The Silkroad Ensemble, a music ensemble that aims “to make a positive impact across borders through the arts,” is kicking off a tour of the northeast United States tomorrow night at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts in Katonah, N.Y.
The Grammy Award-winning ensemble was founded by cellist Yo-Yo Ma in 1998, who believed the historic Silk Road—which connected the Far East and China with Europe and the Middle East—was “a model for cultural collaboration, for the exchange of ideas, tradition and innovation across borders.” Musicians in the ensemble come from the original Silk Road countries.
Silkroad’s new artistic director, Rhiannon Giddens, is a Grammy Award-winning musician and vocalist, MacArthur Genius Grant recipient and co-founder of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, an old-time string band from North Carolina. She has performed with Silkroad often, but her appearances with them this season are her first as its artistic director.
Silkroad calls its new program “Phoenix Rising,” “a musical rebirth and celebration, (taking) a cross-section of Silkroad’s award-winning compositions and arrangements and reimagining them for today. Keeping an eye on the past, members of the Silkroad ensemble and Giddens have also collaborated on new works that coalesce her unique worldview with the ensemble’s collective experience during the pandemic.”
Speaking recently with Forbes.com, Giddens, who described herself as “a banjo lady who likes to talk about slavery,” said she brings “a unique worldview” to Silkroad. She said she is helping to connect “the global sense of the ensemble to the global core of American music,” influenced, she explained, by slaves brought to the U.S.; European immigrants who arrived at Ellis Island; and Asians who emigrated to San Francisco.
She said she accepted her new position at Silkroad “when the world shut down” because of the Covid-19 pandemic. “All of a sudden I was on Zoom with people I’d never met or played with. I had the opportunity to look at how Silkroad operates, how its artists’ voices get heard, how communal decision-making can happen,” she said.
The pandemic, she added, “gave us an opportunity to look at the things that best support all the stuff we want to do going forward.”
She said “we want people to come and share the space, heal together. It’s still a rough time for art to create emotional pathways. Ultimately it’s about creating a piece of art together, with the audience being active participants.”
After Caramoor, Giddens and Silkroad’s 13 other artists will perform through the end of July in Hanover, N.H.; Newport, R.I.; Vienna, Va.; Webster and Lenox, Ma.; and Skaneatles, N.Y.