Advance Program Notes Silkroad Ensemble Falling Out of Time Sunday, November 17, 2019, 7 PM

These Advance Program Notes are provided online for our patrons who like to read about performances ahead of time. Printed programs will be provided to patrons at the performances. Programs are subject to change.

Silkroad Ensemble

Osvaldo Golijov Falling Out of Time based on a book by David Grossman

I Interlude II III

performed without intermission

The Silkroad Ensemble Shawn Conley, bass Nicholas Cords, viola Nora Fischer, vocals Jeremy Flower, electronics and guitar Johnny Gandelsman, violin , kemancheh Karen Ouzounian, cello Shane Shanahan, percussion Mazz Swift, violin Wu Man, Wu Tong, vocals, sheng

with guests Dan Brantigan, trumpet Biella 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 Directors

Falling 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 Shanahan Co-Artistic Directors, Silkroad Ensemble Program Notes I

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, continued

FALLING OUT OF TIME Notes 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, continued A 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 is breath there is breath inside the pain there is breath

—David Grossman, Falling Out of Time (2014) Falling Out of Time

I 1. Heart Murmur 2. Messengers 3. Layla ( Night) 4. I did not shout when he was born 5. Come, Chaos 6. Step by Step 7. Bo, Bni (Come, Son)

Interlude

In Procession

II 1. Pierce the Skies 2. Walking 3. Skein 4. Perhaps, If you meet him 5. Go Now 6. Fly 7. Ayeka? (Where?)

III Pierce the Skies: Breathe Text

Heart Murmur CENTAUR: It’s like a murmur Inside my head, And never stops A rustle, dead leaves, And there is someone Treading on them

I have to tell it like a story Find the words to understand What happened to me...to him.. Because he’ll never, never…

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

MAN: I will go there, to him

WOMAN: Where’s “There”? What’s “there”?

MAN: There, to him

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

CENTAUR: Find the words WOMAN: There’s no such place as ‘there’ To understand And he’s not, he’s not, and not, and not. Write it down Like a story: There’s a man There’s a woman He will walk She will not.

MAN WHO WILL WALK: No It’s impossible That we That the sun The clocks The Moon The couples That the trees in the streets turn green That blood in our veins That Autumn and Spring That the world simply is.

WOMAN: Stop Return to me MAN: To him Return to us Text, continued *** Messengers Instrumental

***

Layla (Night) MAN: At night People came They carried a message In their mouths They walked a long way Quietly grave, And perhaps, as they did so, They stole a taste, a lick. With a child’s wonder They learned they could hold Death in their mouths Like a candy made of poison To which they are miraculously Immune. We opened the door We stood there, You and I, Shoulder to shoulder, They On the threshold And we Facing them, And they, Mercifully, Quietly, Stood there and Gave us The breath Of death. *** I did not shout when he was born

WOMAN: I knew, tonight You would come Don’t be afraid, I did not shout when he was born, and I won’t shout now either. Text, continued *** Come, Chaos

WOMAN: Come, Chaos MAN: I saw one eye CENTAUR: Now, Come, Chaos Weeping For a moment And one eye crazed They sink. A human eye Both not saying Extinguished The same And the eye of a beast Words Soaked in blood, insane Not bewailing him I cannot see you Peered at me from your eye For now. Not with my human eye. But bewailing the Music Of their previous Life.

CENTAUR: The wonder of Simplicity, Lightness.

WOMAN AND MAN: The Earth The Earth Opens its mouth Opens its mouth And swallows us. And swallows them.

MAN: Here I fall WOMAN: Stop! I do not fall Return to me I fall Return to us I do not fall

*** Step by Step

WOMAN ATOP THE BELFRY: Step, Another step. He walks And walks To him. He is An unleashed question An open shout.

My heart beats: He walks My blood pounds: He walks

No I did not go there. Text, continued WOMAN ATOP THE BELFRY: Atop a belfry I walk alone now In circles Slowly, Slowly, Nights, days. While he On the hilltops Facing me, Days, nights Orbits His own circle.

*** Bo, Bni (Come, son)

WALKING MAN: Look at me, Son. Here I am Not.

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

Come, Be present Vibrate Laugh Everything now is Yes. So love Burn Lust F***

Quick, my child, My eyelids tremble! Quick, Devour Be deep Be sad Rage Rave Quick, my child Dawn is rising!

Touch a warm body A woman Breasts In your hands. The head Text, continued

WALKING MAN (cont): Of a newborn child Unborn To you. No! Stop! Come back To darkness Oblivion.

