Silkroad Up-Close offers a closer look at some of the extraordinary artists who make up the Silkroad Ensemble and at the ideas, traditions, and relationships that shape their work. Created as an intimate counterpart to Silkroad’s large-scale concert presentations, this flagship series gives Ensemble members the space to lead: inviting collaborators, tracing musical lineages, and developing programs rooted in their own creative lives. The result is a portrait of Silkroad from the inside, revealing not only the breadth of traditions represented within the Ensemble, but the curiosity and exchange that continually transform them.
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PROGRAM 1
Silkroad Up-Close featuring Shawn Conley
Shawn Conley presents music from his most recent solo bass album Uncharted. This evening’s concert combines Bach's first cello suite with freely improvised pieces. The improvisations weave new sound worlds between the movements of Bach, bringing in a modern voice and expanding the limits of what is possible on the double bass.
PROGRAM 2
Silkroad Up-Close featuring Kinan Azmeh Trio
Syrian-born, New York-based composer and clarinetist Kinan Azmeh brings together pianist Amino Belyamani and bassist Shawn Conley for a new trio that explores the possibilities of an intimate acoustic setting. Moving fluidly between composition and improvisation, the ensemble draws from a wide range of musical traditions while remaining firmly rooted in Azmeh’s distinctive musical language. The result is contemporary chamber music that resists easy categorization, shaped as much by the interplay among the three musicians as by the music on the page.
Over five Wednesday evenings at National Sawdust, Silkroad artists and special guests come together in performances that cross generations and geographies, moving freely between inherited forms and new composition, improvisation and experimentation.
The intimate setting of National Sawdust brings audiences closer to the individual artists of the Ensemble, creating space for the musical connections, discoveries, and moments of spontaneity that can only emerge when artists and audiences share an intimate musical experience.
Join us for the other events in this series:
ABOUT SILKROAD
Yo-Yo Ma conceived Silkroad in 1998, recognizing the historical Silk Road as a model for cultural collaboration—for the exchange of ideas, tradition, and innovation across borders. In a groundbreaking experiment, he brought together musicians from the lands of the Silk Road to co-create a musical language founded in difference, thus creating the foundation of Silkroad: both a touring ensemble comprised of world-class musicians from all over the globe and a Boston-based non-profit organization working to make a positive impact across borders through the arts.
Today, under the leadership of Artistic Director Rhiannon Giddens and President and CEO Ben Hartley, Silkroad leads social impact initiatives and educational programming alongside the creation of new music by the Grammy Award-winning Silkroad Ensemble.
To learn more, please visit silkroad.org and @silkroadproject on social media.
This is a seated performance. If you require accessibility accommodations, please email boxoffice@nationalsawdust.org.
ABOUT SHAWN CONLEY
Hawaii born bassist and composer Shawn Conley grew up loving all types of music. This love of diversity of sound developed into a career that straddles many genres. He has been a member of the Silkroad Ensemble (founded by Yo-Yo Ma) for 13 years and is a member of the Brooklyn-based chamber orchestra The Knights. He is currently the principle bassist in the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra. Shawn also recently released his first solo bass record called ‘Uncharted’ on In a Circle Records. It is a pairing of Bach’s first cello suite with freely improvised pieces, exploring the connection between the two words.
You can hear Shawn on many records including the GRAMMY Award-winning ‘Sing Me Home’ with Silkroad and Yo-Yo Ma, as well as other records from the Silkroad catalog ‘American Railroad’ with Rhiannon Giddens, ‘Falling Out of Time’ and ‘The Vietnam War Soundtrack’. He can also be heard on many of The Knights catalog, including the album “Azul,” and a new recording of composer Anna Clyne’s music (both featuring Yo-Yo Ma) as well as ‘Beethoven and Brahms; Violin Concerto’ featuring Gil Shaham.
As a studio musician, he has performed on multiple soundtracks including True Grit, Moonrise Kingdom, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Tower Heist, and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
Shawn studied at Rice University with Paul Ellison and in Paris, France with Francois Rabbath. He currently lives in Honolulu, Hawaii with his wife Megan and their son Osian.
ABOUT KINAN AZMEH
Hailed as a “virtuoso, intensely soulful” by The New York Times and “spellbinding” by The New Yorker, Syrian-born, Brooklyn-based composer and clarinetist Kinan Azmeh has toured the globe with great acclaim as a soloist, composer, and improviser. He has collaborated with Yo-Yo Ma, Marcel Khalife, John McLaughlin, Daniel Barenboim, Aynur, and Djivan Gasparian, among others. He leads his own ensembles Hewar and the Kinan Azmeh CityBand, and is a Silkroad ensemble artist, with whom he won a Grammy Award in 2016. His orchestral album Uneven Sky, recorded with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, received Germany’s Opus Klassik Award in 2019.
Recent commissions include works for the New York Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, Robert Wilson, and the Morgenland Festival, where he premiered his opera Songs for Days to Come, fully sung in Arabic. He is a graduate of the Damascus High Institute of Music, Damascus University’s School of Electrical Engineering, and The Juilliard School, and holds a doctorate in music from the City University of New York. Kinan serves on the United States National Council on the Arts.
ABOUT AMINO BELYAMANI
Amino Belyamani is a composer and multi-instrumentalist born and raised in Casablanca, Morocco, whose work reflects a rich diversity of influences, from complex African rhythms and Arabic melodies to Western classical music, electro-acoustic music, and jazz. He co-founded the critically acclaimed band Dawn of Midi, whose second studio album, Dysnomia, received international praise. The group has performed at venues including London’s Barbican Centre for the BAUHAUS centennial and opened for Radiohead in two sold-out performances at Madison Square Garden.
Amino is also a founding member of Innov Gnawa, a traditional Moroccan trance ensemble nominated for a 2018 Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording for “Bambro Koyo Ganda,” featured on Bonobo’s album Migration. His other projects include the microtonal and hypnotic SSAHHA, Bedstuy Ewe, a traditional Ghanaian drumming group, and Axis Trio, a modern electro-acoustic jazz trio. He has performed with artists including Dimi Mint Abba, Charlie Haden, Albert “Tootie” Heath, Hamid El Kasri, Hassan Hakmoun, Alfred Ladzekpo, and Houman Pourmehdi. He currently lives in Brooklyn.