The Silkroad Ensemble will perform Thursday, Nov. 7, at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Founded by cellist Yo-Yo Ma, Silkroad Ensemble has been called “vibrant and virtuosic” by the Wall Street Journal, “one of the 21st century’s great ensembles” by the Vancouver Sun, and a “roving musical laboratory without walls” by the Boston Globe. The group creates music that engages and sparks radical cultural collaboration with passion-driven learning to build a more hopeful world, according to its artist statement.
The 7 p.m. performance is presented by UAB’s Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center. Tickets are $28; $10 for students. For tickets, call the ASC Box Office at 205-975-2787 or visit AlysStephens.org.
UAB Visual and Performing Arts members may receive $10 off on up to two single tickets. UAB faculty and staff may receive $15 off on up to two single tickets. A limited number of student, member, and faculty/staff tickets are available.
Silkroad musicians and composers hail from more than 20 countries, drawing on a rich tapestry of traditions to create a new musical language — a uniquely engaging and accessible encounter between the foreign and the familiar that reflects our many-layered contemporary identities. As the Los Angeles Times has said, Silkroad’s “vision of international cooperation is not what we read in our daily news reports. Theirs is the better world available if we, like these extraordinary musicians, agree to make it one.”
The Silkroad Ensemble has performed in more than 100 cities in more than 30 countries and recorded seven albums; its 2016 release, “Sing Me Home,” won the Grammy Award for Best World Music Album. “The Music of Strangers,” a documentary about the Ensemble directed by the Academy Award-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2015 and was released worldwide in 2016.
Learn about the enduring legacy of the historic trading route, the Silk Road, which inspired this musical project, at an Inside the Arts talk one hour prior to the performance.
This concert is made possible by the Alabama State Council on the Arts.