BY ZACHARY LEWIS Ancient Chinese battles. Hindu creation legends. Protest songs from 18th-century Sardinia. These are not the provinces of the Cleveland Orchestra. They are, however, the stock-in-trade of the group presented by the orchestra Saturday night at Blossom Music Center: The Silk Road Ensemble, who travel the country peddling music and ideas from around the globe. For them and their leader, Yo-Yo Ma, for whom Saturday's amplified concert marked his first appearance at Blossom in 20 years, there's no such thing as too exotic. Neither, judging by their performance, is dullness even a possibility. Everyone who attended the nearly sold-out show and stood his ground against the unpredictable weather will have an opinion about which piece was the finest. Plenty, too, are bound to do follow-up research on the many native instruments employed alongside Ma's cello and other Western orchestral tools. For some, no doubt, the highlight was the Indian tabla work, "Shristi," a lively series of looping, lurching drum patterns recently composed by Silk Road member Sandeep Das, who introduced the piece and exchanged pleasant banter with Ma. Others probably gravitated to Galician bagpiper Cristina Pato, whose "Caronte" -- inspired by the Greek myth of the boatman in the underworld -- served as the show's dramatic opening, with the artist strolling on stage and sounding plaintive sighs over rattling percussion and resonant string drones. But for this listener, the musical tales from ancient China, arranged by Silk Road wind player Wu Tong, were the most compelling, evoking vibrant scenes of peace and strife. "Wine Madness," on the first half, portrayed a third-century poet who avoided an Imperial request by staying drunk for 60 days. What began as a pastoral scene for strings and Chinese mouth organ, with a guitar evoking chirping birds, devolved into a delirious, prolonged frenzy. Far more gruesome was the event depicted by "Ambush from Ten Sides." Between furious drumming, heart-pounding displays of musical bravado, clanging dissonance, and the mournful warbling of the pipa, the sense of an epic battle with many victims was inescapable. Most inclusive culturally were "Air to Air" and "The Taranta Project," contemporary chamber pieces by Osvaldo Golijov and Giovanni Sollima. Golijov's amounted to a brisk world tour, including the Sardinian protest song, a Christian-Arab lament, and the spinetingling sound of xylophone trills accompanying prayers taped in Chiapas, Mexico. Sollima's, meanwhile, stood as the clearest proof of Silk Road's wide purview. The imaginative piece threw string and percussion players into a rhythmic fusion of classical, rock and ethnic idioms, showcasing one player in a virtuoso round of leg- and chest-thumping, precisely the sort of thing you'd never catch an orchestra doing.

60 YO-YO MA & SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE Philadelphia Inquirer August 08, 2010 Yo-Yo Ma and Silk Road Ensemble at the Mann: Beyond borders BY DAVID PATRICK STEARNS The numerous far-flung elements of Yo-Yo Ma's musical existence might not have been expected to come together, but come together they have. The cellist - who plays many standard concertos, premieres a new one every season or so, and seems never to have met a musical ethnicity he doesn't like - brings his genre-blurring Silk Road Ensemble to the Mann Center for the Performing Arts on Wednesday, with names that also turn up at his orchestral concerts. That could mean that one side or the other of the Ma equation is getting tame. But among the less-familiar composers on the program is Giovanni Sollima, whose Silk Road piece The Taranta Project springs from a singular temperament: The Sicilian cellist/composer's performances on YouTube show him playing with clenched teeth and extraordinary velocity - far beyond the extravagant physicality for which Ma was criticized in his early years. "He makes me look like a pussycat!" said Ma, 54, sounding proud and almost relieved. "He's very elusive. He goes silent for months at a time. You just can't find him. He's a supervirtuoso of the cello. He studied with [the eminent] Antonio Janigro but plays like a jazz musician and is part performance artist. He has no fear, and that's unusual in the classical world - we're all terrified of wrong notes." These days, Sollima is Ma's kind of colleague, further undermining the image of a rarefied classical artist moving only in the most civilized circles. These days Ma is one degree of separation from musicians like this, intensively surrounding himself with the ever-shifting personnel of the Silk Road Ensemble, whose members think about music as cultural DNA rather than in terms of the genre caste system of the music industry. The group's idea over the last decade has been to emulate the kind of cultural cross-pollination that occurred in centuries past when the silk trade opened the East to the West. Initially, critics flipped through the group's fancy press kits puzzling over what such an endeavor could possibly sound like, and marveling at how Ma was going to any lengths to ward off boredom. Now, however, the group has toured 23 countries, has five recordings - with titles such as New Impossibilities and Off the Map - and isn't far removed from the ethnic fusions of the Kronos Quartet, which augments its string contingent with musicians from the Middle East and Asia. Yet Ma's introduction to the elusive Sollima came not from the Silk Road but - in an indication of how classical music is changing from the inside out - from British concert pianist Kathryn Stott, a sometime chamber-music collaborator with Ma who seems a perfectly proper mainstream musician when she's playing Chopin. "Somehow she became totally excited by Sollima," said Ma. "She's been pursuing him for years." These days, a musician would have to lead a blinkered life to avoid such pan-nationality musicians. Sure, composer Osvaldo Golijov was noticed as a University of Pennsylvania student in the 1980s, but in the last decade he's become

61 Yo-Yo Ma & Silk Road Ensemble Philadelphia Inquirer August 8, 2010 page 2 of 3 an international sensation with works reflecting his Argentine/Jewish upbringing. His contribution to Wednesday's program is Air to Air, which juxtaposes 18th-century Mexican music, Sardinian songs, and the Christian Arab Easter service. Silk Road's newish Off the Map disc features Ritmos Anchinos by ensemble member Gabriela Lena Frank, reflecting her Peruvian/Jewish/Chinese ancestry, not to mention her Los Angeles upbringing. The pieces aren't necessarily showcases for Ma. "I'm following what members are doing," he said the other day in an hour-long phone interview. "That's part of joy. I'm not directing. It's more about seeing how people want things to be and then letting the right thing emerge." The seeds of all this began decades ago when Harvard-educated Ma, born in Paris to Chinese parents, arrived at the top of his profession while still in his 20s - and in a world with too few established cello pieces to sustain a long, inquisitive career. He learned dozens of new concertos that had been written for and premiered by Mstislav Rostropovich, then set out to commission his own, culminating in a memorable 1996 disc of new ones by Richard Danielpour, Stephen Albert, and Leon Kirchner with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Though the Silk Road Project - the ensemble's umbrella organization - might seem a logical outgrowth of such activities, Ma had intended to take this direction for only a year. Yet reasons kept arising for the group to continue, such as the discovery of more like-minded composers or the possibilities of a 2007 Chicago residency that included collaborations with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Art Institute of Chicago, and 70 cultural and community organizations. This season, the ensemble is in residence at Harvard. Though Ma is one of a handful of genuine stars in the classical recording world - last Christmas, Sony released a lavish 90-disc boxed set titled Yo-Yo Ma: Thirty Years Outside the Box - he isn't eager to litter the world with Silk Road products "unless what's happening really demands it," he said. "There's an unbelievable amount of product out there. When you make volume after volume of something, it just sits on your shelf. We're trying to transform people's lives through ideas." Another development: Over the ensemble's life span, the hegemony of long-standing symphony orchestras has been challenged by groups that don't follow the established prototype, often in the interest of meeting other-than-western music on its own terms. That's not news in contemporary circles: Philadelphia's Orchestra 2001 and Network for New Music morph radically from one concert to the next, as does a relative newcomer called Intercultural Journeys, whose core of Jewish and Arab musicians might be augmented, on any given night, by an American Indian guest. The profile of such activities, however, has risen dramatically. Though Ma's Silk Road group usually puts 20 or so musicians onstage, it's a collective of 60, many of them increasingly influential. Also significant is the emergence of standard ensembles with nonstandard repertoire and attitude, such as the string quartet Brooklyn Rider and the chamber orchestra the Knights, which touts its spirit of "radical inquiry." If there's a musical summit in all of this, Ma suggests he reached it in May in deeply familiar territory: a performance with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, with whom he premiered Cello Concerto by Silk Road member Dmitri Yanov- Yanovsky, 47, who often uses conventional instruments to evoke the exotic sounds of the Islam-tinged Central Asian environs of his native Uzbekistan. "It's one of the best concerts I've had the honor of playing," Ma said of the premiere. "He was a child of Alfred Schnittke and Sofia Gubaidulina," two Russian symphonic giants, "so nobody thought of him as a Silk Road composer at first. Is it classical? Silk Road? Who knows? It's devastatingly beautiful."

62 Yo-Yo Ma & Silk Road Ensemble Philadelphia Inquirer August 8, 2010 page 3 of 3 A taste of what he's talking about is heard in Yanov-Yanovsky's piece "... al niente," recorded this year by the Brooklyn Rider quartet. In it, a bedrock of string chords shifts slowly over freewheeling treble instruments that somersault as if being tossed around by a high wind. Slowly, the two elements converge at a point on a distant musical horizon, only to divide and begin another slow convergence. Such descriptions also apply to the Silk Road Ensemble's future, which is by no means assured but seems unable to not continue. "Some of the members now pushing 40 - and a lot of them are now professors - play in orchestras or are otherwise doing their own thing," said Ma. "There's an end when the work is done. I don't think sustaining it for the sake of sustaining it is worthwhile.... but the problem is that cultural work is never over."

