Advance Program NotesSilkroad EnsembleFalling Out of TimeSunday, November 17, 2019, 7 PM

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Silkroad Ensemble

Osvaldo Golijov

Falling Out of Timebased on a book by David Grossman

IInterlude

IIIII

performed without intermission

The Silkroad EnsembleShawn Conley, bass

Nicholas Cords, violaNora Fischer, vocals

Jeremy Flower, electronics and guitarJohnny Gandelsman, violinKayhan Kalhor, kemancheh

Karen Ouzounian, celloShane Shanahan, percussion

Mazz Swift, violinWu Man, pipa

Wu Tong, vocals, sheng

with guestsDan Brantigan, trumpetBiella Da Costa, vocals

This performance was supported in part by a gift from Don and Libby Drapeau.

Silkroad is grateful to the members of the College of the Holy Cross in Worchester, Massachusetts, for their partnership in the development of Falling Out of Time.

A Letter from the Artistic DirectorsFalling Out of Time comes face to face with a raw and vulnerable state of grief through Osvaldo Golijov’s exquisite and nuanced interpretation of David Grossman’s book by the same name. Somewhere between a song cycle and chamber opera, the music is characteristic of Osvaldo’s omnivorous style. For Falling Out of Time, Osvaldo drew inspiration from the early Delta blues and epic ballads of Central Asia—two traditions that have relentlessly explored grief through a musical lens. This cosmopolitan approach to the creative process has led to an extraordinary bond between Osvaldo and the Silkroad Ensemble. Together, we’ve defined a shared space between composer and performers that expands the boundaries of Silkroad’s musical language even further.

From inception, creating new music from a broad range of artistic perspectives has been central to Silkroad’s purpose. As we celebrate our 20th anniversary, we’re renewing our investment in the creative heart of the organization by exploring a wide range of traditions, human experiences, and social issues through an ambitious array of new commissions. This work is rooted in the belief that through music we can build new capacity for connection, curiosity, and understanding for a better world.

The subject matter of Falling Out of Time is fundamental to being human. Addressing grief is essential for us to engage in difficult conversations that have affected humankind across cultures and generations. How do you face an unspeakable emotion like grief? How can music express both a deeply personal and profoundly shared experience? As we begin tonight’s performance, we invite you to listen for these and other unanswerable questions opening up new possibilities and unexpected conversations. Grief is a journey towards breathing again, and Falling Out of Time is a space for us to experience that process with a collective, melodic breath forward.

—Nicholas Cords and Shane ShanahanCo-Artistic Directors, Silkroad Ensemble

Program NotesI

We hear a heart murmur. We see the centaur; half writer, half desk. He tells us that the only way he has to understand what happened to him is by re-creating it as a story (“It’s like a murmur / inside my head / and never stops / a rustle, dead leaves / and there is someone / treading on them”). We see the man and his wife. The man can’t bear staying at home and decides he has to go “there, to him.” His wife despairs (“there’s no ‘there’”). The heartbeat becomes a clock ticking. The man cannot accept that time goes on after what happened to them (“It’s impossible / that we / that the sun / that the clocks / the moon / the couples...the blood in our veins”). The clock stops. The man and the woman sing of the night when messengers came to tell them about their son (“And they / mercifully / quietly / stood there and / gave us / the breath / of death”). The man leaves the house and walks in ever-widening circles until reaching the hills outside the town (“Here I fall / I do not fall”). The woman who stayed at home now leaves and climbs to the town’s belfry, from where she watches the procession walking towards a barren hill (“Atop a belfry / I walk alone now / in circles…While he / on the hilltops / facing me / days, nights / orbits / his own circle.”). The walking man conjures up his son: he urges him to enter his own body so the son can live the rest of his unlived life (“Quick, my child / my eyelids tremble! / Quick / devour / be deep / be sad...Quick, my child / Dawn is rising!”).

Interlude

The centaur tells how some of the townsfolk who are also bereaved see the walking man, leave their homes, and follow him: a midwife; her husband, the cobbler; a woman in a net; an old math teacher.

