Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma:  Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley, Calif., 11.03.2007. (HS)
 

 

As his recordings and concerts attest, the American cellist Yo-Yo Ma adapts to any form of music. He can play the Bach unaccompanied sonatas with perfect clarity and purity, or dig in the dirt with country fiddlers and mandolin artists in the bluegrass-steeped music of Appalachia, or find the romantic swagger in a Piazzolla tango. Who can forget his haunting solo in the title music in Chinese style for the film "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"?

 

Still, the work he does with his world music group of nine years, the Silk Road Ensemble, can make a listener gape in wonder. Here he immerses himself in the music of the cultures found along the ancient Silk Road, which delivered the prized textiles through Japan, China and Central Asia to the Middle East. Nothing could be further from Bach.

 

The ensemble, which lists 48 members on its roster but puts only about a dozen on stage at a time, comprises musicians from many of these nations, plus westerners with those cultural backgrounds. They play their native instruments. On Saturday's concert, given by Cal Performances at the University of California at Berkeley, western stringed instruments and a marimba played with a pipa, a sort of Chinese mandolin, a tabla, the Indian tuned drum, a kemancheh, the violin sound-alike similar to a Chinese erhu, and a shakuhachi, the Japanese vertical flute, among others.

 

Miraculously, the music emerges as if all these instruments have always played together. The mind reels, the ear smiles and the brain simply goes on a seven-minute adventure vacation during the program's finale, Turceasca. An Osvaldo Goliljov arrangement (originally for Kronos) of Sapo Perapaskero's Roma (Gypsy) tune, it encapsulates in one joyful stretch of music what Silk Road Ensemble is all about: bringing human beings together. The above eastern instruments meld with the sound of what we westerners think of as "Gypsy" violin, mixed with the rhythms and scales of Turkey, played with wild rhythmic abandon by instruments that the music's originators never might have envisaged. Did it work musically? Oh my, yes, it did.

 

The ensemble's commissioned works often place Ma's cello in a featured role, but almost always in juxtaposition with the instruments native to the music. In this formula, Ma becomes the first bridge between the cultures. In adding his sound, and sometimes his own glosses, Ma never seems to intrude on the cultural integrity of the music. He enhances it.

 

In the concert's first piece, the opening measures of the quietly moody Mountains Are Far Away find Kayham Kalhor, the kemancheh player and composer, spinning out a long, legato episode in an Oriental mode. His instrument sounds like a violin with a mild head cold. Ma's cello doubles the tune, adding depth and resonance and a sense of spaciousness that makes it float.

 

Finishing the same opening suite is Arabian Waltz, a piece by Rabi Abou-Khalil, a Lebanese composer who also plays jazz. The piece shifts meters between episodes in 5, 6 and 7. The musicians not only nail the metrical intricacies but make it seem utterly natural, as it accumulates rhythmic tension seamlessly.

 

Pared down to violin, cello, bass, marimba, percussion and the Japanese flute, Empty Mountain Spirit Rain by the Hong Kong composer Angel Lam is the first of three works newly commissioned by the Silk Road Project. In this slow, evocative piece, shakuhachi player Kojito Umezaki coaxes sounds that are alternately breathy, then raucous, then deliciously sweet from his vertical flute.

 

Two other new commissions feature percussionists. In Jee-young Kim's meditation on the sound of a 1,200-year-old bell, Ancient Bell, Korean Dong-Won Kim achieves a high level of delicacy and refinement on his two-sided drum. Sulvasutra, a three-movement work by Evan Ziporyn, a professor at MIT, showcases the virtuosity of tabla master Sandeep Das. Ever hear a duet between tabla and cello where both were in tune with the other? Magic.

 

Just like that, in ways big and small, musical and cultural, the Silk Road Ensemble opens doors. And ears. It's an unforgettable experience.

 

Harvey Steiman