Postcards from the Road

Asia – Concert Tour
April 18-30, 2010

New York, U.S. – Silk Road Connect Update
March 30, 2010

The Creative Wellspring
Silk Road Ensemble member Siamak Aghaei takes a few quiet moments with his santur between concerts and museum residencies in Japan.

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Silk Road Ensemble members developed new works all week at Tanglewood’s Seiji Ozawa Hall

10/21/2008 12:56:00 PM

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Composer Gabriela Lena Frank discusses the techniques she explored with musicians

10/21/2008 11:15:00 AM

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Percussionists Shane Shanahan, Mark Suter and Joe Gramley bow the marimba to create a sound reminiscent of the South American panpipe

10/21/2008 10:59:00 AM

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Pipa player Yang Wei with contrabassist Fora Baltacigil, who played for the first time with the Silk Road Ensemble

10/21/2008 10:56:00 AM

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The workshops allowed Silk Road Ensemble members such as shakuhachi player Ko Umezaki to connect with fellow musicians

10/21/2008 11:00:00 AM

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Composer Rabih Abou-Khalil joins the Ensemble on oud during the development of his new work

10/21/2008 11:01:00 AM

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The Ensemble rehearses Rabih Abou-Khalil’s new piece at Seiji Ozawa Hall

10/21/2008 11:01:00 AM

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On Tanglewood’s wooded grounds, Colin Jacobsen and Siamak Aghaei collaborate on their new piece, "The Wind Will Take Us"

10/21/2008 11:01:00 AM

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Nick Cords introduces a new work in six movements, "The Taranta Project" by Giovanni Sollima

10/21/2008 11:02:00 AM

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The Ensemble plays Sandeep Das’ "Mohini"; the final rehearsal was open to the public

10/21/2008 11:02:00 AM

Massachusetts, U.S. – New Commissions Workshop
September 7-15, 2008

Secluded Tanglewood Music Center was an idyllic retreat for gathering Silk Road Ensemble musicians and composers to exchange techniques and develop new music. The Ensemble made the most of this rare weeklong immersion.

Composers Gabriela Lena Frank and Rabih Abou-Khalil, whose Ritmos Anchinos and Arabian Waltz the Silk Road Ensemble recently toured, joined Ensemble composers Sandeep Das and Siamak Aghaei and arranger Colin Jacobsen. Though unable to travel to Tanglewood, Italian composer Giovanni Sollima communicated with Ensemble members prior to and throughout the week. The works of these six composers and arrangers offer a multitude of voices, echoes and overtones ranging from Peru and Jewish Eastern Europe, to Lebanon and Germany, to Sicily, Iran, India and the United States.

To culminate the week of workshops, the Silk Road Project opened the final rehearsal to the public at no charge. Composers and performers discussed the collaborative process.

Gabriela Lena Frank jumped at the chance to hone compositional skills with the pipa and a range of percussion instruments. As Ensemble members demonstrated three examples of her week’s work, playing instruments such as the marimba in unfamiliar ways, Frank challenged the audience to determine what was composed and what spontaneous. “Most of the time there aren’t opportunities to revise or pick up new skills,” she said. “To have eight whole days to do nothing but experiment is like a treasure to me.”

Giovanni Sollima’s The Taranta Project unites Western classical, jazz, rock and Mediterranean influences. By turns somber and playful, hushed and agitated, the piece’s six movements employ some uncommon techniques such as vocalized and body rhythm (Shane Shanahan struck his legs, chest and cheeks to percussive effect) and scordatura (Eric Jacobsen tuned his cello’s C-string one octave low to produce “power chords.”)

Having grown up in Beirut, Lebanon, Rabih Abou-Khalil later studied Western classical music in Germany and describes himself as “a child of both worlds.” His new piece My Wife’s Nightie (or The Benevolent) is concerned with the sensual and emotional qualities of rhythm and melody.

Where the Wind Will Take Us resulted from close collaboration between Siamak Aghaei and Colin Jacobsen. In this lament written in two dastgahs, or modes—one linear, from ancient Greece, the other particular to Aghaei’s village in southern Iran, both thousands of years old—Aghaei’s singing accompanies the santur, echoed by the ethereal shakuhachi.

Sandeep Das’s Mohini revisits a work begun with the Ensemble several years ago. Introducing the piece, Das gestured to his fellow musicians. “For someone like me from India who had never even seen these instruments before,” he said, “to wind up writing music for them—that’s what this Project is about.”

Commissioning new music is vital to the Silk Road Project. Not only is it necessary to continually create new works for the Ensemble’s unique combinations of instruments, but the workshop process also allows time for lasting relationships between musicians to emerge, contributing to a continuum of ongoing development. The Silk Road Project hopes to share these new works with audiences during its 10th-anniversary season from 2008-2010.

Participating Artists

Rabih Abou-Khalil, composer/oud
Siamak Aghaei, santur/composer
Fora Baltacigil, contrabass
Nicholas Cords, viola
Sandeep Das, tabla/composer
Gabriela Lena Frank, composer
Jonathan Gandeslman, violin
Joseph Gramley, percussion
Colin Jacobsen, violin/arranger
Eric Jacobsen, cello
Shane Shanahan, percussion
Giovanni Sollima, composer
Mark Suter, percussion
Kojiro Umezaki, shakuhachi
Yang Wei, pipa

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Massachusetts, U.S. – New Commissions WorkshopSeptember 7-15, 2008

Participating Artists

Massachusetts, U.S. – New Commissions Workshop
September 7-15, 2008