63 Silk Road Ensemble Harvard University April 13, 2010 Silk Road Project moves to Harvard New Allston headquarters will expand campus and community arts education; renewal of five-year affiliation and relocation will strengthen partnership Cambridge, MA The Silk Road Project will move its headquarters to Harvard University this summer, strengthening a partnership between the University and the world-renowned organization that promotes innovation and learning through the arts. Harvard President Drew Faust and Yo-Yo Ma 76, the project s founder and artistic director, today (April 13) announced that the relocation of the Silk Road Project from Rhode Island to Harvard-owned property at 175 North Harvard St. in Allston this July will enable new artistic and cultural opportunities at the University and in surrounding communities. We will act as a working laboratory, exploring intersections between the arts and academics, seeking passionate learning across disciplines and cultures, said Ma, the acclaimed cellist who founded the project in I am thrilled that our partnership with Harvard has resulted in this renewal of our joint commitment to learning through the arts. I am looking forward to an exciting collaboration with Harvard faculty and students. The Silk Road Project is a nonprofit artistic, cultural, and educational organization with a vision of connecting the world s neighborhoods by bringing together artists and audiences. The announcement marked the second time Harvard has welcomed a major not-for-profit organization to Allston in as many months, and it represented a milestone in Faust s initiative to better integrate the arts into the cognitive life of the University. "The Silk Road Project is a thriving example of how the arts enhance our understanding of the world," said Faust. "This new, closer relationship between Harvard and the Silk Road Project will create educational opportunities that will benefit our local communities as well as our students." The new partnership builds on the success of a relationship between the Silk Road Project and Harvard, begun in 2005, that has already inspired multidisciplinary college courses as well as numerous workshops and performances involving members of the Project and Harvard undergraduate musicians. The new Project headquarters location in space shared with the Harvard Allston Education Portal provides opportunities for further cultural collaborations that will benefit the Harvard community and its neighbors. The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma will give annual public performances at Harvard, and Silk Road Ensemble musicians and artists will be available to take part in classroom work on campus, through performance, discussion, and collaborative projects. The Silk Road Project s move to Allston highlights Harvard s ongoing stewardship of its properties and active engagement in Allston. In addition to today s announcement, Harvard recently repurposed one of its properties to serve

64 Silk Road Ensemble Harvard University April 13, 2010 page 2 of 3 as a temporary community skating rink and announced that the world headquarters of Earthwatch, a leading scientific research and environmental education organization, was coming to the neighborhood. The Silk Road Project and Earthwatch are great examples of the kinds of vibrant organizations we can bring to Allston, said Harvard Executive Vice President Katherine Lapp. These are not-for-profit organizations with priorities that mesh nicely with Harvard s educational mission, and bringing them into the neighborhood opens up a world of possibilities for collaborations that will benefit the community. Faust has raised the profile of the arts on the Harvard campus following the recommendations of a University-wide Task Force on the Arts that she named in The task force report encouraged new artistic programming and more opportunities for arts-making as a way of moving the arts already prevalent in the Harvard community closer to the curriculum. In the past year, 12 General Education and departmental courses and 15 freshman seminars integrated artsmaking into their syllabi, and the number of venues for the practice, viewing, or performing of the arts online and on campus has increased. The interchange of music, art, culture, and ideas is the heart of our artistic programming and our educational work, said Laura Freid, chief executive officer and executive director of the Silk Road Project. Entering into this deeper relationship with Harvard and fully integrating into the Harvard campus will allow us to enrich our ongoing explorations of the Silk Road as a metaphor for cultural exchange and interdisciplinary collaboration. About the Silk Road Project The Silk Road Project is a not-for-profit artistic, cultural, and educational organization with a vision of connecting the world s neighborhoods by bringing together artists and audiences around the globe. Founded by cellist Yo-Yo Ma in 1998 as a catalyst to promote innovation and learning through the arts, the Project takes inspiration from the historic Silk Road trading routes as a modern metaphor for multicultural and interdisciplinary exchange. Under the artistic direction of Ma and the leadership of CEO and Executive Director Laura Freid, the Project presents performances by the Silk Road Ensemble, engages in cross-cultural exchanges and residencies, leads workshops for students, and partners with leading cultural institutions to create educational materials and programs. Developing new music is a central mission of the Project, which has been involved in commissioning and performing more than 60 new musical and multimedia works from composers and arrangers from around the world. About the Silk Road Ensemble The Silk Road Ensemble is a collective of internationally renowned musicians, composers, arrangers, visual artists, and storytellers from more than 20 countries. Each ensemble member s career illustrates a unique response to what is one of the artistic challenges of our times: nourishing global connections while maintaining the integrity of art rooted in authentic traditions. Many of the musicians first came together under the artistic direction of Yo-Yo Ma at a workshop at Tanglewood Music Center in Massachusetts in Since then, in various configurations, ensemble artists have collaborated on a range of musical and multimedia projects, presenting innovative performances that explore the relationship between tradition and innovation in music from the East and West. The Silk Road Ensemble has recorded five albums and performed to critical acclaim throughout Asia, Europe, and North America. About Yo-Yo Ma The many-faceted career of cellist Yo-Yo Ma is testament to his continual search for new ways to communicate with audiences and to his personal desire for artistic growth and renewal. Ma maintains a balance between his engagements as a soloist with orchestras worldwide and his recital and chamber music activities. His discography encompasses more

65 Silk Road Ensemble Harvard University April 13, 2010 page 3 of 3 than 75 albums, including 16 Grammy Award winners. One of his goals is the investigation of music as a means of communication and a vehicle for the migration of ideas; in 1998 he established the Silk Road Project to promote the study of cultural, artistic, and intellectual traditions along the ancient Silk Road trade routes. Ma was born in Paris to Chinese parents who later moved the family to New York. He began to study the cello at age 4, attended the Juilliard School, and in 1976 graduated from Harvard University. He has received numerous awards, including the 1978 Avery Fisher Prize, the 1999 Glenn Gould Prize, the 2001 National Medal of Arts, the 2006 Sonning Prize, the 2006 Dan David Prize, and the 2008 World Economic Forum s Crystal Award. In 2006, he was designated a United Nations Messenger of Peace by then Secretary-General Kofi Annan. In 2007, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon extended his appointment. In January 2009, at the invitation of President-Elect Barack Obama, Ma played in the quartet performance of John Willliams Air and Simple Gifts at the 56th Inauguration Day ceremony. About Harvard and the arts The arts abound at Harvard. Blending theory, practice, and passion across a diverse curricular and extracurricular landscape, Harvard is home to a vibrant and dedicated community that celebrates, interrogates, and practices art. The arts require a prominent place at a research institution because they inspire creative thinking and leadership. As the December 2008 Task Force on the Arts Report said, a university that wants to be a place where dreams are born and exciting collaborations push the boundaries of knowledge must include the practice of the arts in the curriculum and embrace it as an integral part of intellectual life on campus. For links to video of Silk Road Project performances and projects and additional stories on Harvard and the arts, go to:

66 Press Contact: Heidi Koelz (401) FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE THE SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE WITH YO-YO MA RETURNS TO ASIA Concerts will take place in South Korea, Macao, Taiwan, Thailand and Singapore from April 18 through 30, 2010 March 18, 2010, Providence, R.I. For the first time in nearly six years, the critically acclaimed Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma will return to South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore during an April 2010 concert tour, which will also feature the Ensemble s debut performances in Macao and Thailand. This series of concerts from April 18 through April 30 concludes the Silk Road Project s 10 th -anniversary celebration with performances in Seoul, South Korea; Macao; Taipei, Taichung and Kaohsiung, Taiwan; Bangkok, Thailand; and Singapore. [A complete tour schedule follows below.] "I look forward to returning to Asia with the Silk Road Ensemble, said Yo-Yo Ma, founder and artistic director of the nonprofit arts and educational organization the Silk Road Project. This tour is especially exciting for us because each of the places we are visiting has deep roots in the kind of exchange that happened along the Silk Road. Whether it's Macao, the former Portuguese colony, alongside Hong Kong or the multi-ethnic Singapore in the midst of the Islamic country of Malaysia, or Korea with its deep connections to Mongolia and Japan, each stop on our route was witness to the movements of peoples, religions, ideas and languages. At a time when so much attention is being paid to these areas politically and economically, I think it is equally important to understand the vibrant cultures of these unique places. The Silk Road Project and I look forward to celebrating the history of each culture, to bringing what we have learned, and to learning more." Mr. Ma carefully constructed several distinct concert programs to suit each of the tour venues. Concerts will present a mix of familiar favorites many of them traditional works from Korea, China, Persia and the Roma people and celebrated new music from some of today s most globally minded composers, written specifically for the Silk Road Ensemble s unique makeup of Eastern and Western musicians and instruments. Highlights of the two-week, seven-city tour include the Asian premieres of Argentinean composer Osvaldo Golijov s Air to Air and U.S. composer Evan Ziporyn s Sulvasutra, both of which are featured on the Silk Road Ensemble s recent CD, Off the Map (released in November 2009 from World Village and In a Circle Records). Infused by music as diverse as protest song from 18 th -century Sardinia, indigenous voices from Mexico and the Christian Arab Easter Page 1 of 6

