Review: Enriching sounds of Yo-Yo Ma fill Ham Hall

Marilyn LaRocque

Thursday, Oct. 31, 2002 | 8:28 a.m.

"Hope you're ready for a musical adventure," cellist Yo-Yo Ma greeted the audience at Artemus Ham Hall at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Wednesday night. The capacity crowd roared its assent.

From that moment, the brilliant, innovative Ma and the extraordinary international musicians of the Silk Road Ensemble wove a vibrant tapestry of unique and stimulating music.

The works, both traditional and pieces commissioned for the Silk Road Project, reflected the rich musical and cultural heritage of peoples clustered along the legendary network of East-West trade routes between Japan and the Mediterranean, which flourished between 200 B.C. through the 1400s. The musicians are from 17 countries, and the group's size fluctuates from 12 to 32 members. Twenty came to Las Vegas.

The instruments also comingled West and East. Traditional strings, trombones, a piano, and diverse percussion were complemented by fascinating oriental instruments: santur, a hammer dulcimer; tabla, a tuned drum played by hand; ney, an end-blown bamboo flute; kemancheh," a very small Persian vertical "spike" fiddle (a cello has a "spike"); morin khuur, a two-string vertical fiddle with a long neck decorated with a carved wooden horse's head (played by Ma); and pipa, a Chinese lute with a history of more than 2000 years.

An "urtiin duu," or "long song," called "Legend of Herlen" (a river), a commissioned work, opened the program. Mongolian herders on the vast reaches of the Gobi Desert use this form of "long-distance communication," as Ma called it. The long song tells a brief story that's repeated over and over. It requires the singer to take enormous breaths to support loud, extended, extremely ornamented melodic phrases.

The song began quietly, with a rippling piano punctuated by a bass drum and gong to portray first the quiet source of the river, then suggest rocks and boulders. Ultimately, two timpanists and three trombones described a raging series of cataracts.

Dressed in a fuchsia satin robe and wearing a round fur hat with contrasting conical point, soloist Khongorzul Ganbaatar sang with a nasal quality, first quietly in the low register, then ratcheting up her voice to a high, penetrating howl to sound like the wind. She used an extraordinary, rapid quiver or flutter in her tone that was amazing, and she never seemed to take a breath.

In a change of pace, the second selection was a tradtional Chinese solo played by Wu Man on the pipa. To pluck the strings and obtain the desired sounds, today's players use long acrylic fingernails to replicate the long natural nails of past centuries.

Tuned to an oriental cadence, the pipa produces an acidic, edgy tone. In the hands of Man, the pipa is a virtuoso instrument. Her fingers nearly blurred as she expertly hurtled through the piece. It was breathtaking.

The first half of the program concluded with "Blue as the Turquoise Night of Neyshabur," another commissioned work. A seating platform accommodated players of the ney, santur, tabla and kemancheh. They were joined by the four traditional strings.

The piece was written by the kemancheh expert, Kayhan Kalhor. Ma again turned teacher, explaining the Persian modes of music. (Familiar European modes are major and minor.)

"When you're changing modes, you have to find a common denominator," Ma said.

The group was in sync. It played as if a pulsating musical umbilical chord bound it together. The musicians' eye contact gave the impression they were reading each other's creative minds. In fact this synergy and ESP level of interaction was awesome throughout the evening. The incessant rhythm and intensity of sound were compulsive (like Ravel's bolero), suggesting the sensuous body movements of belly dancers.

The kemancheh and tabla, or "talking drum," had a fascinating dialogue. The low, cylindrical drums, one small, one hassock-size, change tone depending how they are played. Rapid, repeated finger beats sound somewhat like a bongo drum. When pressure of different strength is applied with the heel of the hand, the drum "talks."

"Tarang," the concluding work, was "written" by tabla player Sandeep Das -- except he didn't write a single note. He described his approach as a group of seven merchants gathered to have a good time after successfully selling their wares.

It was a Silk Road jam session of unbelievable musical dimensions.