Musical Meetings on the Silk Road

Gao Hong, pipa; Issam Rafea, ‘ud
Saturday, September 14, 2019

Hear Chinese and Arab instruments that originated in Central Asia, where the mysterious Sogdians were prominent traders along the medieval Silk Road. The pear-shaped, bent-necked, and wood-faced lute traveled from its home in present-day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to China, where it became the pipa, and to the Arab world, where it evolved into the ‘ud.

Pipa virtuoso Gao Hong and ‘ud master Issam Rafea bring the instruments together for the kind of compelling duets that earned them two nominations for the 2019 Independent Music Awards. Songlines calls their collaboration “a recording that is consistently engaging, deeply contemplative, and culturally resonant.”

Gao Hong graduated from Beijing’s elite Central Conservatory of Music. Since coming to the United States, she has performed at the Lincoln Center Festival, Carnegie Hall, the San Francisco Jazz Festival, and at international festivals in Paris, Caen, Milan, and Perth. She has presented concertos for pipa with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Heidelberg Philharmonic, the Buenos Aires Philharmonic, the China National Traditional Orchestra, Louisville Orchestra, Hawaii Symphony, and the Women’s Philharmonic (San Francisco), among others. In 2017 she became the first Chinese musician to play our ational anthem at a Minnesota Timberwolves basketball game in Minneapolis.

Issam Rafea is one of Syria’s elite musicians. A refugee from the civil war, he served as chair of the Arab music department at the High Institute of Music in Damascus and the principal conductor of the Syrian National Orchestra for Arabic Music. In Syria, he was an active composer and arranger for television and theater. Rafea now directs the Middle Eastern Music Ensemble at Northern Illinois University. He has performed with guitar virtuoso Fareed Haque in cross-cultural collaborations and, with his Syrian orchestra, led a groundbreaking collaboration with Damen Albarn of the British rock bands Blur and Gorillaz.

This concert is presented in conjunction with our new online resource The Sogdians: Influencers on the Silk Roads.
Asia.si.edu/the-sogdians-influencers-on-the-silk-roads/

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