Just do not see With my own eyes What 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 she W-w-w-ould have been five

COBBLER: Poisoning your soul again?

MIDWIFE: W-w-w-hat is in your M-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 teacher Muttering his equation, like Spinoza: Text, continued ELDERLY MATH TEACHER: The object—the life of the son— Must never be located in the universe At a distance From which the father—the observing subject— May encompass all of him With one gaze From beginning to end.

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

A wail rolls over the desert…

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

CENTAUR: A barren brain-hill It pulsates, perhaps Once in a thousand years.

It is the brain of the universe It is not what emits the wail It is desolation. Only desolation.

Mute and deaf and Flat

It has no wails No thoughts

It has no answers And no love.

***

SILENCE

***

Pierce the Skies Instrumental Text, continued ***

Walking

WALKING MAN: Walking, Walking my mind away Walking, Sleeping my mind away My head rests on your shoulders I don’t know Who carries whom

CENTAUR AND WOMAN: He walks, Puts himself To sleep

MAN: My legs Lift slowly From the earth Lightly, slowly We hover Between Here, and There.

*** Skein (Interlude within Walking) CENTAUR: It breaks my heart, my son That I could— Find The words To This *** Walking (cont)

WALKING MAN: The thread will soon And we will glide And look At whatever Is there At whatever we dare To see. Text, continued WALKING MAN (cont): This void This absence Where you Still breathe Still flutter

This void Where one can touch The here, Still almost feel The warming hand That touches There. *** Perhaps/If you meet

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

Will you tell him Of his brother, Born after him?

Will you tell her that You took all her pictures From her room?

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

WALKING MAN: You were right, woman. Perhaps I don’t need to reach The end of ways Perhaps this walk itself Is both the riddle and its answer You were right, woman. Perhaps, there is no there.

*** Go Now WOMAN ATOP THE BELFRY: Go now, Be like him Text, continued WALKING MAN: You were right, woman. I am here and he’s there And a timeless border Stands between here and there.

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

WOMAN ATOP THE BELFRY: Go now, Be like him Conceive him Yet be your death too, Almost. Like him Be now, but only until The shadow of his end Falls On the shadow of your being.

WOMAN ATOP THE BELFRY: And there, my love, There will come peace—for him— For you.

*** 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 body And extends his translucent wings.

He hovers And 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 A WALKER Lost. (cont): Tragedy. We instantly know.

He struggles. Tries to lift off. And he buzzes Until the skies Almost 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 know When you were spawned?

*** Ayeka? (Where?)

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

*** Pierce the Skies: Breathe

VOICE OF A BOY: There is Breath There is Breath Inside the pain There is Breath

END *** Biographies DAN 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 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 , 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 .

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 , Boston Symphony Hall, , 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, continued NORA 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 , 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 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 by The Knights, the Silkroad Ensemble, Brooklyn Rider, and others on his label, In a Circle Records.

NICHOLAS HOUFEK

Nicholas Houfek is a -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, continued Masters 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 , 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, , 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, continued of Music in Beijing. She is a frequent collaborator with the and 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 , 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 ( 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, continued SILKROAD ENSEMBLE, continued

Production Staff Cristin Catnerbury Bagnall, executive producer, Falling Out of Time Jody Elff, sound designer Nick Houfek, lighting designer Ashley Martin, stage manager Sebastian Schinkel, monitor engineer Tour Management Mary Pat Buerkle, senior vice president and manager, artists and attractions, Opus 3 Artists Silkroad Staff Nicholas Cords, co-artistic director Adam Gurczak, artistic programs administrator Liz Keller-Tripp, producer and artistic programs director Jennifer Klahn, acting director of development Shea Mavros, acting director of learning Shane Shanahan, co-artistic director Jessica Shuttleworth, director of marketing Lori Taylor, learning advisor Jennifer Tester, bookkeeper Jacqueline Worley, director of finance Exclusive Management Opus 3 Artists LLC 470 Park Ave South New York, NY 10016

Engagement Events Monday, November 18, 2019, 10 AM PANEL: MUSIC AND GRIEF Members 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

Go Deeper Identify 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? In the Galleries DATAFORM Yorgo Alexopoulos, Jim Campbell, and Daniel Canogar Through Saturday, November 9, 2019 All galleries

Spotlight on Process: Yorgo Alexopoulos L.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 HOURS Monday-Friday, 10 AM-5:30 PM Saturday, 10 AM-4 PM

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