Fri 4/26 @ 7:30PM
The Silk Road Project, now simply Silkroad, was founded in 1998 by eclectic-minded cellist Yo-Yo Ma to bring together musicians from various cultures to ignite new cross-cultural collaboration and ideas. Its musical collective the Silk Road Ensemble is a group of variable size, membership and instrumentation, featuring players from a wide range of Eurasian cultures, bringing their native sounds and distinctive instruments to a variety of newly commissioned works.
In 2020, Yo-Yo Ma passed the leadership of the nonprofit organization to Rhiannon Giddens, known for her wide-ranging interpretations of American roots music, but the mission remains the same: to bring together disparate musicians to produce exciting and unexpected results.
When Silkroad comes to Oberlin College (Giddens’ alma mater, class of 2000) this weekend for a concert at Finney Chapel, the ensemble will include women musicians playing music by women composers. Percussionist Haruka Fujii, vocalist/harpist Maeve Gilchrist, cellist Karen Ouzounian, pipa player Wu Man, flutist/vocalist Nathalie Joachim and vocalist/lap-steel slide guitar player Pura Fé will be performing a program called “Uplifted Voices” featuring mostly works written by the ensemble members.
For instance, Ouzounian’s Der Zor is based on a Turkish-language tune sung by the victims of the Armenian Genocide, and Pure Fé’s Tuscarora/Taíno ancestry fuels her use of Indigenous music in Mahkjchi and Canoe Song. And Fujii’s own piece, Tamping Song, references a folk tune sung by Japanese immigrant railroad workers in the U.S. They will also play Lullaby by Iranian composer Nasim Khorassani to honor Irani women fighting for their human rights.
Learn more about the program here. To get tickets go to oberlin.edu/tickets/event-details.