Silkroad: Train Station Trios

Edinburgh born harpist and composer Maeve Gilchrist has been credited as an innovator on her native instrument and taken the Celtic (lever) harp to new levels of performance and visibility. Currently based in Kingston,  NY, Maeve tours internationally as a solo artist and composer as well as being a member of the grammy-nominated Silkroad ensemble, Arooj Aftab’s Grammy winning Vulture Prince Ensemble and as part of the multi-disciplinary quartet Edges of Light. She has performed and recorded with such luminaries as Yo-Yo Ma, Frankie Gavin, Esperanza Spalding, Bruce Molsky, Ambrose Akinmusire and Solas. As a composer, Maeve straddles the worlds of folk and classical with pieces including her original concerto for symphony orchestra and harp (a co-commission with Luke Benton), a three-movement Samuel Beckett-inspired piece for harp, string quartet and sound samples which was premiered at the Edinburgh International Harp Festival in the spring of 2018 and a number of other pieces for harp ensembles and strings. She is a regular visiting artist at the Berklee College of Music and has had a number of  instructional books published by Hal Leonard and 80 days publishing. Maeve has released a number of albums to her name on the Adventure Music Record Label as well as being a featured soloist on the  Dreamworks blockbuster movie soundtrack, How to tame your dragon: The hidden world.  Her most recent album, The Harpweaver, has garnered international acclaim including a five-star review from the Irish Times who described it as “buoyant, sprightly and utterly beguiling….a snapshot of a musician at the top of her game”. Maeve is the co-music director of the WGBH holiday show, a Christmas Celtic sojourn and the co-artistic director of the brand new Rockport Celtic Music festival; an innovative new festival focused on cross-curation and the outer-fringes of Celtic Music.

Acclaimed composer and instrumentalist Kaoru Watanabe's melodic, authentic and engaging music focuses on points of connection: the joints between Western jazz and Japanese theater and folk traditions and political action, the ancient and the all-too-contemporary. Born into a musical family, Watanabe began his training at a young age, eventually graduating from the Manhattan School of Music, then devoting a decade overseas performing with and ultimately leading the world-renowned Taiko drum performance group Kodo. His ten years in Japan profoundly influenced Watanabe's practice. His signature skill of infusing Japanese culture to disparate styles has made him a much-in-demand collaborator, having worked with Wes Anderson, Yo-Yo Ma, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Laurie Anderson, Jason, and Alicia Hall Moran, Bando Tamasaburo, Eva Yerbabuena, and Zakir Hussain, among many others. Whether writing for solo performances, interdisciplinary ensembles, film, or symphony orchestras, he regularly explores social justice, history, and heritage issues.

Hailed as a “virtuoso, intensely soulful" by the New York Times and "spellbinding" by the New Yorker. Syrian-born, Brooklyn-based genre-bending composer and clarinetist Kinan Azmeh has been touring the globe with great acclaim as a soloist, composer and improviser. He has collaborated with Yo-Yo Ma, Daniel Barenboim, John McLaughlin, Aynur and Djivan Gasparian, among others. He leads his own bands Hewar and the Kinan Azmeh CityBand. His 2019 orchestral album Uneven Sky with the Deutsches Symphony Orchestra Berlin has won Germany’s OpusKlassik Award. Recent commissions include works for the Seattle Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Brooklyn Rider, Aizuri Quartet and Cello Octet Amsterdam. He is a graduate of The Juilliard School, the Damascus High Institute of Music, and Damascus University’s School of Electrical Engineering, Kinan holds a doctorate in music from the City University of New York. He is currently working on his first opera, Songs For Days To Come which will be premiered in June 2022 at The Osnabruck Theater, Germany.