“The Silkroad Ensemble has been blurring and blending cultural boundaries successfully for two decades,” writes Lily O’Brien in Saturday’s (4/20) San Francisco Classical Voice. “To celebrate its 20th year, Silkroad has created a major new multimedia work, ‘Heroes Take Their Stands,’ comprising five original compositions based on heroic tales from different traditions, and created by a collaboration between pairs of culturally disparate artists: Pauchi Sasaki and Nomi Sasaki on Elektra; Kaoru Watanabe and Wu Man on June Snow; Colin Jacobsen and Aparna Ramaswamy on Ajruna’s Revelation; Jason Moran and Lucy Raven on Moderato 400; and Kayhan Kalhor and Hamid Rahmanian on The Price of Sorrows. The world premiere is on April 26 at the Granada Theater at UC Santa Barbara…. In addition to performing, in the past two years Silkroad has … developed in-depth relationships with major educational institutions, including Harvard University and Rice University, where they gather to rehearse, and where they present arts and passion-driven learning and global musician workshops…. ‘We are in a world where there are so many conflicts.… We want to create a more hopeful world in the process of what we do,’ says Silkroad violist Nicholas Cords.”
Posted April 22, 2019
