New Impossibilities [B&N Exclusive Version]

Disc 1
1	Arabian Waltz, for oud, s
2	Night of the Flying Horse
3	Galloping Horses, for pip
4	Song of Eight Unruly Tips
5	Shristi, for voice, percu
6	The Silent City, for kema
7	Ambush from Ten Sides, tr
8	Vocussion, for voices & p
Disc 2
1	Empty Mountain, Spirit Ra
New Impossibilities [B&N Exclusive Version]
1.	Arabian Waltz, for oud, string quartet, tabla & frame drum 7:36
	Composed by Rabih Abou-Khalil
	Performed by Yo-Yo Ma, Yang Wei and Silk Road Ensemble
2.	Night of the Flying Horses, suite 6:50
	Composed by Osvaldo Golijov
	Performed by Yo-Yo Ma, Yang Wei and Silk Road Ensemble
3.	Galloping Horses, for pipa & bass 1:56
	Composed by Hai-Hai Huang
	Performed by Yo-Yo Ma, Yang Wei and Daxun Zhang
4.	Song of Eight Unruly Tipsy Poets, for string quartet & orchestra (from "Poems from Tang") 7:22
	Composed by Zhou Long
	Performed by Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Yo-Yo Ma, Yang Wei and Silk Road Ensemble
	Conducted by Miguel Harth-Bedoya
5.	Shristi, for voice, percussion & ensemble 7:41
	Composed by Sandeep Das
	Performed by Yo-Yo Ma, Yang Wei and Silk Road Ensemble
6.	The Silent City, for kemancheh & string orchestra 22:16
	Composed by Kayhan Kalhor
	Performed by Yo-Yo Ma, Yang Wei and Silk Road Ensemble
7.	Ambush from Ten Sides, traditional melody (a.k.a. "Ambush on All Sides") 12:09
	Composed by Chinese Traditional
	Performed by Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Yo-Yo Ma, Yang Wei and Silk Road Ensemble
	Conducted by Miguel Harth-Bedoya
8.	Vocussion, for voices & percussion + Hidden Track 8:15
	Composed by Unspecified
	Performed by Yo-Yo Ma, Yang Wei and Silk Road Ensemble
9.	Empty Mountain, Spirit Rain, for ensemble 13:49
	Composed by Angel Lam
	Performed by Yo-Yo Ma, Yang Wei and Silk Road Ensemble
	Additional Notes: B&N Exclusive Bonus Track

Barnes & Noble

Yo-Yo Ma and his Silk Road Ensemble are on the move again, trekking to Chicago for this live-performance CD, New Impossibilities. It's the latest offering in the cellist's ambitious Silk Road Project, which aims to explore musical crosscurrents along the ancient trade route stretching from the Far East to Europe. Ma gets plenty of help in this endeavor: A thesaurus of Asian instruments, from oud to pipa to shakuhachi, join Ma's cello, producing a menagerie of colorful sounds, and the estimable Chicago Symphony Orchestra pitches in on a few tracks, too. Fittingly, the album rounds up a virtual caravan of composers, including the Lebanese Rabih Abou-Khalil, the Argentine Osvaldo Golijov, the Chinese Zhou Long and Hai-Hai Huang, the Indian Sandeep Das, and the Iranian Kayhan Kalhor. Their music ranges across the expressive map, from Abou-Khalil's whirling Arabian Waltz to the whimsical equine imitations of Huang's Galloping Horses, and from the moving lamentation of Kahlor's Silent City to the cinematic thrill of the traditional Chinese Ambush from Ten Sides. Golijov is the best-known composer represented, with a handful of major-label albums in circulation, and his Night of the Flying Horses explores the folksy Eastern European styles of doina and klezmer, starting off poignantly and winding up joyfully, while Long's Song of the Eight Unruly Tipsy Poets is no less evocative, summoning the Chicago Symphony's descriptive powers to the fullest. To get an idea of Vocussion, imagine human voices imitating a freewheeling drum circle (including the tabla, an instrument given its due in Das's Shristi). It's a playful cross-cultural fusion that, along with a "hidden track" jamboree, closes the album on a good-humored note. What better way to bring home Ma's humane message of celebrating diversity through teamwork? EJ Johnson

All Music Guide

The Silk Road has taken a little detour to Chicago for the latest undertaking by cellist Yo-Yo Ma and his Silk Road Project, which involves collaborations with a wide variety of musicians, not only Asian ones, connected to the Windy City in some way. The triumphs of Ma's forays into world music might be termed logistical ones; he has, over the last decade or so, brought together diverse talents and made it possible for them to collaborate in high-profile, far-flung venues -- no small feat in itself. (It is, as he cheerfully admits in the album's title, "impossible.") Here the grouping is more diverse than ever, involving a Lebanese-American composer, an Iranian one, Chinese and Indian musicians, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the peripatetic Argentine-Israeli-American eclecticist Osvaldo Golijov, and Ma's Silk Road Ensemble itself (his own playing appears only intermittently, like small gemstones). All the musicians joined together for big free concerts in Chicago's splendid new Millennium Park; and the concerts were recorded live for this album. If the collaborations are not deep, they are unprecedented, and they are a tribute to Ma's particular brand of genial, crowd-pleasing energy. Energy is not enough to pull something like this off, however; one thing that makes it work is that for the core of the program Ma selected musicians who had already worked across cultures and seemingly had good intuitive ideas about how to pull off this kind of a spectacle. It is not only Golijov, whose avowedly multicultural works are the sensation of the moment. Rabih Abou-Khalil, born in Lebanon, has worked with Indian, Western classical, and jazz musicians in addition to those from his native Middle East; his opening "Arabian Waltz" is colorful and primes the ear for the simple structures and variegated textures that are to come. The "pure" Chinese "Galloping Horses" is a diversion, not a main element of the program. The proceedings culminate in "Vocussion," containing the virtuoso vocalization of percussion strokes that is characteristic of certain Indian classical forms, here kaleidoscopically spread across several cultures. It's a great crowd-pleaser and another inspired stroke. The Barnes and Noble version of the album includes the previously unreleased bonus track "Empty Mountain, Spirit Rain," a programmatic work with a poignant story by Angel Lam. The problems of cross-cultural understanding may be deeper than Yo-Yo Ma wants to admit, but only a fool would call him part of the problem, and this album is, above all, a lot of fun. James Manheim