Yo-Yo Ma joins longtime friend and Silkroad collaborator Kinan Azmeh on Uneven Sky, a new recording that spotlights Kinan as a composer, soloist, and improvisor.
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Yo-Yo Ma appears on Kinan Azmeh’s new album, “Uneven Sky”
Mar 14, 2019
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Yo-Yo Ma joins longtime friend and Silkroad collaborator Kinan Azmeh on Uneven Sky, a new recording that spotlights Kinan as a composer, soloist, and improvisor.
Uneven Sky is about home, the multitudes of homes," says Kinan, "and it was made with lots of optimism and love.
Yo-Yo joins Kinan in The Fence, the Rooftop and the Distant Sea. Commissioned by Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie and premiered there in January 2017, Kinan wrote the duo for Yo-Yo on cello and himself on clarinet.
“A fence, a rooftop, and the distant sea were all present facing my desk while I finished the piece in Beirut in December 2016,” says the composer. “These elements were a reminder of how near my hometown of Damascus was, yet how far it seemed after being away for five years. The piece is about the random memories of individuals, more precisely about two characters searching for memories from home. The memories jump, sometimes abruptly from one to another, until they realize that the most powerful memories were the simplest.”
The release also features performances by the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and Manuel Nawri, spotlighting clarinet concertos that were written for Kinan by the Syrian composers Kareem Roustom, Zaid Jabri, and Dia Succari.