II

We hear a cry piercing the skies. There is no answer, only a faint echo. The walking man hovers between here and there (“Walking my mind away”). The music turns into a mantra from which the centaur emerges, asking questions of the walkers who are mourners (“When you meet them/ if you meet them / what will you tell them?”). The walking man continues (“Perhaps this walk itself / is both the riddle and its answer”). The woman atop the belfry sees her husband far away and blesses him (“Go now / be like him /conceive him / yet be your death, too...and there, my love / will come peace—for him / for you”). At the same time the man feels he is giving up (“you were right, wife...there is no there”). One of the walkers meditates upon a fly caught in a web, the unfathomable web of life. Giant drums interrupt. The man hollers a string of questions to his son (“Where? / Where are you, my son? / And who are you there? /And how are you there?”). The stars mock his questions.

III

A cry pierces the skies. There is no answer. Only a faint echo. We hear the voice of a boy (“There is / breath / there is / breath / inside the pain / there is / breath”).

Program Notes, continuedFALLING OUT OF TIMENotes by Leah Hager Cohen

You—Where are you?What are you?And how are you there?And who are you there?

—David Grossman, Falling Out of Time (2014)

Falling Out of Time is a journey to nowhere—or more accurately, a journey to no where. For the dead are no longer in time or place, and those who love them and would follow them must seek a route beyond linear boundaries. This is a kind of madness, and a kind of truth.

The seed of this musical project was sown at a 2002 encounter between Osvaldo Golijov and Yitzhak Frankenthal, founder of The Parents Circle, an organization of Israelis and Palestinians who have lost family members to the ongoing conflict. Frankenthal shared the story of a bereaved father who could not reconcile himself to leaving his dead son and reentering the world of time. For many days he remained at his son’s side, at night sleeping upon the grave, narrating with his actions a story of madness and truth.

The seed found soil 12 years later, when Golijov read David Grossman’s brilliant, almost unbearable novel about a man who walks, a father who describes with his feet impossible, ever-widening circles, driven to go to his dead son.

The notion of losing one’s child conjures, in Golijov’s words, the utmost pain imaginable, a supernova of pain. Is it madness to try to translate such experience into words, into music? Perhaps. A supernova is very big. But as one of the characters says, there is “Great, definitive death”—boundless, eternal, immortal—and then there is “Your single, little death, / inside it.”

In a sense, it is the “single, little death” that both Grossman and Golijov take for their starting points. They enter the fathomless through the particular, the palpable, the present. One foot placed in front of the other. One heartbeat at a time. Ka-thunk. Ka-thunk. We are very much in time—music is nothing if not an organization of time—and in motion. The father is joined by other townsfolk, each having lost a child, each railing against circumstance, each compelled on a relentless walk of resistance at once mad and true. The heartbeat and the walking, the walking and the heartbeat. The body’s humble metronomes—the very movements that separate the living from the dead—allow the journey.

We find a crucial counterpoint to these rhythms in the questions that erupt from the walkers. Golijov, for whom the novel is “a book of questions,” has distilled from it three, which we hear again and again. At times a cry to pierce the sky, at times an echo swollen with tenderness: Where are you? Who are you there? How are you there? To ask, a form of madness. To refrain from asking, another.

And the questions themselves contain echoes of the sorely missed children—indeed, of all children: their lovely doggedness, their lively insistence on asking the unanswerable. We all go in circles, children with their hunger to know why? where? who? how? and grownups who in suffering find we have not lost the appetite: “teach me—as I not long ago / taught you— / the world and all its secrets.” All of us circling, circling, until in time we come to perceive that perhaps the “walk itself is both / the answer and the question.”

“Great, definitive death” touches us all, yet grief is always isolating. Each “single, little death” inflicts its separate suffering, a unique exile. Even parents mourning the same child do not share the same grief.

Program Notes, continuedA coda to the story about the bereaved father who could not bear to leave his son’s grave: When Frankenthal heard about this man, he went to the cemetery. And remained there. Day and night he kept company with this man, until he was able to rise back up and reenter the world and time.

