We live in a global, international, multicultural culture. Cultures are cross-fertilizing, birthing new artistic languages. One of the great experiments in this area is the Silk Road Project, started by our friend Yo-Yo Ma. Here are a couple of videos, one of a concert, and one exploring the collaborative process. What would you call this music? I don't think you can label it.
We discussed Mike Block, the cellist who arranges much of the Silk Road Project's music. Mike is a fine classical cellist, plays folk and rock music, is a singer-songwriter, and a concert organizer himself. He's now teaching at Berklee, on top of all that.
In the opening of the Afterword, Joseph Horowitz describes Steve Reich's 70th-birthday concert at Carnegie Hall, featuring Music for Eighteen Musicians. Here's a short video, which I love, because it's about a midwestern college new-music ensemble learning this piece:
I also love this video because it's a great video, and it's important for us to recognize that in a YouTube era, we need videography skills--or partners. Speaking of video, look at this:
(Hmm . . . I can't get another video to embed, even in a different browser. The link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6X_IhgJLzA, to another Reich piece, performed by Maya Beiser and a number of video versions of herself.)
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