Christian Hertzog

San Diego Arts

La Jolla Summerfest: Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma

The Road to Silk is Paved with Good Intentions
By Christian Hertzog
Posted on Mon, Aug 8th, 2005
Last updated Mon, Aug 8th, 2005

The word “crossover” is a red flag to the classical music purist. Not only does the flag snap in their face, but the flag pole pokes them in the gut, and the cast bronze eagle on top of the pole conks their cranium.

Most classical crossover projects fail miserably on aesthetic terms. Opera stars with wide vibratos and bad English diction can’t convincingly sing musical theater, and surrounding them with legit Broadway singers only heightens the incongruity. Classical instrumentalists who play note-for-note transcriptions of jazz solos usually fall short of the original in missing out on the unnotated subtleties of rhythm, phrasing, and timbre that a jazz musician instinctively supplies. Arranging a Metallica song for orchestra or a Beach Boys tune for string quartet is an unnatural act far more heinous than carrying an ounce of marijuana or offering sexual services for money; yet our hypocritical society allows these arrangers to walk the streets and corrupt our minors while we imprison potheads and prostitutes.

Popular musicians who try their hands at classical composition usually produce results just as bad as, if not worse than, the classical star who goes slumming. Billy Joel, Paul McCartney, Andrew Lloyd Weber: please stick to what you do best and write three-minute songs.

Despite the inferiority of the product, CD producers and concert impresarios continue to hustle classical crossover music, because they make money. In an industry that has faced serious setbacks in recent years, money matters--a lot.

Yo-Yo Ma has engaged in many crossover projects: duo arrangements of classical works for himself and Bobby McFerrin, highbrow hillbilly chamber music with Mark O’Connor, and video interpretations of the Bach Cello Suites. It’s clear that Ma embarks on these projects out of respect for his collaborators. Because he seeks to find some kind of middle ground where he and his collaborators can meet, his projects are generally more musically successful than dropping a classically trained musician into a pop music environment.

How does Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble fare? You certainly can’t accuse Ma of selling out; the audience for classical Persian, Indian, or Chinese music isn’t terribly large in the U.S. Instead, there is a reverse crossing over: Yo-Yo Ma, through his stature and popularity (could any other classical cellist fill the Civic Theater?), introduces audiences to aspects of Asian and Eastern European musical traditions. If this inspires audience members to investigate the original regions’ music and culture, all the better.

On Saturday’s concert, one was struck by Ma’s generosity. He usually took a subordinate role, allowing the talented musicians in his company to have prominent parts. Members of the ensemble gave four encores (it seemed like they performed for an extra half hour). The program was generous in its presentation of different cultures: Mongolian, Indian, Chinese, Gypsy, Persian, and 16th century European. It’s hard to imagine the Civic Theater selling out with such a crazy quilt of musics without the draw of Ma.

Fusion between Western European classical and Asian traditions is nothing new. When the orchestra and European symphonic music were introduced to Japan, Korea, and China at the turn of the 20th century, native composers created nationalist compositions for these orchestras to perform (most of which are never heard in the U.S.). Subsequent generations of Southeast Asian classical composers have continued to merge these two traditions, and at least one of them--Toru Takemitsu--was one of the best classical composers of his time.

Starting 70 years ago, American composers such as Colin McPhee, Henry Cowell, and Alan Hovhaness looked to Asian musical traditions for inspiration. The result was not the simple-minded chinoiserie indulged in by European masters like Puccini or Mahler, but serious attempts by men who were experts in Asian music to meld Eastern and Western traditions.

In recent years, an entire generation of Asian immigrant composers have forged their own syntheses of classical and Asian music. Summerfest has previously featured some of these composers as guests (Bright Sheng, Tan Dun, and San Diego’s own Chinary Ung). Local audiences have heard the music of Zhou Long and Chen Yi in concert. University of San Diego professor Christopher Adler carries on the ethnomusicologist strain of American composition (his specialty is Thai music). The hybridization of classical and Asian music is one of the most exciting, viable streams of contemporary classical American music. Any regular concertgoer in San Diego is bound to run into it.