Perhaps more than an act of making art, the joining of Golijov’s musical voice to Grossman’s literary one is an act of accompaniment. And by collaborating with the Silkroad Ensemble in the creation of this piece, Golijov widens the circle of accompaniment. Accompaniment is not a cure for grief, but it may be the opposite of madness.

Sitting shiva, the Jewish custom of gathering around the bereaved for seven days after a death, is a ritualized form of accompaniment. Falling Out of Time, with its ever-expanding circles of community—from the townsfolk in the novel to the musicians bringing it to the stage—might be thought of as a walking shiva, an act of accompaniment that remains, like the breath of the living, in motion.

There isbreaththereis breathinside the painthere is breath

—David Grossman, Falling Out of Time (2014)

Falling Out of Time

I

1. Heart Murmur2. Messengers3. Layla ( Night)4. I did not shout when he was born5. Come, Chaos6. Step by Step7. Bo, Bni (Come, Son)

Interlude

In Procession

II

1. Pierce the Skies2. Walking3. Skein4. Perhaps, If you meet him5. Go Now6. Fly7. Ayeka? (Where?)

III

Pierce the Skies: Breathe

TextCENTAUR: It’s like a murmur

Inside my head,And never stopsA rustle, dead leaves,And there is someoneTreading on them

I have to tell it like a storyFind the words to understandWhat happened to me...to him..Because he’ll never, never…

It’s like a murmur… a buzz…Inside my head...

Heart Murmur

WOMAN:CENTAUR:

WOMAN:

MAN:

WOMAN:

MAN: I will go there, to him

Where’s “There”? What’s “there”?

There, to him

There’s no ‘there’And he’s not… he’s not

There’s no such place as ‘there’And he’s not, he’s not, and not, and not.

Find the wordsTo understandWrite it downLike a story:There’s a manThere’s a womanHe will walkShe will not.

MAN WHOWILL WALK: No

It’s impossibleThat weThat the sunThe clocksThe MoonThe couplesThat the trees in the streets turn greenThat blood in our veinsThat Autumn and SpringThat the world simply is.

WOMAN:MAN:

StopReturn to meReturn to us

To him

Text, continued***

Messengers

Instrumental

***

MAN: At nightPeople cameThey carried a messageIn their mouthsThey walked a long wayQuietly grave,And perhaps, as they did so,They stole a taste, a lick.With a child’s wonderThey learned they could holdDeath in their mouthsLike a candy made of poisonTo which they are miraculouslyImmune.We opened the doorWe stood there,You and I,Shoulder to shoulder,TheyOn the thresholdAnd weFacing them,And they,Mercifully,Quietly,Stood there andGave usThe breathOf death.

Layla (Night)

***I did not shout when he was born

WOMAN: I knew, tonightYou would comeDon’t be afraid,I did not shout when he was born, andI won’t shout now either.

Text, continued***

Come, Chaos

CENTAUR:WOMAN: MAN:Come, ChaosCome, Chaos

I saw one eyeWeepingAnd one eye crazedA human eyeExtinguishedAnd the eye of a beastSoaked in blood, insanePeered at me from your eye

Now,For a momentThey sink.Both not sayingThe sameWordsNot bewailing himFor now.But bewailing theMusicOf their previousLife.

I cannot see youNot with my human eye.

The EarthOpens its mouthAnd swallows us.

WOMAN AND MAN:

CENTAUR: The wonder ofSimplicity,Lightness.

The EarthOpens its mouthAnd swallows them.

WOMAN:MAN:

Stop!Return to meReturn to us

Here I fallI do not fallI fallI do not fall

***Step by Step

WOMAN ATOP THE BELFRY: Step,Another step.He walksAnd walksTo him.He isAn unleashed questionAn open shout.

My heart beats:He walksMy blood pounds:He walks

NoI did not go there.

Text, continued

***Bo, Bni (Come, son)

WALKING MAN: Look at me,Son.HereI amNot.

Come!I am not hereThe house is yours.My blood your blood.

