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<\/p>\nYo-Yo Ma. World renowned cellist. Child prodigy. Many American audiences got their first glimpse of Yo-Yo Ma when at age 7 he was introduced on television by Leonard Bernstein. Over the decades, Yo-Yo Ma has opened the senses of the masses to the beauty of classical music. Passionate about bringing about peaceful change in the world through the universal musical language, in 2000 Yo-Yo Ma started bringing artists – and their culturally unique musical instruments – from around the world together to play in the \u201cSilk Road Ensemble\u201d. Morgan Neville. Documentarian. Academy Award winner for \u201c20 Feet From Stardom\u201d. Although having an affinity for documentaries involving music, Neville is equally adept with straightforward factual stories, as we saw in \u201cBest of Enemies.\u201d And now, Neville returns to music as he teams up with Yo-Yo Ma for THE MUSIC OF STRANGERS: YO-YO MA AND THE SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE with what is nothing short of symphony for the senses.<\/p>\n
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Meeting Yo-Yo Ma for the first time some five years ago, Neville was completely charmed by him. Talking about \u201ceverything under the sun\u201d, Neville was struck by the fact that \u201cthe kinds of issues he has been grappling with as a musician are the same issues I grapple with as a filmmaker. How important is culture? How important is what we do? How can we make the world a better place with it? And not in a pompous way, but in an existential way, you ask yourself these questions. I feel like this film is really investigating those kinds of issues. To me, and I\u2019m sure to Yo-Yo, the conclusion is, culture is as essential if not more essential than anything else. We tend to think of things like the arts as \u201cnice\u201d but non-essential in America. I think that\u2019s just dead wrong.\u201d And it\u2019s that shared passion and belief that gave birth to THE MUSIC OF STRANGERS.<\/p>\n
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Structured similar to his narrative with \u201c20 Feet From Stardom\u201d, Neville starts his cinematic structure with the known commodity – Yo-Yo Ma – giving us insight to the man today, his passions, and then travelling back in time with his story before then moving onto the narratives of other musicians. Honing in on both the dramatic gravitas of each musician\u2019s story and the turning points in their lives or careers, and the collective journey of the Silk Road Ensemble, together with his cinematographer Graham Wiloughby, Neville introduces us to the members of the Silk Road Project by way of footage of the early meetings as virtuosos and their \u201cexotic\u201d instruments come together for what was described as the \u201cManhattan Project of Music\u201d, all eager to explore Ma\u2019s idea of having culture, tradition and music meet and see just what kind of harmony through music could be found.<\/p>\n
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As if on a musical road trip around the globe, the audience\u2019s interest is sparked as much as that of the individual musicians on their meeting and learning about one and other. Honing in on some of the more colorful musicians, we meet several up close and personal: Wu Man – master of the pipa, a Chinese stringed instrument. Wu Man grew up in post-Maoist China and as one of the more fortunate, his musical talents were shepherded and cultivated; Kinan Azmeh, a clarinetist born in Damascus, stirs the heartstrings as he plays for young students now in Syrian refugee camps; Kayhan Kalhor, an Iranian exile, plays the kamancheh. Kalhour provides personal insight into the revolution in Iran, relating palpable sorrow of his cancelled concerts in his homeland; and, Cristina Pato, a bagpiper often referred to as \u201cthe Jimi Hendrix of Galicia\u201d talks of the trickle down effect of Spain\u2019s economic situation and its affect on Pato\u2019s family. Each is as interesting as the next. Significant is that Silk Road Ensemble celebrates cultural identities while empowering the individual musicians through the connective notes of music as they grapple with their own feelings due to political unrest, religious persecution, displacement, hardships in their homeland.<\/p>\n
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Crisply edited by Helen Kearns and Jason Zeldes with an almost lyrical ebb and flow, the individual stories are judiciously placed between beautiful showcase musical performances from not only the ensemble as a whole but the individual musicians. Through the musical numbers, we learn about and experience new sounds from instruments not familiar to Western audiences, while feeling the exhilaration of a musician emotionally swept up into his or her own performance. We feel their passion. There is a palpable harmony amongst all. For Neville, it was difficult finding the right musical performances for the film, but ultimately, \u201cIt was a combination of what I wanted and what I had. It was not always easy, but the thing is that I filmed with them for so long that I had a fairly good pool of material to pull from.