Silk Road to Explore Cultural Mosaic in Five-Year Initiative
The Silk Road Project, which draws inspiration from the 4000-mile network of trading routes that once crisscrossed Eurasia, has established a new partnership with the Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). The five-year initiative is an affiliate program of the Office for the Arts and the Department of Music, which serve as the FAS hosts to the Project and will assist in the development of its wide-ranging artistic and educational scope at the University.
“By examining the cultural mosaic of the Silk Road,” notes founder and artistic director Yo-Yo Ma ‘76, “we seek to illuminate the heritages of its countries and identify the voices that represent these traditions today. There is obviously a compelling need in the world today for more exchanges across cultures, art forms, and ways of understanding.”
Launched at Harvard in late September with a concert and a Learning From Performers conversation/music demonstration featuring Iranian composer and kemancheh virtuoso Kayhan Kalhor with the Silk Road Ensemble, the Project will develop new interdisciplinary curricula in the arts, literature, history, and music of the Silk Road regions. The Harvard residency programs hope to encourage multi-cultural artistic and intellectual collaborations, and to expand the scope of audience participation beyond the mainstream concert tour format. Working with Harvard’s Department of Music and the Office for the Arts, Silk Road musicians and staff will participate in university courses, workshops, master classes, and public performances in subjects such as art history, ethnomusicology, languages, and civilization.
Currently, Ma and Kalhor are working with Department of Music Professor Tom Kelley in the commission of a new work for string quartet for Kelley’s “First Nights” core course, which will have its world premiere performance as part of the course on December 20. In September the composer and Silk Road Ensemble musicians also participated in a session of Professor Kay Shelemay’s “Soundscapes” core course.
The RISD affiliation was launched in April of this year, featuring Silk Road Ensemble members in a series of workshops with RISD and Brown University students studying illustration, film animation and video, digital media, art and design education.
“We’re very pleased to provide an intellectual home for the Silk Road Project,” says William C. Kirby, Dean of FAS. “We’re embarking on a course that will emphasize international study and research and strengthen the connections between the performance and study of the arts. To begin that journey in the company of the Silk Road Project is most auspicious.”
Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers adds that the collaboration “dovetails splendidly” with the University’s broader efforts to enhance opportunities for its students interested in the arts and to promote “innovative forms of humanistic and cross-cultural learning.”
