Silk Road Ensemble Introduces New Music on its Winter Tour

Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble embark on their US Winter Tour on February 23, visiting five cities in Virginia, Michigan, and Wisconsin - first performances by the Silk Road Ensemble in many of these locations.

Most remarkable about this tour is the introduction of two new pieces to the Silk Road Ensemble repertoire, including the Silk Road Project's most recent commissions and arrangements. Inspired by the instruments and the musicians of the Silk Road Ensemble, these works will join the Silk Road Project's growing commissions and repertoire list:

The Silent City by Kayhan Kalhor, arranged by Kayhan Kalhor and Ljova Harvard University's renowned "First Nights" class commissioned a Silk Road Ensemble composition, as part of the 2005 Silk Road Project Harvard University Residency. Kayhan Kalhor created The Silent City, a piece for string quartet and kamancheh. Kalhor, along with Colin Jacobsen, Johnny Gandelsman, Nick Cords and Yo-Yo Ma, received a standing ovation for the world premiere performance in Harvard's Sanders Theatre on December 20, 2005. The Silent City takes to the road for its first public concerts during the US Winter Tour.

Arabian Waltz by Rabih Abou-Khalil Another recent addition to the Silk Road Ensemble repertoire is Lebanese composer Rabih Abou-Khalil’s Arabian Waltz for Persian instruments, pipa, strings and percussion.

Silk Road Ensemble Goes Instant Live

You can still enjoy Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble US Winter Tour, even if you can't make it to Virginia, Michigan or Wisconsin.

Instant Live, a company that produces and sells live concert recordings, will be joining us for our five-city tour. CDs will be available immediately after each performance and a limited number will be available on line for pre-order or post-concert purchase. To order your CD copy of these limited-edition CDs, go to Instant Live.

Program Notes

The Silk Road is commonly thought of as a solitary artery, extending from China in the east to the Mediterranean in the west. It was actually a complex network of numerous diverging tracks, spanning thousands of miles. Between circa 500 BC and 1500 AD, it served as the major route for transporting material goods and knowledge between Europe, the Near East, India and China - the four major centers of civilization at the time. Towns along the Silk Road were open to influences from all of those civilizations, so much so that long after many of the routes and towns have passed into history, the Silk Road remains a symbol for commercial as well as cultural exchange.

Both historic and symbolic elements were attractive to Yo-Yo Ma, who created the Silk Road Project as a way to study the global circulation of music and musical ideas. One of the Project's first activities was to commission chamber music that evokes the spirit of East-West cultural exchange. To date, composers from China, Mongolia, Korea, Armenia, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, India, Iran and Azerbaijan have completed their commissions. The Silk Road Ensemble US Winter Tour program balances traditional music from Armenia, Persia and Romania with contemporary compositions from Lebanon, the United States and Iran, the latter represented by the Project's most recent commission: The Silent City by Kayhan Kalhor.

KOMITAS VARTABED (1869-1935) was one of the first Armenians to have a classical Western musical education in addition to thorough knowledge of the music of his own people. His activities included composition, ethnomusicology, choral conducting, singing and teaching. He was deeply influenced by the folk and church traditions of Armenia and was a key figure in collecting and arranging thousands of Armenian, Arabic, Kurdish and Persian folk songs, much like his contemporaries Bartok (Hungary and Romania), Grainger (England and Denmark) and Sharp (England and the US). In 1915, he was, along with other leaders in the Armenian community, arrested and deported. He witnessed the brutal extermination of many of his countrymen. His creative activities were truncated by the 1915 massacres, as he never recovered from the trauma of the events. The short works on this program serve both as a testament to his dedication in preserving the folk music traditions of Armenia and as a tribute to the people they represent.

LOU HARRISON (1917-2003) was a direct link to the experimental music tradition in America that began with Charles Ives and included such influential figures as Henry Cowell, Harry Partch and John Cage. Harrison was an original - a composer, instrument builder, calligrapher, painter, poet, and critic. Spanning over 60 years, his compositional output is particularly noted for use of percussion, experiments with just intonation, the melding of Asian and Native American musical elements and, above all, emphasizing melody and rhythm over harmony. His works employ Chinese, Korean and Indonesian instruments as well as Western instruments and those of his own construction. Harrison's Concerto for Pipa with String Orchestra (1997) is a late work, written only six years before his death. Composed for pipa virtuoso Wu Man, the Concerto is one of many Asian-influenced works and is a virtuosic showpiece for the soloist. Originally scored for pipa with string orchestra, the concerto will be performed on the US Winter Tour with an accompaniment of single strings, intensifying the individual lines supporting the solo pipa and creating a more intimate chamber music presentation.

Lebanese-born composer RABIH ABOU-KHALIL (b.1957) was classically trained on oud (Middle Eastern lute) and in the 1970s studied flute in Germany. During the 1980s, he recorded several albums on both instruments, but was not well known until the 1990s brought commissions from Southwest German Radio and subsequent debuts by the Kronos String Quartet. He has worked with many Arabic, Indian and American jazz musicians. His compositions fuse the musical traditions of the Arabic world with jazz improvisation and European classical techniques.

Silk Road Ensemble composer and kamancheh virtuoso KAYHAN KALHOR (b.1963), who divides his time between Iran and the United States, draws upon his mastery of Iranian classical music and his training in Western tradition. His latest composition, The Silent City, is based on an altered minor scale, incorporating Kurdish themes. In choosing the foundation for his composition, Kalhor states that he wanted to "specifically focus on the fact that the Kurdish people - a large population living in western Iran, eastern Iraq and southeastern Turkey - are often referred to as a 'nation-less nation'." The Kurds as an ethnic group have suffered greatly in their quest for an autonomous homeland. "In a way," Kalhor notes, "The Silent City is a tribute to all cities that are somehow destroyed because of human mistakes or selfishness." This piece was made possible by a grant from the Fromm Music Foundation and was first performed as a "First Nights" commission on December 20, 2005, by the Silk Road Ensemble, artists in residence at Harvard University.

HOSSEIN ALIZADEH (b. 1951) is considered to be one of the most important figures in contemporary Persian music. A virtuosic performer on several Persian stringed instruments, he has promoted Persian classical music throughout his career, extending the musical traditions through his compositions and performances. Among his orchestral works is Ney Nava (1983), a concerto for the ney, a breathy Middle Eastern flute with Western string ensemble accompaniment. It is a consummate example of East meeting West, combining instruments from both cultures and employing an explicit harmonic structure based not on Western harmonies, but on intervals found in traditional Persian improvised melodic figures. The result is a fascinating texture where the rich timber of the ney speaks in soulful tones to the string accompaniment. This piece has special significance for Silk Road Ensemble member Siamak Jahangiry, as it was this piece that inspired him to study the ney.

TURCEASCA, the signature piece of the Romanian gypsy band Taraf de Haiidouks (the Band of the Brigands), is based on a traditional Turkish folk song. In 1991, Taraf de Haiidouks performed outside Romania for the first time. Their music drew such interest that filmmaker Tony Garlif featured them in his documentary about the music of the Roma, Latcho Drom. Composer Osvaldo Golijov, whose broad, eclectic musical training (including Western classical, Jewish liturgical, klezmer and Argentinean tango) made him an ideal translator, worked with the band to arrange Turceasca for the Kronos Quartet. The Silk Road Ensemble, guided by Taraf de Haiidouk's tour de force recording and Golijov's inventive arrangement, provide additional embellishments to the work with the addition of Chinese pipa and Peruvian drum cajón.