The con­cert opens on an un­ex­pec­ted note: the sound of the gaita hung in the air as Cristina Pato wound her way down through the crowd to the con­cert hall to join her fel­low mu­si­cians for the open­ing Silk Road Suite. The pro­gram fea­tured mu­sic from Per­sia, China, Galicia, Si­cily, In­dia, and the Roma people, and many pieces in­spired by glob­al cross-cur­rents, in­clud­ing a "ghost trio" by Uzbek com­poser Dmitri Yan­ov-Yan­ovsky, com­posed in hon­or of the friend­ship between cel­list Yo-Yo Ma and Ir­a­ni­an kamancheh vir­tu­oso Kay­han Kal­hor.

A series of high-en­ergy en­cores in­cluded an im­pro­vised face-off between Wu Tong on sheng and Sandeep Das on ca­jon (a Per­uvi­an box-shaped per­cus­sion in­stru­ment). With cam­er­as rolling, the group was per­haps a little more the­at­ric­al than usu­al on­stage. The Berkshire Eagle called the per­form­ance "ram­bunc­tious, ath­let­ic and just about man­ic. ... Teem­ing vir­tu­os­ity marked each per­for-mance."

Silk Road En­semble Artists
Jef­frey Beech­er, bass
Nich­olas Cords, vi­ola
Sandeep Das, tabla
Johnny Gan­dels­man, vi­ol­in
Joseph Gram­ley, per­cus­sion
Colin Jac­ob­sen, vi­ol­in
Eric Jac­ob­sen, cello
Kay­han Kal­hor, kamancheh
Dong-Won Kim, jang-go and vo­cals
Yo-Yo Ma, cello
Cristina Pato, gaita
Shane Sha­na­han, per­cus­sion
Mark Suter, per­cus­sion
Kojiro Umeza­ki, shak­uha­chi
Wu Man, pipa
Wu Tong, sheng

The con­cert film comes to­geth­er with a 60-minute-long doc­u­ment­ary by award-win­ning dir­ect­or Mor­gan Neville.