67 service, Air to Air is what Golijov has called music borne of community. Ziporyn wrote Sulvasutra, a musical enactment of the Big Bang, for Indian tabla player Sandeep Das. Two other works from the album are also on the concert schedule. Ritmos Anchinos, by 2009 Latin Grammy Award winner Gabriela Lena Frank, showcases internationally renowned pipa virtuosa Wu Man and sheng player Wu Tong, a popular Chinese rock musician and proponent of traditional music. Empty Mountain, Spirit Rain, composed by Hong Kong native Angel Lam, is an urban groove for Japanese shakuhachi flute and bass. During the Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma s 2010 Asia Tour, Hyosung is the Lead Sponsor of the Silk Road Project for the concert in Seoul; American Express is the Lead Sponsor of the Silk Road Project for the concerts in Taipei and Singapore. This concert tour is the final in a series of performances, premieres and innovative educational programs that have celebrated the Silk Road Project s 10 th anniversary on three continents. Anniversary programming began in October 2008 with a special performance at the United Nations for U.N. Day and continued through a North American concert tour, a series of performances at New York City s Lincoln Center and a European concert tour in The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma will tour in the United States in August For more information on scheduled performances visit About the Silk Road Ensemble The Silk Road Ensemble is a collective of internationally renowned musicians, composers, arrangers, visual artists and storytellers from more than 20 countries. Each Ensemble member s career illustrates a unique response to what is one of the artistic challenges of our times: nourishing global connections while maintaining the integrity of art rooted in authentic tradition. Many of the musicians first came together under the artistic direction of Yo-Yo Ma at a workshop at Tanglewood Music Center in Massachusetts in Since then, in various configurations, Ensemble artists have collaborated on a diverse range of musical and multimedia projects, presenting innovative performances that explore the relationship between tradition and innovation in music from the East and West. The Silk Road Ensemble has recorded four albums and performed to critical acclaim throughout Asia, Europe and North America. About Yo-Yo Ma The many-faceted career of cellist Yo-Yo Ma is testament to his continual search for new ways to communicate with audiences and to his personal desire for artistic growth and renewal. Mr. Ma maintains a balance between his engagements as a soloist with orchestras worldwide and his recital and chamber music activities. His discography encompasses more than 75 albums, including 16 Grammy award winners. One of Mr. Ma s goals is the investigation of music as a means of communication and a vehicle for the migration of ideas; in 1998 he established the Silk Road Project to promote the study of cultural, artistic and intellectual traditions along the ancient Silk Road trade routes. Mr. Ma was born in Paris to Chinese parents who later moved the family to New York. He began to study the cello at the age of four, attended the Juilliard School, and in 1976 graduated from Harvard University. He has received numerous awards, including the 1978 Avery Fisher Prize, the 1999 Glenn Gould Prize, the 2001 National Medal of Arts, the 2006 Sonning Prize, the 2006 Dan David Prize, and the 2008 World Economic Forum s Crystal Award. In 2006, he was designated a United Nations Messenger of Peace by then Secretary-General Kofi Annan. In 2007, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon extended his appointment. In January 2009, at the Page 2 of 6

68 invitation of President-Elect Barack Obama, Mr. Ma played in the quartet performance of John Williams Air and Simple Gifts at the 56 th Inaugural Ceremony. About the Silk Road Project The Silk Road Project is a not-for-profit artistic, cultural and educational organization with a vision of connecting the world s neighborhoods by bringing together artists and audiences around the globe. Founded by cellist Yo-Yo Ma in 1998 as a catalyst to promote innovation and learning through the arts, the Silk Road Project takes inspiration from the historic Silk Road trading route as a modern metaphor for multicultural and interdisciplinary exchange. Under the artistic direction of Mr. Ma and the leadership of CEO and Executive Director Laura Freid, the Silk Road Project presents performances by the Silk Road Ensemble, engages in cross-cultural exchanges and residencies, leads workshops for students, and partners with leading cultural institutions to create educational materials and programs. Developing new music is a central mission of the Silk Road Project, which has been involved in commissioning and performing more than 60 new musical and multimedia works from composers and arrangers from around the world. Concert Programs April 18 April 30, 2010 Asia Concert Tour The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma Sunday, April 18, at 5 PM: Seoul Arts Center; Seoul, South Korea Program 1 Tuesday, April 20, at 8 PM: Macao Cultural Centre; Macao S.A.R., China Program 2 Thursday, April 22, at 7:30 PM: Taipei National Concert Hall; Taipei, Taiwan Program 2 Saturday, April 24, at 7:30 PM: Taichung Fulfillment Amphitheatre; Taichung, Taiwan Program 3 Sunday, April 25, at 7:30 PM: Jhihde Theater; Kaohsiung, Taiwan Program 3 Tuesday, April 27, at 8 PM: Thailand Cultural Centre; Bangkok, Thailand Program 4 Thursday, April 29, at 7:30 PM: Esplanade Concert Hall; Singapore Program 4 Friday, April 30, at 7:30 PM: Esplanade Concert Hall; Singapore Program 5 Program 1 (Seoul) Silk Road Suite Improvisation Wandering Winds Ahmet Adnan Saygun Partita, Opus 31 (Allegretto) Persian Traditional, Arr. Siamak Aghaei, Colin Jacobsen Ascending Bird Dong-Won Kim, Arr. Jonathan Gandelsman Gabriela Lena Frank Kayhan Kalhor Baet Nore ( Distant Horizons ) Ritmos Anchinos* Silent City** Page 3 of 6

69 Korean Traditional Heung Bo Ga Osvaldo Golijov Air to Air* The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma for Program 1 Jeffrey Beecher, contrabass Dong-Won Kim, Korean percussion and vocals Nicholas Cords, viola Ji Hyun Kim, kayagum and vocals Haruka Fujii, percussion Yo-Yo Ma, cello Jonathan Gandelsman, violin Mark Suter, percussion Joseph Gramley, percussion Kojiro Umezaki, shakuhachi Colin Jacobsen, violin Wu Man, pipa Kayhan Kalhor, kamancheh Wu Tong, sheng and bawu Program 2 (Macao, Taipei) Silk Road Suite Improvisation Wandering Winds Ahmet Adnan Saygun Partita, Opus 31 (Allegretto) Persian Traditional, Arr. Siamak Aghaei, Colin Jacobsen Ascending Bird Dong-Won Kim, Arr. Jonathan Gandelsman Gabriela Lena Frank Kayhan Kalhor Chinese Traditional Baet Nore ( Distant Horizons ) Ritmos Anchinos* Silent City** White Snow in the Sunny Spring Osvaldo Golijov Air to Air ** The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma for Program 2 Jeffrey Beecher, contrabass Dong-Won Kim, Korean percussion and vocals Nicholas Cords, viola Yo-Yo Ma, cello Haruka Fujii, percussion Mark Suter, percussion Jonathan Gandelsman, violin Kojiro Umezaki, shakuhachi Joseph Gramley, percussion Wu Man, pipa Colin Jacobsen, violin Wu Tong, sheng and bawu Kayhan Kalhor, kamancheh Program 3 (Taichung, Kaohsiung) Silk Road Suite Improvisation Chinese Traditional Rabih Abou-Khalil Sandeep Das Music of the Roma Traditional, Arr. Ljova Wandering Winds White Snow in the Sunny Spring Arabian Waltz Shristi Doina Oltului ( Song of the River Olt ) Page 4 of 6

70 Sapo Perapaskero, Arr. Osvaldo Golijov, Ljova Persian Traditional Chinese Traditional, Arr. Zhao Lin Chinese Traditional, Arr. Li Cang Sang, Wu Tong Turceasca ( Turkish Song ) Improvisation Yanzi ( Swallow Song ) Ambush from Ten Sides The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma for Program 3 Jeffrey Beecher, contrabass Dong-Won Kim, Korean percussion Nicholas Cords, viola Liu Lin, ruan, guitar Sandeep Das, tabla Yo-Yo Ma, cello Haruka Fujii, percussion Mark Suter, percussion Jonathan Gandelsman, violin Kojiro Umezaki, shakuhachi Joseph Gramley, percussion Wu Man, pipa Colin Jacobsen, violin Wu Tong, sheng and bawu Siamak Jahangiry, ney Guest Artist Kayhan Kalhor, kamancheh Vesal Arbzadeh, setar Program 4 (Bangkok, Singapore 4/29) Silk Road Suite Ahmet Adnan Saygun Partita, Opus 31 (Allegretto) Persian Traditional, Arr. Siamak Aghaei, Colin Jacobsen Ascending Bird Angel Lam Evan Zipporyn Kayhan Kalhor Chinese Traditional, Arr. Zhao Lin Chinese Traditional, Arr. Li Cang Sang, Wu Tong Empty Mountain, Spirit Rain* Sulvasutra* Silent City** Yanzi ( Swallow Song ) Ambush from Ten Sides The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma for Program 4 Jeffrey Beecher, contrabass Kayhan Kalhor, kamancheh Nicholas Cords, viola Liu Lin, guitar Sandeep Das, tabla Yo-Yo Ma, cello Haruka Fujii, percussion Mark Suter, percussion Jonathan Gandelsman, violin Kojiro Umezaki, shakuhachi Joseph Gramley, percussion Wu Man, pipa Colin Jacobsen, violin Wu Tong, sheng Program 5 (Singapore 4/30) Silk Road Suite Kayhan Kalhor, Arr. Ljova Mountains are Far Away Page 5 of 6