Where does the Silk Road Ensemble fit into all this? For most of the concert, I couldn’t help thinking that their repertory bears the same relation to the music of Zhou Long and Chinary Ung that Johann Strauss, Jr. or Leroy Anderson has to Beethoven and Tchaikovsky. The Silk Road Ensemble is the Boston Pops of Asian-European fusion.

By this comparison, I don’t mean to denigrate the performers, all of whom were excellent. And I don’t intend to slight the compositions: like Strauss or Anderson, the pieces were witty, crowd-pleasing, and finely orchestrated. For what they intended to do, they did it well. But in Byambasuren Sharav’s Legend of Herlen, or Wu Tong’s arrangement of the Chinese piece Ambush from Ten Sides, I kept thinking, “This sounds like a film score.”

Sharav’s work featured a Mongolian singer (Ganbaatar Khongorzul) and Ma on a two-stringed fiddle, accompanied by piano, 3 trombones, and 3 percussionists. It was pleasant to hear, but not very musically challenging. Sure, there’s a novelty to hearing Mongolian singing, and to Ma performing idiomatically on a Mongolian instrument, but anyone can raise the roof with 3 trombones and 3 percussionists on a stage.

Ambush from Ten Sides was scored for pipa (a Chinese lute played with plectra), sheng (Chinese mouth organ, nicely performed by the composer), guitar, string ensemble, and 3 percussionists. It was a flashy arrangement, and at first captured the feeling of the pipa piece on which it was based. However, when the bass instruments started repeating a heavy metal riff (D-F-E-E flat), it was so out of place with the rest of the piece that I couldn’t help but laugh. Ma had a nice cello solo where he imitated a Chinese bowed instrument (an er hu?), and Wu Man’s pipa playing was outstanding, but what did all that sound and fury signify?

Indian classical music is very sophisticated, with as many nuances as European classical music. Tabla player Sandeep Das impressed everyone with his virtuosic performance, yet his piece--Tarang--struck me as Indian music for dummies. Part of the sophistication of Indian music is the interplay between different rhythmic cycles used by the performers. Here, the percussion (Das + three percussionists) played a 6-beat cycle, while the strings played a 16-beat cycle. The 16-beat cycle was pounded into your head because it was the same melody, repeated ad infinitum. Das and the percussionists traded solos back and forth. Energetic, yes, but a pale semblance to either Indian or European classical music, more reminiscent of a Mickey Hart world music jam.

The most successful parts of the evening were those pieces when the spirit of the original music came through relatively unfiltered by Western sensibilities. Ganbaatar Khongorzul filled the Civic Theater as well as any Italian tenor with her yodels, glides, and sustained tones in an unaccompanied Mongolian song (the last encore). Wu Tong sang a traditional Chinese folk song, arranged for his pop-inflected voice (he’s a successful rock vocalist in China) and Ma’s cello. Siamak Aghaei, Siamak Jahangiry, and Kayhan Kalhor sat cross-legged on a large Middle Eastern rug and played a traditional Persian piece. Kalhor played the kamanche, a taut-sounding low-pitched fiddle which is bowed with the instrument held upright. Aghaei played the santur, the Iranian version of the hammered dulcimer. Jahangiry played the ney, an end-blown flute (imagine if you made a recorder from a reed stalk).

The Persian trio ended on a held note, which a string ensemble then doubled and sustained. This signaled the beginning of Kalhor’s Blue as the Turquoise Night of Neyshabur. In this piece, commissioned for the ensemble, Persian music was expanded to include the western instruments and the tabla. As the strings played long accompanying tones, with the santur tinkling an additional accompaniment, the kamanche, the ney, and the cello played a long, sinuous melody. Ma, seated next to Kalhor and his kamanche, admirably navigated the Iranian tunings, which contained notes not normally found on classical instruments. The tablas joined in, adding momentum. The santur then soloed, doubled by Kalhor plucking his kamanche, which eventually led to Ma playing an ethereal melody in artificial harmonics. The work came to a stunning conclusion on a loud unison tremolo in all the instruments.

