Among those spotlighted are Cristina Pato, a Spaniard who plays the Galician bagpipe Wu Man, a master of a Chinese lute called the pipa Kinan Azmeh, a Syrian clarinetist and Kayhan Kalhor, an Iranian who plays the kamancheh, a bowed instrument perched on his knee. But it also introduces some of the group’s members apart from Ma, offering not merely observations about their musicianship but sketches of their lives, with special notice given to circumstances in their countries that have impacted their ability to develop their skills and to express themselves through their instruments as well as their voices.
Neville’s film covers the early days of the Ensemble through interviews and archival footage, and offers clips from rehearsals and later concerts. The Silk Road Ensemble, as the group came to be called, has a fluctuating membership from performance to performance, but it has found popular success both on the stage and on CD. His effort to form a collective that would encompass the globe began in the late nineties, but gained steam after the events of 2001, which proved a need for greater cross-cultural understanding. He grew into one of the world’s foremost stars on his instrument, but also an artist constantly expanding horizons by playing different types of music and searching for ways to collaborate with players who have mastered unusual, often non-western, instruments. The film begins by briefly surveying Ma’s career, beginning with footage of Leonard Bernstein introducing the then solemn seven-year old at a performance before Jack and Jackie Kennedy. It’s an engaging portrait of the transcendent power of music as well as a moving testimony to the effect of political turmoil on individual artists. The axiom that music is a universal language that crosses all cultural and national boundaries is nicely illustrated in Morgan Neville’s documentary “The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble,” which recounts the famed Chinese-American cellist’s organization of a musical collective drawn from many regions who bring their individual skills together in collaborative performance.
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