71 Hu Tian Quan, Arr. Wu Tong, Liu Lin Phoenix Rising Zhao Jiping Summer in the High Grassland Persian Traditional, Arr. Siamak Aghaei, Colin Jacobsen Ascending Bird Ruan Ji, Arr. Wu Tong, Liu Lin Gabriela Lena Frank Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky Wine Madness Ritmos Anchinos* Night Music: Voice in the Leaves Osvaldo Golijov Air to Air ** The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma for Program 5 Jeffrey Beecher, contrabass Nicholas Cords, viola Sandeep Das, tabla Haruka Fujii, percussion Jonathan Gandelsman, violin Joseph Gramley, percussion Colin Jacobsen, violin Kayhan Kalhor, kamancheh Liu Lin, ruan, guitar Yo-Yo Ma, cello Gulia Mashurova, harp Mark Suter, percussion Kojiro Umezaki, shakuhachi Wu Man, pipa Wu Tong, sheng Members of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra will perform as guest artists, including Lan Shui, conductor, and Mark Suter, percussion. * Commissioned by Carnegie Hall through the Weill Music Institute in partnership with the Silk Road Project. The world premieres were given at Carnegie Hall, New York City, in September ** Made possible by a grant from the Fromm Music Foundation and first performed at Harvard University in This arrangement was commissioned by the Carnegie Hall Corporation. Commissioned in 2000 by the Silk Road Project. The Ljova arrangement of Doina Oltului was commissioned by the Silk Road Project and is dedicated to Marty Peretz and Anne Peretz with deep affection and thanks. ### Page 6 of 6

72 FROM MUSICAL AMERICA By Alan Rich He is the unchallenged cello virtuoso of our time. Not only has he mastered the traditional classics from the baroque to the moderns, but with his Silk Road Project he has extended the normal boundaries of his instrument toward infinity. Now here s something to ponder, says Leonard Bernstein. A seven-year-old cellist from China, with his sister at the piano, playing some French music... The cellist is Yo-Yo Ma the name that Kramer shouts aloud in ecstasy on Seinfeld, the jet-setting cellist at home in Bach, tango, jazz, or on the Road to Mandalay. Here, in 1960, he is barely the height of his cello, playing with Yeou-Cheng Ma on one of the trove of small YouTube treasures that encompass his great art from then to now. This was Alexander Schneider s doing, the current-day Yo-Yo Ma remembers on a telephone chat from Chicago during rehearsals for his latest Silk Road project. My father had introduced me to Schneider you know, he was this great champion of young musicians and Schneider brought me to Pablo Casals for a TV program to raise funds to build the Kennedy Center, with Lenny as emcee. Who was this baby-faced phenom or, better, how had he gotten so far so soon? He was born in Paris (1955), where his parents Chinese musicians who had met there and married eased him into music almost as soon as he could walk. (In New York in the 60s I knew the violinist Si-Hon Ma, a distant relative, who, even then, spoke with awe about this Parisian prodigy.) Through family connections he was thrust early on into the New York crowd. In his teens he was already playing chamber music at Carnegie Hall with Schneider and the Isaac Stern gang. As a young man, he says, I was pretty un-selfconscious, and that s something you want to treasure as you grow up. This is what makes the music profession work. You tap somebody on the shoulder maybe before he s not quite ready and you show him what the system is all about. Pablo Casals was, and remains, a constant idol. They had quality time together at Marlboro: the eager, omnivorous youngster and the wise patriarch, already in his nineties, once described as the greatest ever to draw a bow. He was like a sculptor, says Ma, in the way he could articulate a phrase, like carving things out of stone and yet insisting on maintaining an endless variety. Not only with his cello, but also on the podium, he became this incredible, energizing force. And then there are those Bach Suites, six masterworks that explore the expressive range of the cello as the Well- Tempered Clavier does the keyboard. Casals is credited with bringing those works to public notice, and yet his recordings now some 70 years old reflect a Romantic attitude toward tempo and phrasing that is simply out of touch with modern scholarship. Yo-Yo Ma has made his own interesting statement on these Suites twice, in 1983 and 1998 on Sony Classical, most recently in a set that also included CD-ROM visual counterparts: a Mark Morris dance

73 YO-YO MA 2009 Musical America Musician of the Year page 2 of 4 number, some eye-appealing garden scenery, and, if you re ready, an ice-skating pas de deux with the Olympic team of Torvill and Dean who, says the announcer on the promotional disc, have done as much for ice-skating as Bach has done for the cello. The Bach Suites were the first music I played as a soloist, says Ma. I knew the Casals recordings and other recordings as well, and over the years I learned to make my own choices. One thing is certain, however. With all my regard for Casals, if I tried to imitate his performance it would come out wrong. It was a well-tempered musician who, at 17, showed up to begin a Harvard education, with a major in music and a strong admixture of anthropology. I simply wanted to learn what it is that people do. I really came into my own when I was thrown in with people passionate about things other than what I was passionate about. From this involvement grew the breadth of passion that now illuminates the art of Yo-Yo Ma over a range of interests astonishingly broad for any single individual. Hear it on the concert stage, as he blends his great instrument into the sublime outpouring of melody that came to Antonín Dvorák in his Cello Concerto, to Brahms in the passion in his F- major Sonata, to Ernest Bloch, when his Schelomo embodied the outcry of an ancient, oppressed people. Hear it, too, in the lovely expansiveness of his work as a chamber musician, joining the pianist Emanuel Ax as they discourse in subtle exploration on the Cello Sonatas of Beethoven, five works that trace the composer s emerging states of mind from the youthful exuberance of the works of Opus 5 to the mysteries in the fugal convolutions of Opus 102. There s an evening s worth of music to take home and ponder! And hear it in the latter-day passion that now has come into flower as the Silk Road Project, an occupation that does not as much obliterate the normal boundaries of a cello virtuoso s career (which, let s face it, are somewhat narrow compared to those of a violinist) as extend those boundaries toward infinity. The spirit behind the Silk Road Project is the message that would befall any brilliantly endowed musician confronted with the broad expanse of worldwide culture as administered in an enlightened education: that music can no longer be regarded as the prisoner of geography, that it exists the same everywhere only with different orchestration. Specifically, in 1998 at Tanglewood, Ma undertook to gather together music, musicians poetry, and poets who plied their arts along the great trade routes through Asia and into Europe from as far back as the first millennium: songs of love and religious fervor, music for dance and festivity, a repertory that had once stirred the imagination of composers when the first Gamelans were brought to Paris in the historic Universal Exposition of 1889; now it deserved far more intensive study. As an earlier generation was stirred by its first hearings of these exotic sounds and harmonies Debussy, in such a work as Pagodes, from the three-movement solo piano set Estampes, or Ravel in the song of the Chinese Teacup from his opera L Enfant et les sortilèges the Silk Road members have joined their efforts to explore and re-create the poetry and music of ancient minstrels and nomads along that Road and far further to create a fullscale repertory of contemporary music, incorporating the harmonies and the instrumentation to reach eloquently across centuries. The first Silk Road concert in New York took place at Carnegie Hall in the spring of 2002, a mingling of Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist cultures brought together, as it happened, while echoes of the September 11 upheaval still freshly resounded. The program offered an amazing mix: indigenous music of ethnic groups, some actually

74 YO-YO MA 2009 Musical America Musician of the Year page 3 of 4 residing in the New York area, singers from Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan performing, in brilliant native garb, haunting new music composed for Ma, and some repertory works piano trios by Ravel and Shostakovich to demonstrate that foreign musical flavors had already infiltrated the standard concert repertory. The program was hugely successful; the original ensemble stayed together and grew. In recent years Ma has installed a Silk Road ensemble in a specific city for an extended residency most recently Chicago to mingle with a city s cultural institutions, perform in situations large and small, and spread the basic awareness of music as a worldwide phenomenon. The Chicago project, in fact, has borne fruit in an exhilarating sequence on a recent Sony Classical disc fetchingly titled New Impossibilities, where music by composers as well-known as Osvaldo Golijov and Zhou Long stands beside exciting exploratory scores by younger Silk Roaders, with the cello of Yo-Yo Ma and the resonance of the Chicago Symphony bridging the cultural divide. The disc represents the fruition of a year s residency in which the Silk Road members infiltrated the cultural web of Chicago, in partnership with the Symphony, the Art Institute, and the City s Cultural Affairs Department to produce, within a year s time, some 250 performances, exhibitions, workshops, and family and school programs related to the Silk Road history and theme. Chicago Symphony-goers were given access to multi-cultural instrumental demonstrations during intermissions at Orchestra Hall. Across the street at the Art Institute, Afro-Cuban musicians joined a jam session. Like working in a giant laboratory, says Ma. And yet the Chicago laboratory was only one of Silk Road s explorations. In September 2008 Ma began a new project, blending his cello into the playing of musicians from Iran and Central Asia to celebrate another world of mystical visions, music, and poetry, kicking off a nationwide tour in the vast but welcoming premises of the Hollywood Bowl, where previous Silk Road appearances had drawn 18,000-capacity crowds. Central to this new celebration is the legendary Sufi poet Rumi, one of the world s most beloved, compassionate humanists for over 800 years, whom the BBC News once described as the most popular poet in America. More than 20 artists, eight of them new to the U.S., participate in this unprecedented celebration of Persian music and culture. The Whirling Dervishes of Damascus perpetuate a dance said to derive from Rumi s spontaneous poetic outpourings. The troubadour Nour Mohammed Dorpour from South Khorasan performs his extraordinary renditions of Rumi s poetry. And all the while, Yo-Yo Ma himself, like the proud paterfamilias of a worldwide family, joins in the celebration with the silken collaboration of his cello, never as a soloist but always a catalytic force. I don t know what classical music is; I have no idea, says Ma. I think I remember Bernstein saying something like, It is exact music. I have a slightly different view: In this world in our era nobody grows up with one kind of music. Take the matter of intonation. Working with Pablo Casals and Alexander Schneider, you were always taught that half steps were really close together. That s correct intonation for string playing, but it s not the same tuning for the piano, so you make that adjustment. Finally, I started learning the Persian dastagh scale, where if you started on D the E-flat immediately sounds sharp. With an hour s work any musician can acknowledge these as the beautiful notes; you can easily get your ear inside a scale or mode. Does his Silk Road work, especially his work with non-western scales and harmonies, affect his playing of the repertory? What about the Dvorák Concerto, which already leans toward folkish influences? Critic Alex Ross asked the same question recently.

