Silkroad Ensemble Returns to the Hop on July 19

You’d be forgiven if you automatically link cellist Yo Yo Ma with the Silkroad Ensemble, a multi-cultural group of musicians he initiated and helped to create in 1998. After serving as the group’s artistic director since its inception, he stepped down from the position in 2017. The Ensemble, a fluid association of dozens of musicians who perform in smaller and varied groups, has been under the artistic direction of Rhiannon Giddens since July, 2020.

Silkroad is returning to the Hopkins Center on July 19 with Phoenix Rising, its debut tour under Giddens’ direction. Phoenix Rising will unveil three major new commissions by Silkroad artists Sandeep Das, Maeve Gilchrist and Kaoru Watanabe. The program also includes new arrangements by Rhiannon Giddens, Colin Jacobsen, Edward Pérez and Mazz Swift. Sandeep Das will return to Dartmouth in Spring 2023 for a residency and collaboration with the Music Department.

Grammy Award winner and MacArthur “Genius” Grant recipient Rhiannon Giddens is no stranger to the Hopkins Center. She co-founded the string band Carolina Chocolate Drops and performed as part of the group in Spaulding Auditorium in 2010. (The group is no longer together.) Giddens also performed as a solo artist in a sold -out performance at the Hop in 2017.

Hopkins Center Director Mary Lou Aleskie stated in a press release “We are honored to be part of the debut tour of this amazing collective of artists and look forward to experiencing the weaving of their unique sounds . . .” Dartmouth Music Professor Ted Levin, the Ensemble’s first executive director and a founding member of the Silk Road Project, added “Dartmouth’s longstanding connection with the Silkroad Ensemble, which goes back to its first-ever public performance, in January 2001, has been of immense value to our students, not only as a showcase for superb musicianship, but for the avid spirit of musical cosmopolitanism and cultural pluralism that the ensemble exemplifies.”

For more information or to purchase tickets, click here for the Hopkins Center website.

(Photo by Adam Gurczak, courtesy of the Hopkins Center).

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Susan B. Apel shuttered a lifelong career as a law professor to continue an interest (since kindergarten) in writing. Her freelance business, The Next Word, includes literary and feature writing; her work has appeared in a variety of lit mags and other publications including Art New England, The Woven Tale Press, The Arts Fuse, and Persimmon Tree. She connects with her neighbors through Artful, her blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley. She’s in love with the written word.