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The musical numbers are flawlessly lensed. Wiloughby\u2019s camera has a fluidity that engages, capturing not only the musical and cultural fusion, but creating an electrifying sense of spontaneity akin to street performance but on a much grander scale. And this cinematic sensibility never falters no matter where on the globe they are filming. When it comes to working with Wiloughby, whom has long worked with Neville, \u201cI feel like we both push each other to our extremes and I think that gets the best footage out of situations that are not conducive to shooting that way. We brought a steadi-cam to rural China. Kind of nuts. We were shooting 6K and downloading all night long in tiny little rooms. It was not like a commercial shoot. It was very bare bones.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cLogistically challenging\u201d may be an understatement when describing THE MUSIC OF STRANGERS. After initially meeting with Yo-Yo Ma and deciding to embark on a documentary journey with him, Neville thought, \u201cI\u2019ll get the camera and I\u2019ll follow Yo-Yo around and we\u2019ll have some fun and I\u2019m sure I\u2019ll learn some things. Boy did I! This was definitely one of those jumping off the cliff decisions to make a film. I knew it had interesting ideas and interesting characters but I just didn\u2019t know where it was going to take us.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Knowing the film was definitely going to have a global component, that factor was ever evolving throughout the cinematic process. For Neville, finding that connective thread was ultimately, \u201cthe characters I chose to concentrate on. They\u2019re all kind of on the same journey, which is, on this journey away from home and returning home. And by \u2018home\u2019, that can mean tradition. They all come from these incredible cultures and traditions and they all did the unexpected thing and left that tradition in some way or left what was expected of them as a musician in their country. They all kind of return to where they came from, metaphorically or literally, with this new worldly knowledge. To me, that\u2019s like a hero\u2019s journey.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Shooting in six different languages (all of which we get to experience in the film), THE MUSIC OF STRANGERS also serves as a global travelogue. While we see the beauty of rural China, the emotional power of Syrian refugees displaced in Jordan now affected by Azmeh and his clarinet, or the breathtaking awe and reverence of the Basilica Cistern, hearing Morgan Neville talk about during our exclusive interview is something else. \u201cIt was immensely complicated to shoot in some of those places. But as a filmmaker, you just can\u2019t beat locations. The footage we shot of Kayhan [Kalhor] playing in the Basilica Cistern in Istanbul, the underground waterworks that are hundreds of years old; it\u2019s just the kind of shadowy caves that he\u2019s playing in – being in their alone filming him playing was one of my all time favorite filming experiences. When you\u2019re filming in places like that, there\u2019s no comparison. . .In China, we filmed it through proper channels. Because we were filming in China with Yo-Yo, we wanted to do it as you are supposed to – legally, sanctioned by the government. . .We didn\u2019t know what that would mean and we were assigned a handler, but fortunately our handler was most interested in sleeping on the bus and reading the newspaper than every paying attention to us. . .so, we were just sort of wandering.\u201d<\/p>\n
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As much an exploration of what the musicians in the film embarked on, THE MUSIC OF STRANGERS distills something amorphous and powerful into something that works filmicly. For these musicians who come from other countries, being an artist is as important as anything else, equating to a political or religious act. Underscoring the foundational philosophies of the Silk Road Ensemble, through THE MUSIC OF STRANGERS it becomes crystal clear that culture is one of the basic nourishments of life; that through music and cinema we can – and do – find harmony in life. \u201cThere is no East or West. It\u2019s just a globe.\u201d A globe filled with THE MUSIC OF STRANGERS.<\/p>\n
Directed by Morgan Neville<\/p>\n
Artists: Yo-Yo Ma, Kinan Azmeh, Kayhan Kalhor, Wu Man, Cristina Pato<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yo-Yo Ma. World renowned cellist. Child prodigy. Many American audiences got their first glimpse of Yo-Yo Ma when at age 7 he was introduced on television by Leonard Bernstein. Over the decades, Yo-Yo Ma has opened the senses of the masses to the beauty of classical music. Passionate about bringing about peaceful change in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15637,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,9],"tags":[3200,297,4612,4610,4611],"class_list":["post-15633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","category-reviews","tag-morgan-neville","tag-movie-review","tag-silk-road-ensemble","tag-the-music-of-strangers","tag-yo-yo-ma"],"yoast_head":"\n