Here comes Yo-Yo Ma!

Yo-Yo Ma is hitting the road — the Silk Road to China.

It's the first time since 2001 that the cellist has taken his Silk Road Project to that key region of the ancient trade route, which stretched from Europe to China.
This time, they'll be playing at the opening ceremonies of the Special Olympics in Shanghai on Oct. 2, five days before Yo-Yo-Ma's 52nd birthday.

Over the next 10 days, Yo-Yo-Ma and his more than dozen colleagues will give concerts and workshops in Suzhou, Hong Kong, and at Beijing's Forbidden City, performing some of the songs on their newly released, best-selling CD "New Impossibilities."

Yo-Yo-Ma who was born to Chinese parents in France, moved to America as a boy and studied anthropology at Harvard, started the Silk Road Project in 1998 as a way of discovering similarities in diverse cultures and increasing understanding.

The ensemble has performed in 23 countries, and recently completed a yearlong residency in Chicago.

In a recent telephone interview with The Associated Press, Ma spoke about music's role in communications and how the Silk Road Project has affected his playing of the classical repertoire. Here is the interview,

AP: Are you trying to show that diverse cultures have much in common?

Ma: I think so. This is not ideological. We're trying to just find out things. If we find something that has no connection to anything and it evolves on its own, that's great. We're not trying to prove anything. But it seems to us so far that the more we dig, the more you find there are connections.

AP: How did you get into this?

Ma: Well (laughing), I was in a pizza parlor. I was tired of practicing and said, "You know, I can't play in tune. What else can I do?" No! I got this from traveling, from learning, also from the core values from what I was taught. That, essentially, is to find the voices — first of all finding your own voice, finding another person's voice and advocating for it. The other person (can be) someone either whose music I'm playing, or from a different era. ...

If music is a great way to express our inner life, do we have access to another person's inner life? And if we had access, does that actually develop more of a sense of empathy for people around the world?

AP: Are you playing Islamic music in China, which is sensitive about its large Muslim population in the west?

Ma: Oh yeah, sure.

AP: Are you making a point of doing it?

Ma: No. Again it's not so much Islamic music. ... If we play mugham music, which is classical music of a lot of places including Azerbaijan, the art of mugham music is not unlike the art of Indian music, which is meditative. It starts quietly, it develops until you get to a moment of transcendence. It could take four hours, it could take 40 minutes. It's also what Beethoven tried to do. You get to the first movement of Beethoven's violin concerto. You get to that moment where you break free. You earned it! ... You get to the divine! You get to the clouds! And that's what Sufi poetry and music tries to get to. Not so different.

AP: Would you play Jewish klezmer music in Iran if you had the opportunity to go?

Ma: Of course.

AP: What do you think the reception would be?

Ma: I don't know because I haven't been to Iran. It's such a hypothetical question because I would always look at something on a case-by-case basis. ... We always look at it from a respectful point of view and also from our core philosophical point of view. So I can't comment because otherwise it would be ideological.

AP: Is the Silk Road Project going to continue indefinitely?

Ma: I don't know. So much of it is funding. ... We're actually going to celebrate our 10th anniversary in '08. ... It's possible that I should not be artistic director and someone else takes over. I'm not gunning for a job in the best sense of the word. I'm not holding on to say this is the way it has to be. I love the ensemble. It's like family to me. We've really had so many incredible adventures and experiences together. And I've learned so much from my friends, and I hope, I think my friends would say they've learned a lot from me, too.

AP: Do I read you as saying you are disengaging from the Silk Road Project?

Ma: No, no. I'm actually happily engaged. What you are reading is that I don't have a plan. Because I think the best plans are made when everybody listens to each other and gets the reality check from each place that we know. So I think if I ever felt very strongly about something I think we must go and do this.

AP: People have written that you are tired of the standard classical repertoire. Are you?

Ma: Absolutely not. I am so excited every time I go on stage because to me it's a sacred moment, this communion with people and you are trying to share something with people that you deeply believe in. I've learned that from playing with Kayhan (Iranian musician Kayhan Kalhor), the guy who wrote "Silent City," because Kayhan (has held) onto these traditions. When he plays a note on his bow the kamanche — it's an ancestor of the cello — you hear the difference between sound and silence and noise and breathing. I look at it and I'm trying to do his motions and just get into his space, and that space is so wide. And then I'm thinking, "OK, I can bring that to the second theme of the Dvorak Cello Concerto."

AP: So you really learned a lot from the musicians of the Silk Road Project?

Ma: Absolutely. Not just in terms of an informational way, ... but also in terms of approach and the deep respect and spirituality for something. ...

None of this stuff is not emotional. It's about meaning, it's about life. It's where you put yourself in life. ... I'm trying to express it in a number of ways but it always comes back to the same thing — how much we care.


Here's some links,

http://www.silkroadproject.org/

http://www.yo-yoma.com/

Fall Time!

Here we go, into fall.
The giant, raked up leaf piles call!
Time to get out long shirts and jeans.
It's time for Thanksgiving, and Halloween!
Columbus Day too,
In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue!
At Halloween, it's time for witches and ghosts,
I bet we'll get more candy than most!
The leaves change color, from green to red,
and all the flowers go to bed.
It's fall!

Going once...Going twice...Going three times...SOLD!!

An art collection belonging to the late cellist Mstislav Rostropovich was sold to a Russian billionaire for over $40 million!

Alisher Usmanov, one of Russia's richest men,
said he bought the trove of Russian artworks in order to return them to their homeland.
This is especially meaningful to Mr. Rostropovich's wife, Galina Vishneskaya and her family.
In a statement, Ms. Vishnevskaya's family said they were delighted the collection had been bought whole.

"It is especially meaningful for our family that the new owner will bring it to Russia," the statement said.

Mr. Usmanov, who is involved in mining, telecoms and natural gas and was ranked 278th in Forbes magazine's list of the world's richest people in 2006. He recently bought a 15% stake in London's Arsenal soccer team for $150 million.

Mr. Rostropovich, who died in April at age 80, was considered one of the finest cellists of the 20th century.
He fled the Soviet Union in the early 1970s after sheltering the dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, settling in Paris with his wife, soprano Galina Vishnevskaya.

The couple amassed one of the world's finest private collections of Russian art, including glassware, porcelain and works by leading painters such as Ilya Repin and Boris Grigoriev.

After Mr. Rostropovich's death, Ms. Vishnevskaya announced that they would sell the paintings for the benefit of charitable foundations.

Mr. Rostropovich and Ms. Vishnevskaya set up a foundation to raise the standards of healthcare for children in Russia.

Here's the address of the news article.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070917/ap_en_ot/people_rostropovich_sale;_ylt=AiwGlbbGeWJnW67.Gdt55BC2GL8C

and here's the address of the Vishnevskaya-Rostropovich foundation,

http://www.rostropovich.org/