OFA Helps Launch Silk Road
A cultural exchange founded in 1998 by cellist Yo-Yo Ma ’67 to study the global circulation of music along the fabled pathway, the Silk Road Project consists of musicians from around the world who share their musical ideas—both traditional and innovative—through performances, recordings, university and museum residences, and workshops. In 2005-06, the Silk Road Project inaugurated a five-year collaboration with Harvard through the Office for the Arts and the Department of Music, which serve as the Project’s FAS hosts and assist in the development of its wide-ranging artistic and educational scope at the University.
During the week of September 26, Silk Road participated in a range of activities, including “Silk Road Perspectives:
A Musical Conversation” presented by Learning From Performers and moderated by Kay Kaufman Shelemay, G. Gordon Watts Professor of Music and Professor of African and African American Studies. The event included both discussion and performances by the eight members of Silk Road, including Yo-Yo Ma and Kayhan Kalhor, a native of Tehran, Iran, who is a composer and internationally acclaimed virtuoso of the kamancheh (spike fiddle).
Several of the undergraduates who attended this event performed with Silk Road in a concert on September 29 in Sanders Theatre, and many other undergraduates participated in a jam session with the ensemble at Cabot House the previous evening. Students were also exposed to the ensemble’s innovative forms of humanistic and cross-cultural teaching via Prof. Shelemay’s core course in ethnomusicology, “Soundscapes,” as well as “First Nights,” another core course taught by Thomas Kelly, Morton B. Knafel Professor of Music.
The Silk Road Project returns to Harvard in October 2006 for a residency featuring the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra and students participating in the OFA Dance Program.
[view information on the Silk Road 2006 residency]
