The Great Silk Road was the overland route between Imperial Rome and Han-Dynasty China 2000 years ago-a thousand years before Marco Polo first started taking detailed East-West notes.
The Great Silk Road is a main avenue again for Yo-Yo Ma’s musical roots exploration, and for the composer Bright Sheng’s assimilation of the sounds of many nations: Turkey, Persia, Mongolia, Tibet, not to mention China and the many music of Italy, France and Germany.
“Red Silk Dance” is Bright Sheng’s new piece for Emmanuel Ax at the piano with the Boston Symphony Orchestra: it’s music that makes a Silk Road metaphor of his own pilgrim’s life: He was a doctor’s child born in Shanghai into the shattering Cultural Revolution of the 60s, but then he was a prodigious exile who got to New York in the 80s to study composition and show biz with Leonard Bernstein.
The hatching of a new global music in the first hour of The Connection.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
Guests:
Bright Sheng, composer, Robert Spano conductor and Emmanuel Ax, pianist.