75 YO-YO MA 2009 Musical America Musician of the Year page 4 of 4 Dvorák was very open in the process of finding his voice, Ma responded, in playing with folkish melodies and folkish grooves. The rhythmic invention is often overlooked and quite amazing. The inner voices almost never repeat the same rhythmic patterns it s a constant invention that is almost a subtext for the coding of his voice. All this work makes me wonder whether we are heading toward something like world classical music.... If we want to preserve a tradition, the best way to preserve it is to let it evolve. And so, there is Yo-Yo Ma, the unchallenged cello virtuoso who, within the range of his own instrument, has broadened the range of possibilities far beyond what anyone might consider the cello s standard territory: Bach Suites, five Beethoven Sonatas and two by Brahms, a clutch of concertos with the supremely expressive Dvorák at the top of everyone s list. Beyond any of this he has delved deeply into a range of folk music Appalachian in cahoots with bassist Edgar Meyer, Argentine with notable tango bands, jazz excursions with Bobby McFerrin. At home in Cambridge (with wife, son, and daughter) his mantle-shelf sags with his 16 Grammys, his Avery Fisher Prize (1978), Glenn Gould Prize (1999), and on and on. His companions on the journey include two instruments of notable lineage. My Montagnana, he says, is the baritone of the pair; its lowest string sounds the strongest. The older Strad is the tenor instrument; the top string sounds the best. At the start I played each instrument for a year, so that I could begin to internalize the personality of each. You know, it s true to an amazing extent how much a player and an instrument develop a relationship. The fibers of the wood begin to adapt; it s almost as though they begin to know what he wants. Yes, I experiment with new instruments, and some of the latest ones are very good. In the last 25 years the quality of modern instrument building has gone up exponentially. In the golden years in Italy, every violin maker lived on the same street, so to speak, so that ideas flowed freely back and forth. Now the computer makes the same thing possible, and so knowledge is flowing, and there are excellent builders in France, Germany, England... and Utah. Utah? Yes, Utah. The hot, dry air seems to be just right for builders, and so there are several good ones there. Would he ever abandon this repertory of concertos and sonatas, to devote himself full time to any of these other interesting projects that have seized his imagination? Never, says Yo-Yo Ma. They re my best friends. Alan Rich s most recent book is a collection of his writings titled So I ve Heard: Notes of a Migratory Music Critic (Amadeus, 2006). He currently writes for Bloomberg News and his blog ( Among many distinguished posts, he was the music critic of LA Weekly from 1992 until 2008.

76 Silk Road Ensemble & Yo-Yo Ma AARP April 23, 2009 Behind the Silk Road Project Yo-Yo Ma and His Passion You heard Yo-Yo Ma's playing at the Obama inauguration. Read more about the passionate learner and how his project travels among campuses. BY JAKE MILLER Inauguration Quartet: Perlman, Montero (at piano), Ma, McGill Credit: Justin Lane Corbis INAUGURATION DAY: Violinist Itzhak Perlman, pianist Gabriela Montero (in back), cellist Yo-Yo Ma, clarinetist Anthony McGill appeared in freezing weather that put their instruments so far out of tune that a recording they'd prepared was used while they played to dead mics. where to learn more Silk Road Highlights The Silk Road Project burst onto the world musical scene at the Tanglewood Music Center, near Lenox, MA, in Since then, 60 musicians, composers, and storytellers have participated in its traveling schedule of performances around the world. Videos of performances and interviews indicate why it has become such a phenomenon. Silk Road Journeys: When Strangers Meet and Silk Road Journeys: Beyond the Horizon collect many of the more than 70 original pieces commissioned and developed by the Silk Road Project. The Silk Road Project offers its own curriculum materials. Marking its 10th anniversary in February, 2009, its passion-driven educational model was unveiled in New York City, to be used in the city's public schools. Catch a Performance Upcoming events are announced on the Silk Road Project site well in advance. If you can't go in person, use YouTube.com to get a taste. You can see and hear Alim Qasimov singing mugham, for instance.

77 Silk Road Ensemble & Yo-Yo Ma AARP April 23, 2009 page 2 of 5 AN EARLY MUSICAL MASHUP: A thousand years ago, when horse packers and camel drovers herded caravans laden with silk and spices, medicine and musk between the shores of the Mediterranean to the heart of Imperial China, travelers from different worlds met in the shade of Central Asian desert oases to trade their goods and to share their cultures, their technology and their songs. As wondrous as those meetings were, they would pale in their diversity next to a small group of musicians and students who met in an auditorium at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence early this March. On stage sat Yo-Yo Ma, perhaps the premier cellist in the world and one of the best known classical musicians ever, accompanied by members of the Silk Road Ensemble, Ma's decade-long cultural experiment melding the ancient and contemporary art of the East and the West with the vibrant but often overlooked culture of Central Asia. Also on stage with the musicians were violins, a contrabass, and a cello alongside a pipa, a tar, and a kamancheh, plus a range of Middle Eastern and Asian drums, and Japanese and Chinese flutes. A number of the musicians are considered rock stars or living treasures in their home countries. The audience included dozens of middle and high school students from Providence and its hardscrabble satellite cities Central Falls, Woonsocket, and Pawtucket, where the American Industrial Revolution was born and is currently dying a slow, rusty death. For several months, the assembled students had been studying the geography, history, and mixing of cultures along the Silk Road, with support from Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project and local arts organization FirstWorks. This was their chance to experience what they had been learning about as the ensemble played a lively mixture of traditional and contemporary music from the region. The show started with an improvised duet between Chinese and Japanese bamboo flutes, followed by works for the whole ensemble, a piece for drums, and a pair of traditional Azerbaijani mugham songs. It was a challenging program, drawing on the folk and art traditions of diverse cultures from the other side of the earth, and after every song, the kids exploded with standing ovations and cheers. The only one who seemed happier to be there was Yo-Yo Ma himself. Ma's Passion for Learning. Later in the month, when I reached Ma at his hotel midway through the ensemble's 10th anniversary tour, I asked if he was surprised that these young people took so enthusiastically to this otherworldly music particularly the sometimes passionate, sometimes mournful mugham singing of Alim Qasimov and his daughter Fargana so different from anything they might have heard on the radio or seen on television. "I can still remember the first time I heard Alim sing," Ma said. "I knew about mugham, but when I actually heard it, it was so deeply expressive it was totally entrancing. I think the kids responded the same way, viscerally. That's where the power of live music and performance come in." Ma said he always remembers being curious about how the world worked. He read the newspaper and wondered how the different stories fit together. When he began to travel as a young musician, the puzzle slowly started to take shape. "I always feel slightly embarrassed to be a musician. I ask myself what's the purpose of music. I love music but I always felt like I had to have a reason to do it." Lately Ma has come to believe that the power and the purpose of music is not the music itself, but the process of bringing people and cultures together and sparking new creativity. "Out of 30 years of living, I've been gone maybe 20 years from my home," he said. "When you go to different places, people open up their world to you. I sometimes feel as if I've lived many lives." The experience is so intense, he said, that the only way to make sense of it is to try turn the spotlight back onto those extraordinary people he's met along the