Come,Be presentVibrateLaughEverything now is Yes.So loveBurnLustF***

Quick, my child,My eyelids tremble!Quick,DevourBe deepBe sadRageRaveQuick, my childDawn is rising!

Touch a warm bodyA womanBreastsIn your hands.The head

WOMAN ATOP THE BELFRY: Atop a belfryI walk alone nowIn circlesSlowly, Slowly,Nights, days.While heOn the hilltopsFacing me,Days, nightsOrbitsHis own circle.

Text, continuedWALKING MAN (cont): Of a newborn child

UnbornTo you.No! Stop!Come backTo darknessOblivion.

Just do not seeWith my own eyesWhat happened to you.

***Interlude

In Procession(Townspeople are drawn into the Walking Man’s journey; all characters are voiced by the CENTAUR)

MIDWIFE: Y-y-y-esterday sheW-w-w-ould have been five

COBBLER: Poisoning your soul again?

MIDWIFE: W-w-w-hat is in yourM-m-m-outh? Open!

COBBLER: Don’t touch!Leave it!

MIDWIFE: Th-th-th-there’s blood…Sp-p-p-it the nails!

CENTAUR: Look there: It’s the midwife and her husband, the cobbler.Walking behind the Walking Man.And look, look, there!It’s the mute net-mender.

NET MENDER: Agh...agh…

CENTAUR: And the elderly math teacherMuttering his equation, like Spinoza:

Text, continued

MIDWIFE: L-l-l-ook, woman!Over there: a c-c-c-liff c-c-c-utInto round smooth mountain!

CENTAUR: A barren brain-hillIt pulsates, perhapsOnce in a thousand years.

It is the brain of the universeIt is not what emits the wailIt is desolation.Only desolation.

Mute and deaf andFlat

It has no wailsNo thoughts

It has no answersAnd no love.

ELDERLY MATHTEACHER: The object—the life of the son—

Must never be located in the universeAt a distanceFrom which the father—the observing subject—May encompass all of himWith one gazeFrom beginning to end.

CENTAUR: ..and they groan… and trip...and stand…walking half asleep…behind the walking man…

A wail rolls over the desert…

***

SILENCE

***

Pierce the Skies

Instrumental

Text, continued

WALKINGMAN: Walking,

Walking my mind awayWalking,Sleeping my mind awayMy head rests on your shouldersI don’t knowWho carries whom

CENTAUR ANDWOMAN: He walks,

Puts himselfTo sleep

MAN: My legsLift slowlyFrom the earthLightly, slowlyWe hoverBetweenHere, andThere.

***Skein

(Interlude within Walking)

CENTAUR: It breaks my heart, my sonThat I could—FindThe wordsTo This

***

Walking

***Walking (cont)

WALKINGMAN: The thread will soon

And we will glideAnd lookAt whateverIs thereAt whatever we dareTo see.

Text, continued

***Perhaps/If you meet

CENTAUR: And you, walkers?When you meet them,If you meet them,What will you tell them?

Will you tell himOf his brother,Born after him?

Will you tell her thatYou took all her picturesFrom her room?

That you couldn’t bear it any longer?That you gave his dog to a boy in the street?

This voidThis absenceWhere youStill breatheStill flutter

This voidWhere one can touchThe here,Still almost feelThe warming handThat touchesThere.

WALKINGMAN (cont):

WALKINGMAN: You were right, woman.

Perhaps I don’t need to reachThe end of waysPerhaps this walk itselfIs both the riddle and its answerYou were right, woman.Perhaps, there is no there.

***Go Now

WOMAN ATOPTHE BELFRY: Go now,

Be like him

Text, continued

WOMAN ATOPTHE BELFRY: Go now,

Be like himConceive himYet be your death too,Almost.Like himBe now, but only untilThe shadow of his endFallsOn the shadowof your being.

WOMAN ATOPTHE BELFRY: And there, my love,

There will come peace—for him—For you.

WALKINGMAN: You were right, woman.

I am here and he’s thereAnd a timeless borderStands between here and there.

Thus to stand,To fill with knowledge.As a wound fills up with blood:This is to be man.

