Silk Road Tickets

Under the artistic direction of its founder, Yo-Yo Ma, the Silkroad ensemble is truly a one of a kind experience. The artists draw inspirations from a rich collection of traditions from all over the world and combine them together to create absolutely wonderful music that has the tendency to speak volumes.

The Silk Road Ensemble

The ensemble is not a fixed group of musicians. The number varies with time and it can go up to even 59 musicians, composers, visual artists, arrangers and storytellers from the different Eurasian cultures. The group has performed in a variety of locations all along the famous Silk Road, including places in Iran, Azerbaijan, India, Armenia, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. The group combines a variety of local sounds to create absolutely wonderful music. For the purpose of keeping their sound traditionally relevant and region-specific, the group infuses various local musical instruments such as the pipa – a Chinese short-necked plucked lute, a Shakuhachi – a Japanese bamboo flute, a duduk – a traditional Armenian double reed woodwind, and a morin khuur, a Mongolian horse head fiddle. This is only a small list out of all the unique instruments that the Ensemble utilizes in its music.

Silk Road Discography

Over the years since its formation, the group has recorded six CDs. In 2001, they came out with their first recording, titled “Silk Road Journey: When Strangers Meet”. This was followed by “Silk Road Journeys: Beyond the Horizon” in 2005 and “New Impossibilities” in 2007. After this came the group’s 2008 collection, titled “Traditions and Transformations: Sounds of Silk Road Chicago” and was followed by “Off the Map” a year later. The two latest compilations from the group include their 2013 collection titled “A Playlist Without Borders” – a title very apt for what the group is all about, and the 2016 “Sing Me Home”.

The Silk Road Musicians

The Silk Road Ensemble has received quite a bit of critical acclaim. The Wall Street Journal even called them “vibrant and virtuosic” while the Boston Global described them as a “roving musical laboratory without walls”. The Vancouver Sun has labeled them as “one of the 21^st century’s great ensembles”. With such good reception, there is no doubt about the wonderful nature of the work these individuals are doing.

The group is made up of performers and composers from over 20 countries. It includes the likes of Edward Arron on cello, Kinan Azmeh on the clarinet, Jeffrey Beecher on the double bass, Li, Hui on the pipa, Sandeep Das on the tabla, Joseph Gramley on the percussion, He Cui on the sheng, Betti Xiang on the erhu, Shane Shanahan on percussion, Siamak Jahangiry on the ney, Christina Pato on the Galician bagpipe, Bassam Saba on the oud and so on. Other members of the group include the composers such as Wu Tong, Kayhan Kalhor, Rabih Abou-Khalil, Jia Daqun, Ljova, Vache Sharafyan, Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, Nurlanbek Nyshanov, Zhao Lin, Evan Ziporyn, Alisher Latif Zadeh and Angel Lam among many others.

The vast number of musicians, composers, vocalist and arrangers is what helps the group retain a certain sense of originality and freshness in its sounds. Commissioning new music is considered to be an important factor in the group performances, recordings and on-going artistic exchange. New sounds and music is developed by performers in commissioning workshops in combination with Silk Road musicians and composers. The commissioning program has helped create more than 80 new works from arrangers from various Asian countries along the historic Silk Route and even beyond to the Middle East, Europe and United States.

If you want to get hold of these enthusiastic musicians, get your hands on these Silk Road tickets now.