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| | | Colin Jacobsen, Wu Man and Mike Block performing "Chayraq" at the Mondavi Center, UC Davis, in April 2011
| © MAX WHITTAKER
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Creating new music is a necessity—and a joy—for the Silk Road Ensemble. Since there is no standard repertoire for, say, marimba, pipa, and Western strings, we commission new works from composers with an interest in juxtaposing instruments, sounds, and techniques from many cultures. In some pieces, instruments are used in traditional ways; in others, such as Gabriela Lena Frank's "¡Chayraq!: Rough Guide to a Modern Day Tawantinsuyu," new approaches are required.
We first worked with Gabriela a few years ago, when she wrote "Ritmos Anchinos" (recorded on the Grammy-nominated album Off the Map) for the Ensemble. At a subsequent workshop, she experimented with bowing techniques on the marimba, in evidence in the video above, "Crying Song," one movement of "¡Chayraq!" Gabriela's richly mixed heritage provided the Peruvian and Chinese influences for this work's series of short movements, which mix and match percussion, pipa, violin and cello. She also drew on ethnomusicology research and her own travels in Latin America. At indigenous festivals, religious ceremonies and harvest fiestas, Gabriela made field recordings on the fly—examples that formed a curriculum for her own self-education as a composer. "Crying Song" was filmed in March 2011, during a concert by the Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma in Harvard University's Sanders Theater, as part of our ongoing affiliation with Harvard. |