78 Silk Road Ensemble & Yo-Yo Ma AARP April 23, 2009 page 3 of 5 way. He hopes that his passion for learning and sharing will be contagious and that people will find a way to translate this excitement into their own lives. "If it's worthwhile, they need to find a way to fit it into their world," he said. Musical Conversations. This kind of sharing formed the basis for the cultural exchanges along the Silk Road that helped spread Buddhism and technology like the compass, gunpowder, and stirrups for horsemen. It's not about giving a concert, it's about sharing music. Onstage, working without a director, often playing music that includes improvisations, the musicians lean in toward one another, raise their eyebrows, and gesture with their heads to indicate changes in tempo and tone. They also laugh and smile when they hear something they particularly like. During a question and answer period in the workshop, viola player Nicholas Cords said that improvisations are "not 'just making it up.'" Some of the musicians were trained to read music, others to work creatively within the framework of their particular style. When they work together, they need to find new ways to play that can work for all of them, and for the music itself. "In order to really communicate with each other in a musical language," he said, "we need to get off the page. It's not reading a text, it's having a conversation." These conversations can be formal, like the years-long process of developing a new piece of music, or casual, with musicians trading melodies like jokes. At a rehearsal before the U.S. premiere of their new arrangement of the celebrated Azeri opera Layla and Majnun (a more intense Romeo and Juliet), the musicians were warming up and playing riffs while they waited for the sound crew to tweak their microphones and monitors. A collection of scales and fiddle riffs from one violinist evolved into a motif from the Beatles "Day Tripper," which was soon echoed by pipa player Wu Man. I would have thought I had imagined it, but several of the other musicians on stage laughed. With the Silk Road Ensemble, the conversations aren't confined to the musicians on stage. They have built multi-year residency programs and deep relationships with students and faculty at Harvard and RISD. Their residency in Chicago featured concerts and storytelling and piloted the Silk Road curriculum (which was developed in collaboration with Stanford University's SPICE (for the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education). This February Yo-Yo Ma played for a collection of middle school principals and sixth grade teachers in New York City, where the public schools are rolling out the latest version of the curriculum, with collaborations in the works with Teachers College, the Manhattan School of Music, and the American Museum of Natural History. A key part of the curriculum is the engagement of students with artists who are living the musical traditions of the Silk Road. Another key is that the engagement and the conversations flow both ways. At a workshop earlier this winter at Hope High School in Providence, one of the students approached pipa player Yang Mei and asked if he knew any reggae. He said he didn't but he was excited to learn, so the student got out his guitar and Yang Mei strummed along on his Chinese lute. Sharing the Passion. It's not easy bringing together musicians from around the world. It can be hard to get a visa for an ensemble member from Iran, and then when he arrives he has to find a way to work with musicians who speak five different languages with none in common, who were trained in different musical systems (some without written notation or with unfamiliar scales and modes). Then, if you're lucky, some high school kid will ask if you can play reggae. Yo-Yo Ma seems to look at these things as opportunities, not obstacles.

79 Silk Road Ensemble & Yo-Yo Ma AARP April 23, 2009 page 4 of 5 At the RISD workshop, the percussion section gave a quick master class in drumming. They explained that in many cultures young drummers first learn the basic cadences of their music by using their voices to emulate the different sounds of striking the skin, the side or the rim of the drum chanting combinations of dum, pah, or tek, for example. The whole crowd joined in, dum dum pah, dum pah, dum dum pah and kept up for a minute or two as the drummers picked up the tempo and began to play their actual drums. When they started adding teks and riffing off the basic rhythm, most of us quickly gave up, but Yo-Yo Ma was sitting, cello leaned to one side, chanting, trying to keep up, a look of intense concentration on his face until finally, he shook his head with a laugh and let the virtuoso drummers fly away on their own. Later, ensemble member Sandeep Das, a tabla player from New Delhi, India, answered a student's question about how long it takes to master the paired clay drums. But Das a three time All-India drumming champion and one of the leading drummers in India doesn't consider himself a master. "It's a journey throughout your life," he said. "When you study, you get techniques, which are like materials: sand, concrete. You can make a bridge or a multi-story building or something much more beautiful. Every day is a learning experience." The Silk Road Project is trying to leverage this passion for learning by partnering with other institutions and serving as a catalyst for chain reaction of passion-based learning. "We see ourselves as a catalytic cultural organization," Silk Road Project executive director Laura Fried said in an interview after the RISD workshop. While they were working on adapting Layla and Majnun, the Project drew on the breadth and depth of scholarship at Harvard, working with experts on the philosophy and literature of Islam to deepen their understanding of the complex intertwining of romantic and divine love in the classical Arabian poetry that inspired the Azerbaijani opera, Fried said. The Project's residencies at RISD have allowed ensemble members to explore the relationships between the visual and performing arts and to work with people who create in a very different way, isolated from the audiences that appreciate their art. After participating in the 2008 Silk Road Project residency, Henrik S derstr m (RISD '08) was selected from a national pool of candidates to design the set for the Ensemble's multimedia reinterpretation of Layla and Majnun. His paintings recall the textiles and ceramics of classical Islamic art, an art form that was developed using pigments and techniques dispersed along the Silk Road. Speaking of cultural exchange, Layla and Majnun was also one of the sources of inspiration for Eric Clapton's hit song, "Layla" (one other was George Harrison's then wife, Pattie, the future Mrs. Clapton). The story of two ill-fated lovers didn't realize it was crossing borders and boundaries, it simply flowed from culture to culture, touching people and being touched and transformed themselves as the story was re-imagined. Expanding Awareness with Music. "Part of playing music is believing in a world that's bigger than ourselves," Yo-Yo Ma said. "I don't think anyone today grows up listening to just one musical tradition, we come across many different musics all the time they're all around us." As lovely as the music was, the most beautiful thing in that RISD auditorium was that those young people didn't notice or didn't care that the music they were listening to was 'different.'

80 Silk Road Ensemble & Yo-Yo Ma AARP April 23, 2009 page 5 of 5 "We perceive them as different, but it's all very much the same," Yo-Yo Ma said. "The things that separate them are really tiny. A couple of little changes can create something that seems radically different. If we can solve that, if we can get a better understanding of that in music, that wouldn't be such a bad start." Jake Miller writes regularly for Live & Learn from his home base outside Boston.

81 Kayhan Kalhor and Brooklyn Rider L.A. Times September 29, 2008 Yo-Yo Ma s Silk Road Project at the Hollywood Bowl BY RICHARD S. GINELL The cellist s East-West event tops off a Bowl concert full of Persian design, calligraphy, verse, dance and melody Last year was the octocentenary of the 13th century Persian poet Rumi, whose nondenominational messages of tolerance and spiritual love resonate among newly enlightened folk in the West. This year is the 10th anniversary of ever-curious cellist Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project, whose musical highway from China to the Mediterranean runs right through Persia (now Iran). So it was not such a stretch to unite the legacy of Rumi and the adventures of Yo-Yo at the Hollywood Bowl on Saturday night as part of a 3 1/2 -hour marathon of Persian music and verse. What was a surprise was that the concert wasn't linked to the simultaneous World Festival of Sacred Music, which ended Sunday and was dealing in exactly this sort of thing. Not that it needed any help, for the Bowl looked full (official attendance: 15,644), just as it was when the Silk Road Ensemble last appeared there in This time, though, Ma and his friends didn't perform until 10:35 p.m. -- half an hour behind schedule -- in a pop-like position as the headlining closer. And the Silk Road Ensemble was limited to a single East-West-fusion composition by longtime member Kayhan Kalhor, "Blue as the Turquoise Night of Neyshabur," that it had performed at Royce Hall in 2002 and at the Bowl in No new roads there. In any case, those who came primarily for Ma were given an exhaustive crash course in Persian culture, as curated by Kalhor. The Bowl's outer rim was illuminated with Persian designs, and the calligrapher Ostad Yadollah Kaboli could be seen onstage creating his intricate patterns, projected on the video screens, in real time. Actress Shohreh Aghdashloo and journalist Iraj Gorgin recited Rumi verse (she in English, he in Persian), including the universal manifesto "La Makan" ("I am neither a Christian, nor Jew, nor Zoroastrian, nor a Muslim"). The white-turbaned Nour-Mohammad Dorpour appeared solo in what was billed as his first performance outside Iran, strumming jangling rhythms on a dotar (lute) and reciting Rumi poetry in a voice that outdoors seemed to echo through the ages. The Qaderi Dervishes of Kurdistan, in their first U.S. performance, sang in syncopated, ever-changing rhythms to the rolling beat of a daf (frame drum) and eventually went into fits of ecstasy shaking their long black hair.

82 Kayhan Kalhor and Brooklyn Rider L.A. Times September 29, 2008 page 2 of 2 As the Bowl became even more wildly illuminated, the Whirling Dervishes of Damascus revolved slowly to the modal, drone-based accompaniment of Sheik Hamza Chakour and Ensemble Al-Kindi, then spun around faster and faster, their white garments spreading like umbrellas. Kalhor, a virtuoso of the kamancheh (a small spiked fiddle held like a cello), and his marvelously precise classical Persian ensemble performed a lengthy, carefully structured piece that ran overtime entering a majestic tread. Of Kalhor's several pieces for the Silk Road Ensemble, "Blue as the Turquoise Night of Neyshabur" seems to be the most popular, with its meditative opening and chugging rhythm that almost resembles a tango. Ma's identification with the idiom is now such that his tone quality and inflections at times were indistinguishable from those of Kalhor. The piece's musical signposts were attacked with gusto by the Western string players and members of Kalhor's group. There were also breaks for improvisation -- and the musicians' energy was infectious enough to lift a tiring audience into whooping ecstasy.