***Fly

A WALKER: Look, there:A leaf, green,A miracle on the rock.

Look there:A fly, landing on the leaf

Now he cleans his bodyAnd extends his translucent wings.

He hoversAnd lands again.

Vibrant… a riddle…But he should be careful, right?From the one in the web.

No! He touched it.The fly, with the tip of his wing.He touched it.

Text, continued

***Ayeka? (Where?)

WALKINGMAN: Ayeka?

Where?Where are you, my son?And who are you there?And how are you there?Ayeka?

A WALKER(cont):

Lost.Tragedy.We instantly know.

He struggles.Tries to lift off.And he buzzesUntil the skiesAlmost tear apart.His mouth, wide open.

What?What are you trying to say?And what?What has been revealed to you?That you didn’t knowWhen you were spawned?

***Pierce the Skies: Breathe

VOICE OFA BOY: There is

BreathThere isBreathInside the painThere isBreath

END

***

BiographiesDAN BRANTIGAN

As a trumpet player and composer, Dan Brantigan offers a unique sound and textural perspective to a diverse range of musical projects and films. Brantigan has performed around the world with notable artists, including Osvaldo Golijov, David Byrne, Macy Gray, Bonobo, Sarah Brightman, Doyle Bramhall II, Kaki King, and DJ Krush, and has been a featured soloist in multiple Ken Burns documentary series. Brantigan’s composition and sound design work has received accolades from the Bourges Institute and the Acoustical Society of America and can be heard regularly in feature and documentary films.

SHAWN CONLEY

Honolulu-born bassist Shawn Conley won a position with the Honolulu Symphony while in high school and went on to earn degrees in music performance from Rice University. Conley won the 2009 International Society of Bassists Jazz Competition, was a semifinalist in the Thelonious Monk Jazz Competition, and received a Wagoner Fellowship. He has performed with Sting, Peter Gabriel, and Emanuel Ax, among many others. Conley teaches at the Hawaii Contrabass Festival and regularly performs with the Hot Club of Detroit, the NOW Ensemble, and The Knights.

NICHOLAS CORDS

Violist Nicholas Cords has devoted his career to the advocacy of music drawn from a strikingly broad historic and geographic spectrum. Cords serves as one of Silkroad’s inaugural co-artistic directors. He is also a founding member of the string quartet Brooklyn Rider and a member of The Knights. Cords performs internationally as an acclaimed soloist and guest chamber musician. His recent solo recording, Recursions, features music ranging from Heinrich Biber to his own compositions. A prize-winning violist in his student days at the Juilliard School and the Curtis Institute, Cords currently teaches viola and chamber music at New England Conservatory in Boston.

BIELLA DA COSTA

Biella Da Costa is one of Venezuela’s most acclaimed and versatile vocalists. Da Costa was awarded the Premio Nacional del Artista on two occasions. She has shared the stage with international artists such as Eric Clapton, Ray Charles, and others, and has appeared in prestigious jazz festivals and venues throughout Europe, North America, Russia, and Australia. Since November 2000 Da Costa has been performing Osvaldo Golijov’s La Pasión Según San Marcos, Ayre, and Oceana. Da Costa has numerous recordings to her credit, including El Sueño with Casablanca, Solo Jazz, Jazz & Blues, and Biella Da Costa en Navidad, and now she is releasing a new work. She is also featured on Monk in the Sun, a tribute to Thelonious Monk released in the U.S. In 2009 she recorded Osvaldo Golijov´s La Pasión Según San Marcos at the Carré Theatre in Holland. Da Costa has performed at Carnegie Hall, Boston Symphony Hall, Sydney Opera House, and many other theatres around the world.

JODY ELFF

Jody Elff is a Grammy Award-winning audio engineer and sound designer. For 25 years Elff has worked with some of the world’s most adventurous artists in the pursuit of the ideal representation of their sonic intention in music performances and recordings. His fine art sound works have been presented in galleries, museums, and public spaces internationally. Elff’s commercial work includes sound design and implementation for live television and corporate events, as well as architectural spaces.

