Tag: silk road ensemble

10 of Our Favorite Roots Cellists

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Though an uncommon encounter in the roots music scene, the BGS team will always applaud a roots, folk, bluegrass, or old-time cello moment. With velvety, rich tones and a unique percussive capacity, the cello deepens the flavor of every tune it encounters. While not considered a traditional bluegrass instrument, it carries an ancestry boasting many folk interweavings – and its proximity to both the upright bass and fiddle grant it a certain amount of creative leverage while integrating into roots music.

The cello’s undefined yet familiar positionality allows cellists an unconventional playing ground for innovation; without the same distinctly canonized roots traditions as say, the fiddle or the banjo, cellists can access a broadened range of textures and styles.

This list, though it is by no means comprehensive and is curated in no particular order, pays tribute to some of our favorite cellists in a variety of roots music contexts.

Leyla McCalla

A prolific multi-instrumentalist and multilingual singer, Leyla McCalla’s impact on the roots music scene continues to be nothing short of profound. An alumna of the GRAMMY-winning Black string band the Carolina Chocolate Drops and founding member of Our Native Daughters (alongside Allison Russell, Rhiannon Giddens, and Amythyst Kiah), McCalla also has five solo releases under her belt. She is the daughter of two Haitian immigrants and activists and her work is widely informed by Afrofuturist thinkers and Afro-diasporic musical influences. The 2022 recipient of the People’s Voice Award by Folk Alliance international, McCalla’s work has been recognized time and again for her deep commitment to ancestral study and social change.

More Leyla McCalla content here.

Mike Block

Ever seen a cellist perform standing up? If you have, they’ve probably heard of Mike Block. Among the inaugural wave of cellists to perform using a strap, Block was the first cellist to ever perform standing at Carnegie Hall and he did so using his own patented creation, the Block Strap.

Sonically, Block has also explored an expanded range of motion, as he is well known for his cross-cultural collaborations. While BGS fans may know him best from the Mike Block trio, his acoustic string band with Joe K. Walsh and Zachariah Hickman, Block also tours with an electric trio called Biribà Union, a duo with Indian tabla player Sandeep Das, a six-piece American/African fusion band, and the Silk Road Ensemble, a collective formerly spearheaded by fellow cello luminary Yo-Yo Ma. Block, astoundingly, has also released 20 albums of his own music, in addition to recording, performing, and arranging for other musical giants such as Miley Cyrus, Elton John, Raffi, and more.

Yo-Yo Ma

Perhaps one of the most renowned cello players of all time, Yo-Yo Ma is widely recognized for his feats in classical music. His discography includes over 120 albums (19 of which earned GRAMMYs), both paying tribute to the classical Western canon and forging revolutionary cross-cultural connections. One of our personal favorite examples here at BGS is Ma’s participation in the Goat Rodeo Sessions, a stellar 2011 collection of classical and Appalachian entwinements featuring Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile, with vocals from Aoife O’Donovan showcased as well. The result is nothing short of breathtaking – truly an original fusion of soundscapes that remained unparalleled until the supergroup’s release of their sequel album, Not Our First Goat Rodeo (2020).

Read our exclusive 2020 interview with Yo-Yo Ma on Not Our First Goat Rodeo.

Monique Ross

Hailing from Milwaukee, Wisconsin and now based in Nashville, cellist Monique Ross is one half of the dynamic sibling duo SistaStrings. She and her sister, Chauntee Ross (violin), blend their classical training with gospel, R&B, and folk influences to yield music that once again proves the age-old wisdom that there is nothing quite like sibling synastry. The pair’s vocal and instrumental prowess enrapture with both distinctive emotive execution and precise relationality. Both also perform as members of Brandi Carlile’s touring band and Carlile will serve as the producer for their upcoming project currently in the works.

Find more Monique Ross and SistaStrings here and here.

Larissa Maestro

Larissa Maestro is a Filipinx multi-hyphenate talent based out of Nashville, Tennessee. Named “Instrumentalist of the Year” at the 2022 Americana Music Awards, Maestro was the first cellist and the first member of the AAPI community to receive that honor. A composer and activist as well as a musician, Maestro arranges chamber music, co-founded a community orchestra (The Nashville Concerto Orchestra), and often fundraises for non-profit organizations through their craft.

Maestro’s ability to weave lush string arrangements into a vast array of genres positions them as a highly coveted collaborator, having worked alongside the likes of Hozier, Margo Price, Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Ms. Lauryn Hill, John Legend, Allison Russell, and more as well as fronting and collaborating with various projects and bands.

Natalie Haas

Known for her impeccable traditional cello playing, Natalie Haas keeps centuries of Celtic traditions ablaze. She and Scottish fiddler Alasdair Fraser have toured together for twenty-three years, reviving and reimagining the tradition of cello/fiddle duets, popular in 18th and 19th century Scottish dance music. Though historically these duets featured a droning cello and melodic fiddle, Haas’s curiosity coupled with her virtuosity explore the cello as a dynamic instrument, capable of harmony, melody, percussion, and every blended iteration thereof. As Peter Winter once said, “Natalie basically wrote the book on the cello’s place in Celtic music.”

