Tradition and Innovation: A Workshop with Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble on Mentoring, Creating, and Communicating

David Goodman conducts Ensemble members Johnny Gandelsman (violin) and Wu Tong (sheng) and Carnegie fellow John Hadfield (percussion) during a rehearsal of Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky's new commission.

From September 6 to September 17, 2006, Yo-Yo Ma and members of the Silk Road Ensemble led a Weill Music Institute Professional Training Workshop, entitled Tradition and Innovation: A Workshop with Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble on Mentoring, Creating, and Communicating at Tanglewood Music Center, Lenox MA.  

In the second of a two-part workshop (the first was in March 2006), participants explored musical tradition and innovation through the study of existing and newly commissioned works. This workshop was presented by The Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall in partnership with the Silk Road Project and Boston Symphony Orchestra.
 
Carnegie Hall commissioned three established composers (Gabriela Lena Frank, Osvaldo Golijov, and Evan Ziporyn) and two emerging composers (Christopher Adler and Angel Lam) to write new works for indigenous Silk Road instruments with varying combinations of strings and percussion. Throughout the workshop, Yo-Yo Ma, musicians of the Silk Road Ensemble and the composers rehearsed and worked with eleven young professional musicians chosen by Carnegie Hall on these new compositions, which had world-premiere performances in Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall. Also premiered were works by Jeeyoung Kim and Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky, which were commissioned by the Silk Road Project.

click to enlarge	click to enlarge	click to enlarge