Biographies, continuedNORA FISCHER

Nora Fischer is challenging the way we listen to the voice. The Amsterdam-based singer is renowned for her adventurous approach to live performance and her innovative projects fusing classical and contemporary repertoire. This can range from traditional concert programmes to genre-defying collaborations—such as Fischer’s debut album, Hush, which was released on Deutsche Grammophon in April 2018. Using her voice as a versatile instrument, her repertoire ranges from Monteverdi to the many compositions that have been written for her in the present day. Her “affinity with experimental classical styles and sharp dramatic instincts” (The New York Times) has led to many collaborations with leading contemporary composers, including Louis Andriessen, Osvaldo Golijov, David Lang, and Michel van der Aa. Fischer’s unique approach has taken her around the globe, from the Philharmonie de Paris and Walt Disney Concert Hall to the Lowlands Pop Festival or a mysterious forest at the Oerol Theatre Festival.

JEREMY FLOWER

Jeremy Flower is a multi-instrumentalist and composer of acoustic and electronic music. Flower’s work with electronics has landed him on stage as a guest artist with orchestras and chamber groups all over the world, as well as with world-renowned electronic producers in experimental, ambient, and minimal techno genres. Flower has been commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for their Music NOW series, James Sommerville and the Hamilton Philharmonic for their new music festival What Next?, and Carnegie Hall’s Weill Institute. Flower writes music for the Mediated Matter Group from MIT’s Media Lab and is part of David Krakauer’s Ancestral Groove project, which explores the heritage of traditional Jewish music through the lens of the modern experience, fusing Klezmer with hip-hop, jazz, and house music. He has also collaborated extensively with Argentine-American composer Osvaldo Golijov. Currently, Flower is working on a couple children, a second recorded song cycle to follow 2016’s The Real Me, and building modular synthesizers.

JOHNNY GANDELSMAN

The son of a musical family from Moscow by way of Israel, violinist, composer, and producer Johnny Gandelsman combines his classical training with a restless desire to reach beyond the concert hall in exploring contemporary music. As a concert soloist and a founding member of the quartet Brooklyn Rider, Gandelsman has premiered dozens of new works and has released albums by The Knights, the Silkroad Ensemble, Brooklyn Rider, and others on his label, In a Circle Records.

NICHOLAS HOUFEK

Nicholas Houfek is a New York City-based lighting designer working in music, dance, and theatre. Houfek’s work in music and theatre includes Patti Smith (Tribeca Film Festival/Beacon Theater); International Contemporary Ensemble, Maya Beiser, Ojai Music Festival, and Family Play (Collaboration Town/The New Ohio); The Capables (Gym at Judson); The Highwayman (ARSNOVA, Dickson Place); and The 39 Steps (Olney Theatre Center). Houfek has worked with the Martha Graham Dance Company, Cedar Lake Contemporary Dance, and William Isaac’s Kymera Dance. As lighting supervisor, Houfek’s credits include Parsons Dance Company, Límon Dance Company, Martha Graham Dance Company, and Jonah Bokaer. Houfek’s co-lighting design credits include Li’l Buck and Yo-Yo Ma at (le) Poisson Rouge and Natalie Merchant Tours.

KAYHAN KALHOR

Kayhan Kalhor is an internationally acclaimed virtuoso on the kemancheh. A native of Iran, born in the Kurdish city of Kermanshah, Kalhor was a musical prodigy who traveled across Iran to perform and explore the music of its many regions. Internationally, he has appeared as soloist with a variety of symphony orchestras and ensembles. Kalhor is co-founder of the renowned Dastan, Ghazal: Persian and Indian Improvisations, and

Biographies, continuedMasters of Persian Music ensembles. Kalhor’s compositions are prominent in Silkroad’s repertoire, and his recordings have received four Grammy Award nominations.

ASHLEY R. MARTIN

Ashley R. Martin is a proud Silkroad artist since April 2018, joining the group through tours of the U.S. (northeast, Florida, and west coast) and Asia. Martin is a freelance music touring stage and production manager, event show caller, and AEA union stage manager. Based in California, Martin enjoys spending her year jumping between the music, corporate, and theatre worlds.