Read more about Natalie Haas and her collaboration with her sister, Brittany, here.

Ben Sollee

Ben Sollee is a Kentucky-based cellist and activist whose interdisciplinary work seeks to connect and elevate his communities. His most recent solo album, The Long Haul, interpolates both American influences and inspirations from the global south to deliver a dynamic album that, in part, processes the many griefs he faced during COVID’s inaugural years while maintaining a buoyant sense of resilience and growth. In addition to his innovative cello playing, Sollee works as a composer, having scored several films and the podcast “Unreformed.” Sollee has also recently helped spearhead a non-profit called Canopy to support local Kentucky businesses mindful of having a positive social and environmental impact on their community.

Read more about Sollee and The Long Haul here.

Nancy Blake

A pioneer for glimmers of cello in the modern American roots landscape, Nancy Blake is a cross-genre hero. Nancy began her relationship to the instrument at age 12 and grew up playing cello in the Nashville Youth Symphony. On a fortuitous day in 1972, her band Natchez Trace opened up for prolific picker Norman Blake. The two eventually married, and Nancy aptly fused her cello playing into Norman’s musical landscape. She also picked up several other more traditional roots instruments, such as guitar, fiddle, and upright bass, appearing on many of Norman’s releases throughout his career.

Joy Adams

Dr. Joy Adams is a versatile multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, composer, songwriter, and educator from Washington state who currently resides in Denver. While you may know her best from her extensive touring with Nataniel Rateliff, Darol Anger, and the all-women powerhouse group Big Richard, she has accrued a sprawling list of collaborators throughout her career. From recording on the Emmy award-winning soundtrack of The Queen’s Gambit to performing with the likes of Chick Corea, Kenny Loggins, Ben Folds, Waxahatchee, and more, Adams weaves energetic innovations into each of her collaborations.

Read our recent interview with Big Richard on their brand new album, Girl Dinner.

Casey Murray

Like many of our favorite cellists, Casey Murray is a talented educator in addition to their performance and compositional ventures. A Berklee grad based in the luscious roots scene of Boston, Murray finds much inspiration in blending Celtic, old-time, folk, classical, and improvisational sensibilities – like in their work with forward-looking string band Corner House. They particularly enjoy providing musical accompaniment for contra dances around the New England area, an exercise of their keen attunement to the rhythmic possibilities the cello has to offer.

Of course, even with ten incredible entries, our list of roots cellists barely scratches the surface of this vibrant community in folk, bluegrass, and beyond. With plenty of examples – like Rushad Eggleston, Nathaniel Smith, Kaitlyn Raitz, and many more – still to pull from, we’re already prepping a Part II to our roots cello exploration. Who would you include?

Photo Credit: Ben Sollee courtesy of Big Hassle; Leyla McCalla by Noé Cugny; Yo-Yo Ma by Austin Mann.

Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble: Tearing Down the Wall

Posted on by Editor

Election years are rife with divisive rhetoric, with 2016 perhaps taking the cake — thanks to deeply split parties and a man named Donald Drumpf blathering about building a literal wall between Mexico and the United States — for the most inflammatory, insufferable year yet. It’s during times like these that people often turn to art for comfort, whether through searching for answers in protest music or simply turning up the volume to drown out all of the noise. 

It’s appropriate, then, that Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble just released their latest album, Sing Me Home. It is an eclectic collection of genre-defying songs put together by Ma and his virtuosic group of performers and composers, whose backgrounds span 20 countries. The Ensemble is built on collaboration and cross-cultural conversation, an approach that sees players taking turns leading the group, choosing and arranging songs that either represent their cultural heritage or contain personal significance. The resulting music would best be described as what Ma calls “humanist” more than it could easily fit any genre label or regional attribution.

“What I love about the Ensemble is that there are so many people who can both be part of a group but also can lead a group,” he explains. “The idea is that obviously everyone has such individual personality and identity and voice that you want to celebrate it. Cristina [Pato], for example, is from Galicia in the northern part of Spain. She was a rock musician bagpipe player and played in sort of a girl band as a teenager and then came to the States. She’s learned so much about the cross-cultural references that went back and forth between Spain, Portugal, North and South America, and Africa. She found a way to bring all of her experiences in both Galicia and the United States together. So that’s another wonderful way of her leading us, taking us to a place that is familiar to her and that we were guests and then became participants in.”

Accordingly, listening to Sing Me Home takes you on a sonic trip across the globe, hopping from India to Portugal within the span of a couple minutes. In addition to representing their traditions through song selection, Ensemble members also had the opportunity to choose the album’s impressive roster of guest musicians, which includes Abigail Washburn, Sarah Jarosz, Bill Frisell, Shujaat Khan, and many others.

