Silkroad Ensemble To Premiere Osvaldo Golijov’s “Falling Out of Time”

The world premiere of Osvaldo Golijov’s Falling Out of Time, written for the Silkroad Ensemble, will take place on October 31 at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA. The premiere was named one of the 13 best classical concerts to see this fall by the Los Angeles Times. The “vibrant and virtuosic” (Wall St. Journal) Ensemble will then perform the work in Germantown, TN, Vienna VA, and Blacksburg VA.

Three years ago, Osvaldo Golijov sat down on a park bench in Tel Aviv to read David Grossman’s Falling Out of Time. Part play, part poem, part fable, the book narrates a journey “out of time” as parents grieve the death of their child, a quest to comprehend a loss with no name.

Osvaldo Golijov’s exquisite and nuanced interpretation of the story portrays a musical, mythical walk that traverses vast and varied emotional landscapes to finally arrive at a place where breathing is again possible. Drawing on David’s powerful text, Osvaldo has conceived this song cycle for 13 artists of the Silkroad Ensemble, the collective whose delicacy of musical expression he describes as like “a harp of a thousand hairs.” The piece is scored for three voices, electronics, string quintet, kemanche, percussion, pipa, sheng, and trumpet.

Workshops for Falling Out of Time began in fall 2017 as part of Silkroad’s multi-year residency at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA. Subsequent residencies have included work-in-progress readings and workshops that explore the role that arts play in bringing communities together.

View the tour dates, watch a video about the workshop, and learn more about the work on the Silkroad Ensemble’s website.