Cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble now is in its 11th year as a group. They will be performing this Tuesday at 6:30 pm @ Central Park Summerstage and on Saturday @ 7 pm on the New Haven Green at the International Festival of Arts & Ideas in Connecticut.
This Q & A in preview of those performances features Ma, CEO & Executive Director of the ensemble Laura Freid and violist Nicholas Cords talking about: the upcoming programming of those concerts, some description of the music itself and the mission statement for the ensemble going forward.
For directions to Central Park SummerStage at Rumsey Playfield click here.
For driving or train directions to downtown New Haven click on: http://www.infonewhaven.com/getting-here. On the site is a map of the downtown area including the New Haven Green.
Q: The Silk Road Project is going on its 11th year. Looking back to the beginning, in what ways has your goals for the project been met? Where do you want to take the project going into the future?
Yo-Yo Ma: I think one defining characteristic of the time we're living in is, more than ever before, we're thinking globally. What the Silk Road Project has done over the last 10 years is to concretize this idea both through historic examination and performance.
In the years to come the Silk Road Ensemble looks forward to broadening and deepening our work For example, people are trying to dismiss what kind of education students need to be the creative, innovative workface of tomorrow. The Silk Road Ensemble wants to continue bringing what we've learned as a group and bring that into the realm of education.
One's place is not just our neighborhood, or our state, or our country--it's literally the world.
Q: The Silk Road Project often approaches its concerts with a specific theme or focus. With that in mind, please differentiate the themes/focus of the two concerts coming up at Central Park and the New Haven Green in CT?
Laura Freid (CEO & Executive Director of the Silk Road Ensemble): Our performance at SummerStage in Central Park will be an evening of music, dance, art and stories that will spotlight hundreds of 6th-grade students and their teachers from the Silk Road Connect arts education program that we have been piloting in NYC. Special guest artists will including: street dancer Lil Buck, vocalist Bobby McFerrin, novelist Jhumpha Lahiri and actor Bill Irwin. This free performance is a fun night out and is family-friendly. .
Before the International Festival of Arts & Ideas performance, Yo-Yo and I will give a 3 pm afternoon talk about how the historic Silk Road served as inspiration for him and the Silk Road Project’s artistic and educational programming.
The concert in New Haven at 7 pm will feature the Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma. The concert will feature music commissioned for the ensemble (including Osvaldo Golijov’s “Air to Air” from the Grammy-nominated album Off the Map) as well as pieces by members of the ensemble like Kayhan Kalhor from Iran and Sandeep Das from India.
Q: Take readers inside what the rehearsal process is like for the Silk Road Ensemble and the adjustments that have to be made with the varying musical styles at work.
Nicholas Cords (violist): The very beginning was difficult, even cacophonous!
I’ve become a profoundly different listener because of working with musicians trained in other methods, many based in learning by ear Therefore, many details are affected: sound production, rhythmic feel, and audience awareness for example.
Gradually, the rehearsal process has worked itself out as:
a) people's roles have become better defined and conversely
b) people have been more and more comfortable stepping out of their own comfort zones.
A big part of our mission is the creation of new works. So now a typical rehearsal for the Silk Road Ensemble resembles a relay race. All members of the group are able to push the process further because everybody is willing to be both leader and follower.
Q: In what tangible ways has your experience with the Silk Road Ensemble informed you as:
a) working on the Silk Road Connect project with NYC-school children.
b) viola instructor at Princeton.
Cords: Playing in the Silk Road Ensemble makes me a better educator because I am engaged in learning new things. The environment of the ensemble is one of natural curiosity. When one is engaged in passionate learning, I think that leads to better teaching. This concept applies equally, whether that context is working with NYC-public school children or college-level students at Princeton.
Q: Take a reader into the process of creating “Silent City” with kemenche player Kayhan Kalhor. Give a sketch of what the music is like on that CD for someone who hasn’t heard the music before.
Cords: “'Silent City” is a 30-minute piece written by Kayhan Kalhor for the Silk Road Project. The composition requires a sense of trust between the players, as nearly half the piece is improvised.
Brooklyn Rider (Cords is the quartet’s violist) idea was that working with Kayhan would allow us to go into the studio to explore ideas and generate more repertoire.
The disc starts with a frenetically-paced piece of Persian folk music, “Ascending Bird.” This soaring melody serves as metaphor for spiritual transcendence. Colin Jacobsen and I heard it--played on its original instrument--literally the fused bones of a bird--during a trip to Iran in 2005.
Next, we had our friend Ljova (Russian-born, NY-based composer Lev Zhurbin) arrange an older piece of Kayhan's based on a similar tale. Entitled "Parvaz" (Farsi for flight), Kayhan plays the Persian setar (lute) set against string quartet and bass.
Lastly, Brooklyn Rider's violinist Jacobsen composed the recording's final track, “Beloved, do not let me be discouraged.” This piece explores the centuries old relationship between Persia and Europe. It takes a 14th-century Italian secular song and fuses it with elements closer to Kayhan's traditional repertoire.
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