Kalhor’s composition did not pander to a Western audience. It stated its ideas on Kalhor’s Persian terms. The listener willing to accept and attempt to learn these ideas was rewarded, for once that evening, with a truly successful musical hybrid.

The Iranian music was preceded by arrangements of Gypsy compositions. Since Gypsies typically use European instruments, there was less distance between the arrangements and the originals. (The notable exception to a classical instrument was a rectangular drum used as a bench while the percussionist played with his hands between his knees). While the melodies and harmonies in these arrangements for strings, pipa, and drum were much more authentic than the Hungarian dances and rhapsodies of Brahms and Liszt, they could have used a bit more raucousness in tone and looseness of ensemble to be fully convincing. They were otherwise winsome, fun renditions.

The encores, besides the Mongolian vocal solo, consisted of another upbeat chart for the gypsy ensemble; a full ensemble arrangement of what sounded to me like a Persian melody, with solos for the ney, the sheng, the American percussionists, and a vocal by Wu Tong (the trombone trio, who hadn’t been heard since the beginning of the concert, loudly reappeared at the very end); and a rendition of the Renaissance composer Filippo Azzaiolo’s Chi passa per’sta strada (this tune which Azzaiolo arranged was one of the most popular songs of 16th-century Europe).

Years back, under the directorship of Heiichiro Ohyama and Neale Perl, Summerfest consisted largely of 19th-century European offerings (with the occasional foray into the 20th-century). Under the supervision of Mary Lou Aleskie and Cho-Liang Lin, the breadth of Summerfest’s programming has expanded tremendously, bringing in not just popular and jazz music, but non-European cultures as well. Even a curmudgeon like myself welcomes the diversity of their offerings this year. Perhaps, in the not too distant future, we’ll be able to see a gamelan ensemble, a Noh drama, or a master sitar player on stage at Sherwood Auditorium: a pure, undiluted taste of another culture. For the time being, I’ll settle for the Silk Road Ensemble.

About the author: Christian Hertzog studied composition with George Crumb, Brian Ferneyhough, Robert Erickson, and Morton Feldman. He studied piano with Cecil Lytle and Aleck Karis. He has been hired by or collaborated with many local performing arts institutions, including the La Jolla Playhouse, SUSHI, Sledgehammer, Isaacs and McCaleb Dance, and City Moves. From 1995-2000 he was the executive director for San Diego New Music. In recent years, he has been a keyboardist with the Geisel Library Toy Piano Ensemble and the Teeny Tiny Pit Orchestra. In 2008 he won 1st prize from the San Diego Press Club in the category of Newspaper/Internet Reviews.
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Comments

Posted by Joseph Grienenberger	Mon, Aug 8th, 2005
I agree with the reviewer that many crossover projects are putrid. However, Yo-Yo Ma is an artist who has a passion for a wide array of music, not just "classical" music. Also, a TRUE artist is always looking for new areas to explore -- frankly, the ones who play the same repertoire over and over for decades are lazy and narrow-minded [just look at all the major opera singers who have a repertoire of just a handful of roles]. Yo-Yo Ma realizes that the rigidity of "classical" music can get sterile after awhile; he has the talent to back up his drive to diversify, but of course he'll always be grounded in the classics. If anything, his journeys into other genres keeps his passion for music fresh and vibrant, which is good for classical purists. And I must say that the reviewer's description of "highbrow hillbilly chamber music with Mark O?Connor" is simplistic and rather insulting; those collaborations with O'Connor on Appalachian music [a genre often containing some haunting and exquisite music] were imaginative, engaging, energetic, and contained crisp playing of some very technically difficult musical arrangements. They were a far cry from, say, the absurdities of Jose Carreras singing "Maria" from West Side Story.

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