#BAGPIPE PLAYER IN MUSIC OF STRANGERS SERIES#
#BAGPIPE PLAYER IN MUSIC OF STRANGERS FREE#

Of all the Silk Road concerts I’ve attended, this one ranked as the most fun. Silk Road mainstay Kayhan Kalhor continued to mesmerize with his virtuosity on the kamancheh (a small Iranian spiked fiddle).Īnd as a parting shot, the ensemble closed the evening with an exotic arrangement of Prince’s “When Doves Cry” that fit the tune surprisingly well as the Bowl shell lit up in - of course - purple.

#BAGPIPE PLAYER IN MUSIC OF STRANGERS SERIES#

There were other intoxicating mergers - some written out, some improvised - like pipa master Wu Man’s hoe-down-like duet with Wu Tong on another Chinese reed instrument (the sheng), or a wonderfully weird polyglot deconstruction of Billy Strayhorn’s “Take the ‘A’ Train.” David Bruce’s “Cut the Rug,” which seems constructed like a four-movement symphony on CD, became a run-on series of grooves and meditations encompassing Balkan-like rhythms and Andalusian flamenco. Others, such as Syrian clarinet musician Kinan Azmeh and Galician bagpipe player. This segued directly into “Ichichila,” for which Kojiro Umezaki’s shakuhachi and Kinan Azmeh’s clarinet solos had a pronounced jazz tinge to my ears, and eventually led to “Green (Vincent’s Tune),” whose mad jumble of sound, with the bass drum booming through the hills, produced a deliciously cacophonous freakout. Of course, Ma and Kalhor are just two players in the Silk Road Project. The performance opened with a bang - a droning duel of fanfares between the charismatic Galician bagpiper Cristina Pato (who also plays a mean classical piano) and Wu Tong on the suona (a loud Chinese double-reeded horn).

#BAGPIPE PLAYER IN MUSIC OF STRANGERS FREE#

That’s more than half of the 17-person group. tour-ending gig Sunday night at Hollywood Bowl. appearance in Royce Hall in 2002 were on hand for its U.S. They suggest that no one has been listening.īut the Silk Road Ensemble has nevertheless produced a legacy of sometimes bold polystylistic fusions - six albums’ worth, along with the recent documentary film, “The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble.”Īlthough the personnel shifts from project to project, no fewer than nine members of the ensemble who played the first L.A. Whether this group has managed to make an iota of difference in peace and understanding along the Silk Road might be answered with a glance at the headlines on any given day. The Silk Road Ensemble, Yo-Yo Ma’s grandly all-encompassing world music band that seeks to find meeting points for musical traditions from China to Europe, has proved after 18 years to be the ever-curious cellist’s most valuable project.

Bagpipe player in music of strangers