Yo-yo Ma, Silk Road make stop in Seoul
By Warren Lee

THE KOREA HERALD
June 17, 2004, Thursday

A program featuring Armenian folk songs, Romany melodies and a Korean
12-stringed zither or “gayageum” thrown in for good measure may appear
chaotic, but there is a common thread that unites these sounds. All
were heard along the Silk Road, the ancient trade route that connected
the people and traditions of Asia and Europe.

For the past six years acclaimed cellist Yo-yo Ma has led the Silk
Road Project on a nomadic concert series devoted to music from lands
along the historic route. Ma has helped unearth and introduce a
diverse range of isolated musical traditions that remain as exotic
to contemporary ears as they were to European travelers like Marco
Polo several hundred years ago.

The Silk Road Project will make its first appearance in Korea at the
Seoul Arts Center on June 24, with Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble
performing music stretching from Azerbaijan to Korea with stops
in between.

Ma originally created the Silk Road Project, which has gone on to
successfully capitalize on the exoticism shrouding the Silk Road’s
historical legacy, as an earnest study of how musical ideas travel
through various geographic and cultural terrains. It has become
more than a mere travelogue in sound and aims to underscore more
similarities than differences among traditions, while integrating
Western classical works with ties to those traditions.

The concert will begin with a pair of Korean artists. Kim Ji-hyun’s
performance of “gayageum byeongchang,” traditional Korean singing
with accompaniment on the gayageum, will contrast with a newly
commissioned work by composer Jacqueline Kim. “Tryst,” written for
the gayageum, oboe and cello, is a love song sung between the famed
scholar and poet Jung Chul and the beautiful courtesan Chin Ok. The
vocal cries are brought to life by the gayageum, with the cello and
oboe mirroring the traditional ensemble functions carried out by the
“piri,” a Korean wind instrument.

The second half of the program features the music of Azerbaijan,
Armenia and Roma arranged for string quartet, performed by Ma, violist
Nicholas Cords and violinists Jonathan Gandelsman and Colin Jacobsen.

In “Mugham-Sajay for String Quartet,” composer Franghiz Ali-Zadeh
mimics the sounds of traditional Azerbaijani and Middle Eastern
instruments, transforming a Western string quartet into a small
Azerbaijani folk band. Her piece evokes the spirit of her native
mugham, a collection of suites that form the backbone of Azerbaijani
classical music. Ali-Zadeh, who received a doctorate in musicology
from Baku Conservatory, exemplifies the Western-trained composer who
straddles two musical worlds. Chinese virtuoso Wu Tong will perform a
traditional work on the sheng, a Chinese mouth organ made of bamboo or
bronze pipes. In “The Prospect of Colored Desert” written for Chinese
lute, violin, cello and sheng, Chinese composer Jia Daquan, a painter
who turned to music when his vision became impaired, imagines a black
ink brush painting a desert.

The Silk Road Project represents another step in Ma’s musical journey
that extends well beyond performance of the classic cello repertory.
Fascinated by how ideas evolve when they travel over geographic and
cultural distances, Ma founded the organization to study the flow of
ideas along the Silk Road. The Silk Road Project is now an umbrella
organization and common resource to a variety of artistic, cultural
and educational projects.

Yo-yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble will perform June 24 at 7:30 at
the Seoul Arts Center Concert Hall, located near Nambu Bus Terminal
Station, Subway Line No. 3, Exit 5. Tickets start at 30,000 won. For
more information, contact (02) 720-6633 or visit

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress