This is one of the most amazing musical projects I’ve ever come across. Musicians from a wide variety of international cultures, each of which has incredible technical skill and passion, come together to create astonishingly beautiful music.

Particularly breathtaking is their ability to take instruments like the accordion and clarinet, and play them in ways I’ve never seen before. A new life is drawn out of these instruments, leaving me humbled and full of wonder.

This project is run as a not-for-profit organization, and if you feel as passionately about the beauty of their work, please consider giving a small donation through their website.  You can see their annual reports and look at the list of board of directors to if you have any concerns.

https://embed.ted.com/talks/silk_road_ensemble_turceasca

https://embed.ted.com/talks/silk_road_ensemble_rhiannon_giddens_st_james_infirmary_blues

The Boston Globe described them as a “roving musical laboratory without walls”.

The Silk Road Ensemble’s music is contemporary and ancient, familiar and foreign, traditional and innovative, drawing on traditions from around the world to create a new musical language that reflects our 21st-century global society.

In every performance and recording, we hope to lead a listener from a well-known place to somewhere new. Whether our pieces are created individually or collaboratively, written or improvised, invented or passed on, music making with this group is a joyous process.

 

Inspired by the exchange of ideas and traditions along the historical Silk Road, cellist Yo-Yo Ma established Silkroad in 1998 to explore how the arts can advance global understanding.

Website: SilkRoadProject.org

Twitter: @silkroadproject

Facebook:Facebook.com/silkroadproject

Youtube: Youtube.com/user/silkroadproject

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/silkroadproject/