83 Silk Road Ensemble Bloomberg.com March 19, 2009 Cellist Yo-Yo Ma Ponders Links Between Mummies, Gandhi, Jeans BY ROBIN D. SCHATZ March 19 (Bloomberg) -- Yo-Yo Ma, looking relaxed in his black corduroy slacks and black sweater, put down his 18th- century Venetian cello and posed a riddle to his audience: What connects mummies to pirates and Mahatma Gandhi and blue jeans? I d come to see the 53-year-old musician in action, on a recent evening in Manhattan at Columbia Teachers College. There was no symphony orchestra to accompany him. He shared the stage with New York City schools chancellor Joel I. Klein, a storyteller and a British scholar. Ma performed for about three minutes of the 90-minute program -- Sarabande from a Bach cello suite. The star cellist is an ardent champion of what he likes to call passion-driven education -- musical and otherwise. For the most part, Ma s 600-strong audience came from the trenches of the New York City public schools. The session kicked off a novel, two-year collaboration between the city s Department of Education and the Silk Road Project, the nonprofit musical and educational organization that Ma founded 10 years ago to bridge East and West. Working closely with educators, the Silk Road Project plans to craft an interdisciplinary curriculum based on the study of the eponymous ancient East-West trade route where ideas, cultures and goods freely mingled. The American Museum of Natural History and the Manhattan School of Music will also participate in the program. I ve been playing this piece since I was 5 or 6 years old, Ma said about Sarabande. And every year of playing it, I learn something new. Banned in Spain It originated in North Africa hundreds of years ago as a woman s dance, he said, made its way to Spain, where it was banned for being too lascivious, and hopped over to France, where it was adapted as a courtly dance. Johann Sebastian Bach took it from there in the 1720s -- incorporating it into a suite of dances. So who owns this piece? Ma said. The world. The Silk Road program will target sixth graders in Manhattan because it s a pivotal year. One of the things I remember about sixth grade --and there s not a lot I want to remember -- is that it s very confusing, Ma said. You re thinking about who you are, how you fit in the world. It s tough on the parents, it s tough on the kids. Silk Road Curriculum Teacher s College held a workshop earlier that same day for 150 sixth-grade teachers, who may start introducing aspects of the Silk Road curriculum into their classrooms this spring. As for Ma s riddle: The answer is indigo, the precious plant-derived dye that s been in use for some 4,000 years. The Silk Road Project hopes to use the study of indigo to explore everything from history and chemistry to economics, music and art.

84 Silk Road Ensemble Bloomberg.com March 19, 2009 page 2 of 2 Indigo dye is so chemically stable that it has endured for thousands of years in the wrappings of Egyptian mummies, explained British indigo historian Jenny Balfour-Paul. Caribbean pirates raided treasure-laden galleons in the 17th century, carrying indigo among their precious cargoes. In the early 1900s in India, Gandhi s support of oppressed indigo workers helped launch the Indian independence movement. Indigo dye also contributed to the invention of Levi Strauss & Co. s blue jeans. American slaves farmed and processed indigo, which turned their hands blue -- and possibly gave rise to the music we now call the blues. Early Stages I caught up with Ma after the freewheeling session. This is the beginning of the work, Ma said. So, I m expectant, a little nervous, excited and realizing there s a long road ahead. But it s a worthwhile road to travel. The indigo curriculum is only in its early planning stages for the school year. It will, of course, include plenty of music. We re trying to look at Duke Ellington s Mood Indigo as a core piece, Ma said. It was Wynton Marsalis s favorite piece. He s taught it to me and now I love it, too. In June, Ma s Silk Road Ensemble will finish up its 10th anniversary tour with two concerts at Lincoln Center s Alice Tully Hall and a free outdoor concert in Damrosch Park. Hopefully, a lot of the people we saw tonight might want to come and continue this conversation, Ma said. For more information: (Robin D. Schatz is an editor for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)

85 Silk Road Ensemble Boston Edge March 10, 2009 The Silk Road Ensemble BY ROBERT ISRAEL Yo-Yo Ma performs as a member of the Silk Road Ensemble. If you could listen in on a composer s imagination, let s say you could plug your ipod earpiece directly into their mind, what would their imagination sound like? Yo-Yo Ma posed this question on March 8 during the first of two Celebrity Series of Boston concerts of the Silk Road Ensemble at Symphony Hall. Known for his sonorous cello and mischievous smile, Ma takes delight in serving up a full range of musical offerings, from a John Williams composition performed with an ensemble at President Obama s inauguration, or accompanying James Taylor on his recent album that featured a stirring version of Leonard Cohen s "Suzanne." The Silk Road Ensemble, of which he is artistic director, is composed a multitude of international players who create musical magic with strings, percussion, and a host of ancient instruments from China, India, Japan and the Caucasus. They succeed by not only plugging directly into the imaginations of the composers - most of them unknown to audiences in the States - but to listeners as well. In the second selection, a composition by Angel Lam titled "Empty Mountain, Spirit Rain," the audience was treated to the sounds of that multi-layered city of Hong Kong, where traffic noises and rainfall and misty harbor islands conspire to create a dreamscape. Kojiro Umezaki played the shakuhachi, an eerie instrument that dates from the 15th century. It makes a most hypnotic sound, softer than a panpipe but just as breathy, with a range that touches the earth in one breath before soaring heavenward in the next breath. This shakuhachi, and the beguiling composition by Angel Lam, calls to listeners from a faraway place in softly probing and enticing mysteries that are never fully unraveled. The musical numbers lend themselves easily to storytelling, another ancient art form that creates a strong cohesion with the instruments. The music is colorful, sensuous, and rhythmic. It is easy to envisage dancers moving across a stage, or in front of a caravan, by a campfire, or in a grand and graceful room where listeners, sitting cross-legged on tatami mats, gently swoon to these aural pleasures. The hypnotic effect of these instruments cannot be understated. The pipa, a short-necked wooden lute from China, was played majestically by Wu Man, and it took me back to a theatrical

86 Silk Road Ensemble Boston Edge March 10, 2009 page 2 of 2 performance I attended many years ago in Japan where a troupe of kabuki players mimed their disconsolate lives while musicians plunked away on the pipa s quietly insistent strings. During the second half of the performance, the ensemble gathered to accompany Kojiro Umezaki who narrated a series of Zen koans titled "Paths of Parables," by the composer Dimitri Yanov-Tanovsky. The stories were remarkable not for what they said but for what they left unsaid, and while one parable mined the depths of humility and humor, it left this listener with questions about what is heard and what is often lost in our daily communications. It should be noted that while Yo-Yo Ma may be the name emblazoned on the marquee, he is really a member of the ensemble as opposed to a featured soloist. His cello, held close to his torso, has strings originally fashioned from a gut of an animal; when his bow, fashioned from horse hairs, is drawn across these strings, the result is a sound that mimics the human voice. While it would be wonderful to listen to a recital by this gifted musician, he prefers to be seen (and heard) as a member of the ensemble. All the musicians were remarkable, with warm kudos going out to Sandeep Das for his playful and teasing tabla, to Wu Tong for his entertaining sheng and bawu, and to the aforementioned Wu Man for her beguiling pipa that enticed listeners to delve into deep dreams. The Silk Road Ensemble travels extensively, collects music everywhere they go, and brings back their interpretations to global audiences. They are musical ambassadors, and with dissonant and disparate pieces they unite us, returning us to inner harmonies and to the still unexplored areas of our own lives and imaginations.

87 Silk Road Ensemble The Boston Globe March 12, 2009 Ma leads group down Silk Road BY MATTHEW GUERRIERI Pipa player and composer Wu Man. 'YO YO PARK," the sign across from Symphony Hall instructed arriving cars. "$20." This may not have been the official billing of "The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma," but it accurately described the draw for the crowd. The superstar cellist is first among equals in the group, which, on Sunday and Monday, offered Boston two programs of music inspired by the ancient trading route connecting Europe, Central Asia, and China. Ma was just one of the band, leading only via occasional emcee duties or to prompt other players into the spotlight (for example, goading Wu Tong into a virtuoso solo on the sheng, a Chinese mouth-organ, for a crowd-pleasing encore on Sunday). The centerpiece of the concerts was Monday's performance of "Layla and Majnun," the venerable Arabic tale of doomed love, adapted in 1908 into what has become the national opera of Azerbaijan by Uzeyir Hajibeyov. An original

