Wotersen, Germany, 25 August 2001 - At the first of a landmark series of festivals, a distinguished international group of musicians, artists and scholars forming part of the Silk Road Project last night introduced to European audiences, the Aga Khan Music Initiative in Central Asia, a long-range, multi-year programme to enable the revitalisation of indigenous expressive culture in Central Asia.

The Silk Road Project’s Artistic Director Yo-Yo Ma and members of the Silk Road Ensemble are performing specially commissioned pieces, traditional works from Silk Road countries and Western music influenced by Eastern traditions.  Featuring compositions from Azerbaijan, Iran, Japan, China, Mongolia and Uzbekistan, the Concert programme includes performances of traditional instruments as varied as the morin khuur, a Mongolian two-stringed fiddle and the sheng, a 3,000 year-old traditional wind instrument.

Explaining the purpose of the Music Initiative, Prince Amyn Aga Khan, brother of His Highness the Aga Khan, and a Director of the Silk Road Project, said “we want to revive, help sustain, and make accessible to the wider world, the varied forms of musical expression to be found along the old Silk Routes.”  “Our hope,” he continued, “is that the performances of Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble and especially of the pieces specially composed for the Silk Road Project, will give audiences here in Europe, as indeed elsewhere, a first true glimpse of the diversity of traditions, but also of their commonality, and particularly, of the value today of exchanges among and between peoples and cultures.”

“When strangers meet” and “an exploration of the inner life” were among the characterisations that Yo-Yo Ma used to describe the vastness of the Silk Road Project which he sees as an attempt “to bring new ideas, talent and energy into the world of classical music, and at the same time, nurture musical creativity drawing on wonderfully diverse and distinguished sources of cultural heritage around the world.”

With its Music Initiative, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture seeks to expand on its groundbreaking Humanities Project for Central Asia which focuses upon the development of curricula that will promote pluralism in ideas, cultures and peoples.  Presenting, teaching, documenting and archiving traditional arts, preparing educational materials on music and poetry, supporting publications, recordings, broadcast and televised transmission – the Music Initiative hopes to help create a unique repository of musical knowledge and performance. Among its beneficiaries will be the newly established University of Central Asia, created by an international treaty signed among the Presidents of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and the Kyrgyz Republic and the Aga Khan.

In October, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture will sponsor concerts by Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. Within the ambit of the Aga Khan Music Initiative for Central Asia, a key component of the tour will be workshops and master classes that will permit unique interaction between musicians and students in these countries and the composers, musicians and scholars who form part of the Silk Road Project.  Concerts are also planned for several cities in Europe and North America during 2002.  The Aga Khan Trust for Culture, as the lead funder and a key creative partner in the Silk Road Project, will also be involved in the Smithsonian Folklife Festival to be held in Washington D.C. and in supporting documentation projects.

NOTES

The Silk Road Project aims to illuminate the Silk Road’s historical contribution to the cross-cultural diffusion of arts, technologies, and musical traditions, identify the voices that best represent its cultural legacy today, and support innovative collaborations among outstanding artists from the lands of the Silk Road and the West.

The Aga Khan Trust for Culture, established in 1988 in Geneva, Switzerland, is a private, non-denominational, philanthropic foundation that focuses on cultural revitalisation as a means to promote physical, social and economic well-being in countries where Muslims have a significant presence. In addition to the programmes noted above, the Trust administers: the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, the world’s largest architectural prize; the Historic Cities Support Programme concerned with the conservation and re-use of buildings and spaces in historic cities through projects in Bosnia, Egypt, Pakistan, Spain, Syria, Uzbekistan and Zanzibar; support for the Aga Khan Programme in Islamic Architecture at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); in collaboration with MIT, ArchNet, an interactive global Internet-based cyberspatial network that links architects, planners and universities around the world.

The Trust is part of the Aga Khan Development Network, a family of institutions created by His Highness the Aga Khan, 49th hereditary Imam (spiritual leader) of the Ismaili Muslims.  The Network brings together agencies and institutions working to improve living conditions and opportunities in specific regions of the developing world, especially in Asia and Africa.  Since 1993, the Network has launched a number of successful initiatives in Central Asia in areas ranging from agrarian reform to education, infrastructure, healthcare, micro-credit, small enterprise development and cultural revitalisation.

For further information, please contact:

The Aga Khan Trust for Culture
1-3 Avenue de la Paix
1211 Geneva 2,
Switzerland
Telephone:       (41.22) 909.7200
Fax:                 (41.22) 909.7292
E-mail:             aktc@akdn.ch