During the yearlong celebration Silk Road Chicago, the Project’s focus was to bring the world to Chicago; since June, with workshops at the Académie Musicale de Villecroze in France, performances at Switzerland’s Lucerne Festival, a residency at Zürich’s Rietberg Museum and a concert tour in China, our mission has been to take the Project to the world. The ripples from an idea cast nearly a decade ago are forming ever-broadening circles as the Project continues its strong, steady growth.

From the initial workshop in 2000, commissioning more than 30 composers from Armenia to Uzbekistan, the Project has built a legacy of repertoire. Museum residencies illuminating cultural traditions through art objects and gallery presentations, introduced at the Peabody Essex Museum in January 2004, have been presented at the Nara and Kyushu National Museums in Japan, the British Library in London, the Rubin Museum in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago. With concerts and workshops throughout Europe, North America and Asia, the Silk Road Ensemble has become part of the global stage.

The Project’s infrastructure has also grown. Initially just one, its staff now numbers seven full-time employees. Five founding members convened the first Board of Directors meeting; today, they number 17. In May 2002, during the Project’s third year, the first long-range planning discussion centered on music and performance, describing core objectives in terms of creativity and collaboration, imagination and linking. In January 2006, the first board retreat continued the conversation about the Project’s history, direction and next steps. A year later, the board approved a formal strategic plan, putting a map of our future into words and providing tools in the form of mission, vision, mandate and values statements to measure our progress against the goals we have set.

Of the Project’s many imaginative partnerships, its multi-year affiliations with the Rhode Island School of Design and Harvard University offer creative environments for visual, musical and educational collaborations. In October 2006, Harvard Dean of Humanities (and Silk Road Project board member) Diana Sorensen invited faculty to adapt the Project’s cross-cultural approach when developing new curricula. This semester, drawing upon the university’s rich resources of art, music, culture, history and technology, Professor Stephen Greenblatt unveiled “Travel and Transformation in the Early 17th Century,“ a course that in his words “attempts to break down the boundary between the literary and the nonliterary, between history and literature.”

The initial goals set in 1998—to bring together talented individuals from the Silk Road region to exchange ideas and cultural traditions—have provided an excellent foundation. Globally and locally, our vision of connecting the world’s neighborhoods is becoming our legacy.

Yo-Yo Ma
Artistic Director