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Silk Road Ensemble's Wu Man and Colin Jacobsen set for Santa Fe Pro Musica / Santa Fe New Mexican

Santa Fe New Mexican's Mark Tiarks writes…..The name Morgan Neville may suggest nothing so much as a member of Great Britain’s House of Commons, but he’s actually an Oscar- and Grammy Award-winning documentary filmmaker who was born in Los Angeles. As the name of his Tremolo Productions suggests, music is Neville’s primary focus and one of his Academy Award-nominated films — The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble — screened at the Center for Contemporary Arts on January 23. The timing wasn’t an accident. The celebrated pipa virtuoso Wu Man is one of the featured subjects in the film; she is in town for concerts with Santa Fe Pro Musica on January 25 and 26 with fellow Silk Road Ensemble member and violinist Colin Jacobsen, the local group’s artistic director.
 

Neville’s 20 Feet from Stardom won the 2014 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature as well as a 2015 Grammy Award for Best Music Film. Five more of his films were nominated for Grammys, including The Music of Strangers as well as documentaries on Johnny Cash, Muddy Waters, and the Stax Records label.


Neville’s other subjects include the Beach Boy’s Brian Wilson, the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richard, Steve Martin, Mickey Mouse, and Fred Rogers — the last in 2018’s Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, the highest grossing documentary film of all time.


In addition to Wu, The Music of Strangers spotlights the Syrian clarinetist Kinan Azmeh, who performed an orchestral program with Santa Fe Pro Musica last November; the Iranian kamancheh (spiked fiddle) player Kayhan Kalhor; Galician bagpiper and pianist Cristina Pato; and French/American cellist Ma, who founded Silk Road in 2000.
 

Neville and producer Caitrin Rogers blended performance footage, interviews, and archival film in exploring how artists from a wide range of ethnic traditions can communicate, collaborate, and shape cultural and societal evolution. (The film’s crew credits include no fewer than 14 different translators.)
 

The Los Angeles Times noted that “Neville is as expert at getting the human stories behind the songs as he is in capturing the music,” while The Washington Post said that the film “offers an inspiring look at creative people from very different walks of life who nonetheless communicate beautifully with one another.”
 

The Wall Street Journal said, “Morgan Neville’s documentary is a joyous revelation, a group portrait of superb musicians from all over the world offering music as an emblem of what people can do in these fractious times when they live in concert with one another.” It’s a message that may be more important than ever over the next few years.
 

The documentary is streaming on Tubi, Apple TV, and other services. 


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