KAREN OUZOUNIAN

Praised for her “radiant” and “expressive” performances (The New York Times), cellist Karen Ouzounian is a winner of the S&R Foundation’s Washington Award and is at home in diverse musical settings. Ouzounian is a founding member of the Aizuri Quartet, which was awarded the Grand Prize at the 2018 M-Prize Chamber Arts Competition and First Prize at the 2017 Osaka International Chamber Music Competition in Japan. Its debut album, Blueprinting, was released by New Amsterdam Records in fall 2018. Ouzounian’s commitment to adventurous repertoire and the collaborative process has led to her membership in Grammy-nominated chamber orchestra A Far Cry and critically-acclaimed new music collective counter)induction. Born to Armenian parents in Toronto, Ouzounian holds master of music and bachelor of music degrees from the Juilliard School, where she was a student of Timothy Eddy.

SHANE SHANAHAN

Percussionist, composer, and arranger Shane Shanahan has combined his studies of drumming traditions from around the world with his background in jazz, rock, and Western art music to create a unique, highly sought-after style. Shanahan is one of Silkroad’s inaugural co-artistic directors and has performed with Bobby McFerrin, James Taylor, Aretha Franklin, Philip Glass, Alison Krauss, Chaka Khan, and Deep Purple, among others, and has appeared at the White House, playing for President and First Lady Obama. Shanahan frequently hosts workshops and clinics at the world’s leading universities and museums and collaborates actively with the dance, theatre, and yoga communities in the New York area, including several stints on Broadway.

MAZZ SWIFT

Critically acclaimed violin/vox/freestyle composition artist Mazz Swift engages audiences with her signature weaving of composition and improvisation, MazzMuse. Several of Swift’s compositions for atypical chamber ensemble have been heard on NPR. She has performed and taught workshops on free improvisation on six continents, most notably traveling to Suriname, Mozambique, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Cameroon, Senegal, Albania, and Siberia as cultural ambassador at the invitation of the United States Department of State. She is a teaching artist with Carnegie Hall’s Future Music and Lullaby programs, where she coaches an ensemble of talented teens from every corner of New York City, writes lullabies with incarcerated mothers and mothers-to-be, and leads professional development sessions for symphony orchestra members and their students. She sits on the artistic board for the Jersey City-based chamber music collective, Con Vivo, and is a proud performing member of that organization. Swift is currently working on a solo CD, Solo MazzMuse.

WU MAN

Pipa virtuoso and composer Wu Man is an ambassador of Chinese music, creating a new role for her lute-like instrument in both traditional and contemporary music. Brought up in the Pudong school of pipa playing, Wu became the first person to receive a master’s degree in pipa performance from the Central Conservatory

Biographies, continuedof Music in Beijing. She is a frequent collaborator with the Kronos Quartet and Shanghai Quartet and has performed in recital and as soloist with major orchestras around the world, regularly premiering new works. Wu has recorded more than 40 albums, five of which have been nominated for Grammy Awards. Wu was named Musical America’s 2013 Instrumentalist of the Year, but the best measure of her achievement is that her instrument, which dates back 2,000 years, is no longer an exotic curiosity.

WU TONG

Born into a musical family, Wu Tong graduated from the Central Conservatory of Music in 1994 and has appeared as soloist with the New York Philharmonic, London Sinfonietta, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. Wu is the founding vocalist of Lunhui (Again), the first rock band ever to appear on Chinese television. In 2008 he made his operatic debut in The Bonesetter’s Daughter (San Francisco Opera) and wrote the film score to Wong Kar-Wai’s Ashes of Time Redux. A nominee for Best Crossover Album at Taiwan’s 2011 Golden Melody Awards, he was named 2012 Musician of the Year by New York’s China Institute. In 2013 Wu premiered Zhao Lin’s Duo, a double concerto written for him and Yo-Yo Ma.

