Ma, ensemble improvise in a lively musical tour
MUSIC REVIEW
The Boston Globe
April 7, 2005
By Richard Dyer, Globe Staff
Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble gave a large and enthusiastic
audience a 2½-hour multicultural hootenanny in Symphony Hall last night.
An ensemble of 14 virtuoso musicians from many lands joined the cellist
for a program that presented four kinds of music: authentic folk music
from countries along the Silk Road; modern arrangements of folk music
for mixtures of Eastern and Western instruments; contemporary composed
music with deep roots in national and folk cultures; and cheerful
crosscultural improvisations.
Although Ma founded the Silk Road Project, it has grown and developed in
surprising ways because he has never made it all about himself. For most
of the evening, he was an ensemble player, emerging for only one solo,
”Habil-Sayagy,” a substantial piece for cello and prepared piano by
Franghiz Ali-Zadeh. This is an amazing piece to have been composed by a
woman in Baku in 1979. The innards of the piano were atmospherically
plucked and struck by Joel Fan, while Ma used his instrument in an
improvisational recitative-and-aria style based on the sound and
traditional repertory of the kamancheh, an instrument from Azberaijan.
Wu Man, virtuoso of the Chinese pipa, made herself completely at home in
Romanian gypsy music; in these exciting and smoochy tunes, violinists
Colin Jacobsen and Jonathan Gandelsman vied with each other in speed and
altitude. Gevorg Dabaghyan proved the expressive master of the Armenian
duduk, a small instrument with a large, plaintive sound resembling a
combination of clarinet, oboe, and saxophone. Sandeep Das, playing the
tabla from India, joined three Western drummers to create waves of
rhythm. The astonishing vocalist Alim Qasimov from Azberaijan boasts a
tenor so high that high C was a note to play in the midst of volatile
cascades of expressive coloratura.
Percussionist Shane Shanahan announced the last encore by saying this is
what the party would have sounded like if all the musicians had
simultaneously pulled into the same oasis on the Silk Road centuries
ago; it was great fun to join them there.
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