Silk Road musical tour begins

An exciting 2-year musical tour has begun this year called the Silk Road Project. It was inspired by a book written by a professor of musicology at Dartmouth College in the US. Ted Levin's 1996 book, ''The Hundred Thousand Fools of God - Musical Travels in Central Asia (and Queens, New York),'' inspired world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma to launch the Silk Road Project. Yo-Yo Ma attested to this when he opened the first concert of this international, cross-cultural initiative in January at Dartmouth's Hopkins Center. Yo-Yo Ma said he will spend the next two years touring around the world with an ensemble of traditional Asian and Western classical musicians.

The Silk Road Project hopes to evoke this spirit of trans-cultural exchange through the commissioning of new works by composers from Silk Road countries and from the West, and through concerts, festivals, and educational outreach efforts in North America, Europe and Asia. The project aims to not only promote greater awareness of and appreciation for Central Asian peoples, but also to reinvigorate the world of contemporary concert music. According to Silk Road Project director Ted Levin the project is intended as “an East -West cultural bridge, incorporating both traditional and new music.”

A year-long series of festivals will begin in August in Salzburg. In addition to performances of newly commissioned works and traditional music from Silk Road regions, these festivals will offer accompanying dance programs, art exhibitions, and films. In North America, festivals will be staged in Washington, D.C., Berkeley, Calif., Seattle, Chicago, and Toronto.

For the largest of these festivals - the summer 2002 Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall in Washington - the project will present 400 performers and artisans from countries along the entire length of the Silk Road as well as from the diaspora in the West.

The term ''fool of God'' is an expression used to describe a musician who regards music as a moral calling that has the power to lead humankind to the just. A fool of God must maintain high ethical standards, humility, and altruism in both his musical activities and his day-to-day life. From all indications, this notion guides both Levin and Yo-Yo Ma in their professions and the Silk Road Project. The presentation of the music, said Levin, ''is, of course, a fully meaningful end in itself. Beyond that, one can hope that the music is a beginning of a path, not an end, toward different ways of understanding the world, of understanding how, through culture, everything is linked.''

Uzbek musical traditions are a vital link in the Silk Road culture. As part of the program of new works commissioned are pieces by Mustafa Bafoef - his Bukhara cello concerto - and Dmitri Yanov-Yanofskii - his Night Music. Concerts in Tashkent and other cities in Uzbekistan are planned next year.

The project will also generate educational resources: CD recordings on the Sony Classical label, a documentary film and an educational Web site. Funding for the Silk Road Project is being provided by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, Ford Motor Co., the Starr Foundation, Sony Classical, and a few individual donors.