A Mighty Wind on the Silk Road

Music lives in an eclectic age just now. No one idiom or concept holds the high ground of respectability. But two ideas, rhythm as main organizing principal and cultural crossover, seem to be blowing in the same general direction and forming something like a prevailing wind.

We’ve felt it at Present Music concerts the past few season, where music by an African drummer is as likely as music by a university-based composer. And we heard it in a big way  Thursday, when Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble landed at the Pabst Theater.

Yo-Yo Ma, left, along side cellist Mike Block Thursday night at the Pabst Theater. Pabst Theater photo by CJ Foeckler.

Hummable melodies and compelling chord progressions were few and far between. Rhythmic cycles, scale patterns and improvisation based on both abounded. Hot composers Osvaldo Golijov and Giovanni Sollima, even in their heavily notated works, borrowed pointedly from assorted cultures and left room for improvisation. The rest of the pieces, loose arrangements of traditional music from non-Western cultures went further toward improvisation. Rhythm, not harmony, melody or argumentative sonata-type structure, was the most important thing in Golijov’s Air to Air, Sollima’s The Taranta Project and in the ambitiously expansive numbers based on already virtuosic exotic traditions.

For anyone awaiting the next Beethoven to carry the banner of Western Culture or to anyone who would keep each little culture 1oo% pure, all this is bad news. But if you like vital, gripping, daring music, it’s just fine.

Cristina Pato, on gaita (Galician bagpipe) and Kojiro Umezaki, on Shakuhachi, front and center at the Silk Road concert Thursday. Pabst Theater photo by CJ Foeckler.

The Silk Road concert was tremendous because 15 of the world’s greatest musicians got together with their violins, violas, cellos, bass, guitar, sheng, piba, shakuhachi, tablas, gaita and so on and worked things out. But even in the amazing bit for the four percussionists, performed without a single phrase written down, this was no self-indulgent, free-form jam. The result in all seven numbers was a coherent whole, whether guided generally by one composer or arranger or arrived at more or less by committee during rehearsal.

What a pleasure to see musicians playing extremely difficult stuff with their heads up and smiles on their faces. Eye contact among them was the rule, not the exception. Their joy in plying their expertise in the company of equals and in a creative atmosphere was contagious. The big, happy crowd — the Pabst was nearly full — hooted and hollered after astonishing riffs, which were plentiful. The Silk Road concert was as brainy and high-minded as a symphony concert, but felt more like a jazz or rock event.

If that is where the Western Classical Tradition is going, it’s OK with me.

Caronte Cristina Pato

Ascending Bird Persian Traditional

(Arr. Siamak Aghaei, Colin Jacobsen)

Wine Madness Ruan Ji

(Arr. Wu Tong, Liu Lin)

Air to Air Osvaldo Golijov

Wah Habbibi

Aiini Taqtiru

K’in Sventa Ch’ul Me’tik Kwadalupe

Tancas Serradas a Muru

—INTERMISSION—

The Taranta Project Giovanni Sollima

Shristi (for percussion quartet)                        Sandeep Das

Ambush from Ten Sides Traditional   (Arr. Li Cang Sang, Wu Tong)

And here, for the record, are the personnel:

The Silk Road Ensemble

Jeffrey Beecher, contrabass

Mike Block, cello

Nicholas Cords, viola

Sandeep Das, tabla

Haruka Fujii, percussion

Jonathan Gandelsman, violin

Joseph Gramley, percussion

Colin Jacobsen, violin

Yo-Yo Ma, cello, and artistic director

Jon Mendle, guitar

Cristina Pato, gaita (Galician bagpipes)

Mark Suter, percussion

Kojiro Umezaki, shakuhachi

Wu Tong, sheng and bawu

Yang Wei, pipa