Ma melds the music of Silk Road strangers

Imagine forming a band by traveling along the Silk Road and recruiting the best local musicians you can find.

Most of the instruments - while centuries or millennia old - have probably never before been juxtaposed in a jam session.

Imagine a Chinese pipa (lute), an Indian tabla (drum), a Persian kamancheh (a bowed instrument), an Arabian oud (lute), a Syrian clarinet, an Armenian double-reed duduk and even a Galician bagpipe from northwestern Spain.