We couldn't be happier about the recent news that the Silk Road Ensemble's CD Off the Map was nominated for a 2011 Grammy Award for Best Classical Crossover Album. Shakuhachi player Kojiro Umezaki will represent the Ensemble when he attends the awards ceremony in Los Angeles. What better timing for the Ensemble's tour with Yo-Yo Ma in March and April?
A highlight of the album, Osvaldo Golijov's kaleidoscopic "Air to Air," will guide concert audiences through a soundscape of Christian-Arab and Muslim-Arab melodies; voices in prayer from Chiapas, Mexico; and a protest song from 18th-century Sardinia.
Another composer whose work appears on Off the Map, Latin Grammy winner Gabriela Lena Frank, has since written a new piece for the Ensemble, "¡Chayraq!: Rough Guide to a Modern Day Tawantinsuyu," which we'll premiere on this tour. Drawing on her own mixed Peruvian and Chinese heritage as well as ethnomusicology research, the piece alludes to the music of indigenous festivals, ceremonies and fiestas in the pre-Conquest Incan Empire.
Just as exciting as working with some of today's most multifaceted and globally minded composers is discovering new treasures that Silk Road Ensemble performers themselves bring to the group. This tour will give such pieces their due, with compositions by percussionists Mark Suter and Joseph Gramley, a ninth-century Buddhist melody reimagined by pipa virtuoso Wu Man, music by Persian kamancheh master Kayhan Kalhor, and a new arrangement of the muiñeira, the traditional dance of Galicia, by gaita player Cristina Pato.
Following our summer festivals tour, reviewers praised the Ensemble's "vital, gripping, daring music" (Third Coast Digest) and the "intimate" connection between the audience and the musicians (Chicago Classical Review). This series of programs shouldn't disappoint.
The tour, from March 28 through April 10, will include concerts in Austin, Dallas, San Antonio and Houston, Texas; Los Angeles, Berkeley, San Francisco and Davis, California; and Vancouver, British Columbia. Calendar: concert dates and venues
Hyosung is Lead Sponsor for the Silk Road Project 2011-2014 |