88 Silk Road Ensemble The Boston Globe March 12, 2009 page 2 of 2 multiculturalist, Hajibeyov leavened conventional operatic structure with mugham, traditional semi-improvised Azerbaijani singing. Ensemble violinist Jonathan Gandelsman distilled the opera into a six-part chamber cantata; his 11-player arrangement achieved both an opulent, profusely embroidered surface, matching the vocal ornamentation, and a raw drama. The singers, the legendary, phenomenal Alim Qasimov and his daughter, Fargana Qasimova, were similarly, startlingly immediate. Both concerts also featured works composed for the group. On Sunday, Angel Lam's "Empty Mountain, Spirit Rain" layered atmospheric touches behind Kojiko Umezaki's breathy, undulating shakuhachi, but didn't escape a generic filmscore mood. Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky's "Paths of Parables" found Umezaki as narrator, relating short Sufi tales. Behind him, Yanov-Yanovsky wove resourceful, modernist illustration, but took too long to get to the stories' punch lines. On Monday, Gabriela Lena Frank's "Ritmos Anchinos" made a far-flung connection with Peruvian music; its cheerfully dissonant, asymmetrical foot-stomping didn't project a strong profile, but made ample use of Wu Man's charismatic flair on the pipa, strumming with self-possessed intensity. Evan Ziporyn's "Sulvasutra" had the most personality, with Sandeep Das's tabla emerging out of primordial, string-glissando chaos into a looping, sweeping landscape. Most selections followed a common pattern: an opening featuring an exotic instrument in rhythmically free, improvisation-like recitative (or actual improvisation, as with the opening of Sunday's concert, Umezaki and Tong trading shakuhachi and bawu lines as they made their way down the hall's aisles), gradually moving into a strong, rhythmic ensemble groove. In jam-session-like numbers, Rabih Abou-Khalil's "Arabian Waltz," Shane Shanahan's "Saidi Swing," and Osvaldo Golijov's high-octane arrangement of Sapo Perapaskero's "Turceasca," the group was at its best, with an easy precision, multilayered rapport, and a generous energy. Translation into written arrangements meant the Western classical lens never fully disappeared, but the result had a hybrid exuberance, not unlike Debussy or Ravel's Spanish-tinged showpieces. Even vague imperialist overtones, the group ensconced within Symphony Hall's gilded, "Beethoven"-crowned proscenium, could find a parallel: Historical knowledge about the Silk Road is largely due to the efforts of European archeologists. The most rewarding moments were when the web of individual interactions between the players hinted at the rich complexity of the back-and-forth between the Silk Road's history and its re-created image in both Eastern and Western imaginations. Sunday's program concluded with Siamak Aghaei and Colin Jacobsen's near-rock instrumental arrangement of the Persian folksong "Ascending Bird," flying ever higher toward the sun. The parallel with the Icarus legend was provocative and noteworthy. But one could also connect it to the origin of the term "Silk Road" itself: It was coined by the German geographer and geologist Ferdinand von Richthofen. His nephew was the Red Baron.

89 Silk Road Ensemble Ann Arbor Entertainment March 14, 2009 Silk Road Ensemble and cellist Yo-Yo Ma BY SUSAN ISAACS NISBETT Like voyagers long away in exotic lands, the Silk Road Ensemble and cellist Yo-Yo Ma made Hill Auditorium their caravansarai Friday evening, ready to share the marvels from their travels. And, in the first of two different programs they presented this weekend under University Musical Society auspices, Ma - a member of the band, not a starring presence on this occasion, though his enthusiasm glowed brightly even from the back of the stage - and his fellow troupe members worked their usual magic of musical cross-cultural pollination. There was Jewish-Peruvian-Chinese music; there was gypsy music; there was Azerbaijani opera and a composition based on ancient Sanskrit texts. And to play all this an orchestra in which Indian tabla drums met Western violins and Persian kamanchehs and Chinese pipas and shengs. There was also some "Go Blue!" going around: percussionist Joseph Gramley is a University of Michigan faculty member; fellow percussionist Mark Suter has U-M ties, too; and Gabriela Lena Frank, whose "Ritmos Anchinos" led the show, received her doctorate from the U-M music school. Gramley, speaking to the audience, used the word "hybridity" to describe the Silk Road's mix of traditions and its devotion to both old and new. A $50 word for sure, but it's spot on to describe what transpired Friday. It certainly applied to "Ritmos Anchinos," a evocative, witty and timbrally rich composition in which Frank explores her Jewish-Chinese-Peruvian heritage. Chinese Pipa and sheng - instruments she finds similar to Andean instruments - are highlighted; Pipa player Wu Man and sheng player Wu Tong were thrilling. Evan Ziporyn's "Sulvasutra" highlighted tabla, with tabla player Sandeep Das offering an explanation the work's evocation of a universe in formation. The work's unearthly sonorities were as interesting as the drumming. "Turceasca," the signature piece of the amazing gypsy band Taraf de Haidouks, made a zippy and rhythmically exhilarating close to the first half in an arrangement by wizard Osvaldo Golijov. But as good as the first half was, it was the singing of the father and daughter team of Alim Qasimov and Fargana Qasimov in the second half that was the most stirring. It didn't much matter that the supertitles for "Layla and Majnun," the 1908 Azerbaijani "Romeo and Juliet" that Silk Road member Jonathan Gandelsman arranged for the orchestra, were prettier to look at than they were easy to read. Masters of the melismatic mugham style of singing, the two express the soul.

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92 Silk Road Project New York Times June 7, 2009 Tale of Love and Death Along the fabled Silk Road BY JAMES R. OESTREICH Daniel Barry for The New York Times Silk Road Project: Alim Qasimov and his daughter Fargana Qasimova sing a version of the Azerbaijani opera Layla and Majnun accompanied by, from left, Nicholas Cords, Mark Suter and Yo-Yo Ma. When the Silk Road Project began a decade ago, few but its prime mover, the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, had any clear idea what lay in store, and hearing him try to describe it beforehand you sometimes had to wonder about him. But his sense of timing was excellent: the project caught a wave of rising inclusiveness in Western classical music precincts embracing pop idioms, non-western cultures, all manner of electronics and the like and has gone on to help feed another wave. What the project has become most prominently is a magnet for many of the finest exponents of the various musical traditions along the Silk Road, the ancient trade route from Western Europe to Eastern Asia, and by extension, around the world. More generally it represents a hybrid approach to music making, both composition and performance. Through its multifarious activities educational programs and publications as well as performances and recordings the project has carved out an invaluable niche for itself on the international classical music scene. So it has ample reason to celebrate its 10th anniversary, as it did with two concerts at Alice Tully Hall over the weekend. The culmination was a performance of the classic Azerbaijani opera Layla and Majnun in a portable chamber version, as Mr. Ma called it from the stage, on Saturday evening. This is one of the project s most ambitious efforts to date: a reduction of Uzeyir Hajibeyov s three-and-a-half-hour opera for soloists, chorus and orchestra to a 45-minute version with only the title characters and a small band. Jonathan

93 Silk Road Project New York Times June 7, 2009 page 2 of 2 Gandelsman and Colin Jacobsen, Silk Road violinists, made the arrangement for the Azerbaijani vocalists Alim Qasimov, an acclaimed master of the role of Majnun, and Fargana Qasimova, his daughter and student. Hybridization of national styles is nothing new. Hajibeyov drew inspiration for Layla and Majnun, which appeared in 1908, from having seen The Barber of Seville by Rossini (who almost a century before had operatically placed an Italian in Algiers, a Turk in Italy and whatnot). And if, as Mr. Ma rightly said, hybridization can lead to creativity, it can also lead to hokiness at times, and there was a touch of that in what remained of the orchestration here. A few odd juxtapositions of perky instrumental music with desolate song in this tale of love, separation, death and madness may have resulted in part from the compression. None of which mattered when Mr. Qasimov or Ms. Qasimova held forth in spare, deeply expressive laments, tinged and embellished with exquisite subtlety. They sat on a raised platform, facing the audience and barely interacting in this wholly interior drama but communicated eloquently despite the total unfamiliarity of the language and the relative unfamiliarity of the vocal idiom. The Saturday program was filled out with colorful instrumental works from 2006 by Gabriela Lena Frank ( Ritmos Anchinos ) and Evan Ziporyn ( Sulvasutra ) and by a three-part Silk Road Suite in modes Korean and Japanese, Turkish and Azerbaijani. A program of musical storytelling on Friday evening was equally motley, notable chiefly for Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky s Paths of Parables (2006), with music well suited to the wise and witty spoken texts; Angel Lam s Empty Mountain, Spirit Rain (2006), a touching memorial to a grandmother s death; and Giovanni Sollima s Taranta Project (2008), eliciting virtuosity in many forms, including the crude and comical. Both evenings ended with jams or Silk Road party pieces. The performances were consistently fine and sometimes stunning. The international superstars were mostly magical: Wu Man on pipa (Chinese lute), Wu Tong on sheng (Chinese mouth organ) and Kojiro Umezaki on shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute) on both evenings; Sandeep Das on tabla (Indian drums) and Dong-Won Kim, a Korean vocalist, on Saturday. And Yo-Yo Ma was, well, Yo-Yo Ma.

94 Silk Road Ensemble The New York Times June 10, 2009 A Glittery Cast s Cultural Exchange BY JAMES R. OESTREICH Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times An estimated 3,500 listeners attended the Silk Road Project s free concert at the Damrosch Park band shell on Tuesday night. After two relatively subdued programs at Alice Tully Hall last weekend, the Silk Road Project, celebrating its 10th anniversary and Lincoln Center's 50th, pulled out all the stops on Tuesday evening in a free concert at the Damrosch Park band shell. Lincoln Center estimates that 3,500 listeners braved the threatening weather, which in the end produced only a few late sprinkles, and the event was telecast as part of the PBS series "Live From Lincoln Center." Much of the interest undoubtedly stemmed from the star power of the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the artistic director of the Silk Road Project, a performing and educational enterprise devoted to musical globalization and named for the ancient trade route between Eastern Asia and Western Europe. But the beauty of the project is that it has from the start attracted international performers whose musical virtuosity and personal charisma rival those of Mr. Ma, who often takes a back seat. Such performers abounded on Tuesday. In addition to the already glittery weekend cast - Wu Man, Wu Tong, Kojiro Umezaki, Dong-Won Kim, Sandeep Das, Alim Qasimov and Fargana Qasimova - Kayhan Kalhor, the Iranian master of the kamancheh, a Persian string instrument with a wiry timbre, performed and led his "Blue as the Turquoise Night of Neyshabur" (2000), one of the first and most enduring works composed for the project. And Cristina Pato, a