“[The guest roster] is all chosen by different Ensemble members,” Ma says. “Colin [Jacobsen] loved Martin Hayes, the fiddler, so he initiated that and that was fantastic. In each case it was, I think, friendships. Kayhan [Kalhor] brought the great Indian sitarist Shujaat Khan. They’d been playing together for 45 years and they are like family to one another. So I think friendships, that’s key. Friendships where the trust and the admiration for what somebody does are probably the key ingredients that made all of those relationships work.”

Rhiannon Giddens also guests on the album, adding vocals to a remarkable version of the classic folksong “St. James Infirmary Blues” that the Ensemble arranged after accordion player Michael Ward-Bergeman heard the tune in a London pub, worked through it with a group of Romanian musicians, and ultimately brought it to Silk Road. Giddens, known for both her solo work and as part of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, adds an Appalachian touch, seamlessly bridging the gaps between her own North Carolina upbringing, Ward-Bergeman’s Romanian flourishes, and the cover’s fortuitous origin in a British pub.

“She is so fantastic,” Ma says of Giddens. “I’m so moved by what she does. I don’t know what it is. It’s so strong and so powerful and it’s like she’s giving 100 percent. It’s so authentic. It’s just amazing.”

Even with such a talented group of performers and composers, bringing those seemingly disparate elements together was no easy task. Ensemble member Johnny Gandelsman, who produced the album in addition to playing violin, was able to do exactly that. “Johnny is our heart and soul,” Ma says. “And he actually did put his heart and soul into it. He is so immensely talented. Sometimes, when people have so much talent, you can actually not know how to go about doing it all. But he has such a gift for organizing, for getting everybody lined up, making everything go on time, making guests feel comfortable. It was amazing because we never knew that side existed in him.”

For Ma, making great music is important, but uniting players across cultural lines and providing listeners with global reference points they may not have otherwise are the utmost goals of the Ensemble. In an election year, especially, Ma sees music and culture as invaluable components of civilized society, and as a chief method through which damaging walls between social and cultural groups get torn down.

“It’s not about, ‘We must build a wall.’ It becomes a much more nuanced approach to looking at people, traditions, and, in that context, you can look at socio-political and economic situations,” Ma says. “Without the culture, we get into having a war and not planning for what happens afterward. With the culture, you know what you’re getting into. You think carefully about what to do afterward. When you think about how your friends will react to some information you might bring, you’re careful about the way you say it, the tone. And this is true of everything. I think that’s where cultural knowledge can really help. We may not be able to solve the situation, but at least we can help add nuance to the way certain communications are made.” 

Sing Me Home is nothing if not nuanced, both in its musical performances and its meticulous homage to the home countries of the Ensemble members. That it still manages to balance that attention to detail with a scope that — sonically and socially — encompasses such a diverse range of perspectives is a testament to the talent, vision, and kindness of those involved with the group. Ma’s own assessment of the music is spot on: This is human music (or, let’s be honest, superhuman — we’re talking about Yo-Yo Ma, after all), made for and by people who care deeply for others, regardless of borders or party affiliations. 

“We want to be a society that is actually open, not only to one another, but open humanistically,” Ma says. “We just want to make sure that we’re dealing with humans as three-dimensional people and not just as statistics. So, even though we may not be able to solve the situation, the least we can do is make sure that the dignity of humans is always in everybody’s mind, no matter which sector they’re coming from, in trying to solve a problem. And I think the music does that.”

Lede photo: Kayhan Kalhor and Yo-Yo Ma. Photo by Aykut Usletekin, courtesy of International Izmir Festival

Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble (ft. Rhiannon Giddens), ‘St. James Infirmary Blues’

Posted on by Editor

Yo-Yo Ma and Rhiannon Giddens … need we say more? The legendary cellist brought the talented solo artist and former member of Carolina Chocolate Drops on board for a project with the Silk Road Ensemble, a multi-national group of composers and performers Ma formed in 2000. The ensemble just readied a new album, Sing Me Home, featuring Giddens on the popular American folksong "St. James Infirmary Blues," which we're happy to premiere. Other guests on the album, out April 22, include Bill Frisell, Sarah Jarosz, and Gregory Porter. 

“Music is one of the best ways human beings have to code memory and often, at Silk Road, it’s also the way we code friendships," Ma says. "Michael Ward-Bergeman’s arrangement of 'St. James Infirmary Blues' for the Silk Road Ensemble grew out of his friendship with the legendary Romani band Taraf de Haidouks, and became the way to welcome to our creative community a new friend: the extraordinary Rhiannon Giddens. As Michael says, Rhiannon’s voice on this song was a gift to us all.”

"What an amazing session with the Silk Road Ensemble!" Giddens adds. "I was so honored to get to sing with these fabulous musicians, and you can tell we are all having a great time!”

Listen to "St. James Infirmary Blues" and pre-order Sing Me Home here.