Yo-Yo Mo & The Silkroad Ensemble: Sing Me Home album review - a sheer delight

Yo-Yo Ma’s Silkroad Ensemble have been forging unexpected connections for 16 years.

To innovate presupposes a predilection for risk-taking, and Yo-Yo Ma has never been slow to venture towards the edges. This collection teases out the intricacies of that thing we call home with chutzpah.

The familiar takes on a fresh spectrum of colour, as Martin Hayes' O'Neill's Cavalry March is rendered anew, through the accompaniment of the kamancheh, an Iranian bowed, string instrument and shakuhachi, a Japanese flute.

A Tuareg song, Ichichila sways beneath the balafon of Balla Kouyaté and Toumani Diabaté's kora.

The biggest surprise is Gregory Porter and Lisa Fischer's duet on Hoagy Carmichael's Heart and Soul. Surprises lurk at every hairpin bend. A sheer delight.

silkroadproject.org