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The Grammy Award-winning Silkroad Ensemble is poised to present a musical program rooted in the heritage of its performer-composers at the Bankhead Theater this week.
Their “Uplifted Voices” tour combines contemporary innovation with global musical traditions including African and Indigenous American, Armenian, Japanese, Lebanese and Scottish. The resulting compositions are often inspired by their homeland, ancestors, community and family and represent previously under-recognized voices from around the world, according to the Silkroad website.
People need this collaborative show now more than ever, ensemble member and Silkroad associate artistic director Haruka Fujii told the Weekly. “It gives an inspiration, not just on the stage, how to reflect that and see the world and how to face the world.”
The Silkroad Ensemble performs worldwide and has eleven recorded albums and one EP, including “Sing Me Home”, which won the 2016 Grammy for Best World Music Album.
Performing in “Uplifted Voices” are six female and non-binary ensemble members: Lebanese violinist and composer Layale Chaker; singer-songwriter and activist from Tuscarora Nation in North Carolina, Pura Fé; Japanese multi-percussionist Fujii; Scottish harpist and composer Maeve Gilchrist; Armenian cellist and composer Karen Ouzounian; and violinist and composer Mazz Swift, who combines classic African American music, electronica and mindfulness.
To create the program, artists each bring a story or message to the group, accompanied by a melody or music style. Sometimes the Silkroad Ensemble performs music composed by someone from outside the ensemble, but this program features music created exclusively by the performer-composers from the ensemble.
“Every piece is always an invitation to delve into somebody’s unique world
— one of the musicians — and at the same time it’s always a discovery for other people,” said Chaker, who is also a member of the Silkroad artist committee.
Each member of the ensemble then contributes their own musical speciality to the piece during practices to create a “living form,” Fujii explained.
“You have this certain conception of what you want your piece to be, but then you bring it to the group and they really stretch it in ways you could not have imagined,” Chaker said.
Fujii encourages first-time listeners to absorb the conversation that happens on the stage, as artists make a harmony out of their differences.
“It could be a dissonance in a regular setting.” Fuji said. “You see that race-wise, gender-wise, religion, anything that that could be by, but we try to make that as the way of making a harmony.”
Fujii added, “This is a showcase of how we accept our differences.”
The performance is scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. on Friday (April 4). For tickets and other information, go to livermorearts.org.
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