Percussionist

Silkroad artists Balla Kouyate(Opens in a new window) (balafon) and Kaoru Watanabe(Opens in a new window) (Japanese flutes and percussion) collaborate with Boston Conservatory students for a concert exploring cultural expression and creativity. Precomposed and improvised music will be performed in solo, duo, and small group formats.

EPSG:4326

Silkroad Collaborative Performance

Boston Conservatory at Berklee

Under the leadership of 2023 Pulitzer Prize winner, the dynamic multi-instrumentalist Rhiannon Giddens, the Grammy-winning, genre-defying Silkroad Ensemble embarks on a new initiative that illuminates the impact of under-recognized voices in America’s expansion west. The project explores the creation of the Transcontinental Railroad through the contributions of African American, Chinese, Irish, Indigenous, and other communities, their cultures, and their music. Chinese traditional instruments like the guzheng, pipa, erhu, and qinqin are contrasted with the fiddle, bones, tambo, and banjo of Black musical traditions, and their Indigenous and Celtic counterparts. New compositions and commissions weave these disparate traditions together to tell a new version of the American story. As Giddens told the New York Times, “Silkroad has people from all over, and that’s what makes it such a great group to represent the American story, because that’s what the American story is. We are world music”.

American Railroad Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens

University of California, Berkeley

American Railroad highlights the cultural diffusion and collaboration that resulted as African American, Chinese, Irish, and Native American communities made vital contributions to the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Rhiannon Giddens, the Grammy Award-winning Silkroad Ensemble recontextualizes the railroad through the sounds of the worlds that collided through its creation.

American Railroad

Stanford University

Silkroad’s newest initiative, American Railroad, illuminates the impact of African American, Chinese, Irish, and Native American communities on the creation of the Transcontinental Railroad and America’s Westward Expansion. Exploring the dissemination of cultures across the United States, the railroad was to North America what the Silk Road was to China, the Far East and Europe.

American Railroad Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens1

Soka Performing Arts Center

American Railroad: Silkroad Ensemble With Rhiannon Giddens

As a social-impact organization and home to a Grammy Award-winning musical ensemble, Silkroad works to inspire collaboration in innovative ways that add more equity and justice into the world through the power of the arts. Today, under the leadership of Artistic Director Rhiannon Giddens, Silkroad reaches new heights through a commitment to new music, a re-sparked mission towards cultural collaboration, and a reinvigorated focus to high-quality arts education that both reflects its mission and the times in which we live.

Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens

Balboa Theatre

Mikhail Baryshnikov at 75: A Day of Music Celebration

Kaatsbaan Cultural Park

LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs celebrates her second book, Village (Coffee House Press 2023). In propulsive and formally inventive verse, Diggs examines how trauma reshapes lineage, language, and choice, disrupting attempts at reconciliation across generations. Questioning who is deemed worthy of public memorialization, Diggs raises new monuments, tears down classist tropes, offers detailed instructions for her own international funeral celebrations, and makes visible the hidden labors of care and place. From corners in Harlem through North Carolina back roads, Diggs complicates the concept of “survivor,” getting to the truth of living in the dystopia of poverty.

LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs: Village

Joe's Pub

Dream Up draws inspiration from Tomas’ years as a performer in Stomp, and as a member of multi-percussion ensembles such as his own Triple Double, 7 Poets Trio, and Shizuko, Mike Reed’s Living By Lanterns, and the Broadway show Fela. The suite is a celebration of storytelling, history, memory, and culture through the transformative power of rhythm.

Kaoru Watanabe

Percussionist

Events

Past events

Mar 3, 2024

Silkroad Collaborative Performance · Boston Conservatory at Berklee

Nov 17, 2023

American Railroad Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens · Cal Performances

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