SILKROAD ENSEMBLE

Yo-Yo Ma conceived Silkroad in 1998 as a reminder that even as rapid globalization resulted in division, it brought extraordinary possibilities for working together. Seeking to understand this dynamic, Ma began to learn about the historical Silk Road, recognizing in it a model for productive cultural collaboration, for the exchange of ideas and traditions alongside commerce and innovation. In a radical experiment, he brought together musicians from the lands of the Silk Road to co-create a new artistic idiom, a musical language founded in difference, a metaphor for the benefits of a more connected world.

The Grammy Award-winning Silkroad Ensemble has been at the core of Silkroad’s work to build a more hopeful and inclusive world since 2000. These artists represent dozens of nationalities and artistic traditions, from Spain and Japan to Syria and the United States. Today Silkroad artists seek and practice cultural collaboration in many forms, creating and presenting new music, teacher and musician training workshops, and residency programs in schools, museums, and communities.

Silkroad has recorded seven albums. Sing Me Home, which won the 2016 Grammy for Best World Music Album, was developed and recorded alongside the documentary feature The Music of Strangers from Oscar-winning director Morgan Neville.

Silkroad gratefully acknowledges the support of individuals, foundations, and corporations, including the Barr Foundation, Hyosung Corporation, and Alice L. Walton Foundation.

To learn more about Silkroad, please visit silkroad.org and @silkroadproject on social media.

Biographies, continuedSILKROAD ENSEMBLE, continued

Production Staff Cristin Catnerbury Bagnall, executive producer, Falling Out of TimeJody Elff, sound designerNick Houfek, lighting designer Ashley Martin, stage managerSebastian Schinkel, monitor engineer

Tour ManagementMary Pat Buerkle, senior vice president and manager, artists and attractions, Opus 3 Artists

Silkroad StaffNicholas Cords, co-artistic directorAdam Gurczak, artistic programs administratorLiz Keller-Tripp, producer and artistic programs directorJennifer Klahn, acting director of developmentShea Mavros, acting director of learningShane Shanahan, co-artistic directorJessica Shuttleworth, director of marketingLori Taylor, learning advisorJennifer Tester, bookkeeperJacqueline Worley, director of finance

Exclusive ManagementOpus 3 Artists LLC470 Park Ave SouthNew York, NY 10016

Go DeeperIdentify an instrument or musical genre you hear in the ensemble that you are largely unfamiliar with. What questions do you have about it/them? What knowledge and impressions do you gain from the performance alongside instruments and genres you do have experience with?

Engagement EventsMonday, November 18, 2019, 10 AMPANEL: MUSIC AND GRIEFMembers of the Silkroad Ensemble will disucss how grief is interpreted in their music and cultures. The panelists will share musical examples and analyses of how their ideas are conveyed in composer Osvaldo Golijov’s Falling Out of Time.

Special thanks to Pat Hyer, Lifelong Learning Institute

DATAFORMYorgo Alexopoulos, Jim Campbell, and Daniel CanogarThrough Saturday, November 9, 2019All galleries

Spotlight on Process: Yorgo AlexopoulosL.A.-based multimedia artist Yorgo Alexopoulos comes from a broad and varied creative background, with his early years focused primarily on the creation and photographic documentation of graffiti and street art in Venice, California. Alexopoulos’ work would later expand to include painting and drawing, and the advent of computer design and animation software like Adobe Photoshop, After Effects, and Illustrator further broadened his artistic vocabulary and led to a pivotal moment in his career. An invitation to work on a film project would bring it all together.

The film, The Kid Stays in the Picture (2002), was created using an innovative technique of creating 3D effects using only 2D images, mainly photographs, by digitally separating the elements within the image then editing or animating them as individual layers. Alexopoulos would eventually employ this technique in many of his works and can be seen in parts of Conjugated Gradients: Split (2018), currently on view in the Sherwood Payne Quillen ’71 Reception Gallery located on the second floor.

GALLERY HOURSMonday-Friday, 10 AM-5:30 PMSaturday, 10 AM-4 PM

To arrange a group tour or class visit, please contact Meggin Hicklin, exhibitions program manager, at megh79@vt.edu.

In the Galleries