The Digital Silk Road

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma is back for a sixth album with the Silk Road Ensemble. "Sing me Home" is the companion album for a new documentary film called The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble. The album is a musical exploration of the notion of "home", from the diverse perspectives of the members of the Silk Road Ensemble. With a mix of traditional tunes and original songs we're taken on a tour of homes around the world from the Balkans to China, India, Iran, Ireland, Japan, Mali, Syria, and the United States.

Founded by Yo-Yo Ma during the Project’s second year, the Silk Road Ensemble has featured more than 60 members from 24 countries. Hailed as “one of the 21st century’s great ensembles” by the Vancouver Sun and described as “a kind of roving musical laboratory without walls” by the Boston Globe, the genre-defying Ensemble is a broad collective of musicians who honor the value of each member and the flexibility and creativity of the group. The newest chapter comes with the Sony Masterworks release of "A Playlist Without Borders" from the Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma. This is the groundbreaking group’s fifth recording and first since 2009’s Grammy-nominated Off the Map.

In a world where unrest and war make constant headlines, human migration is an issue that touches peoples everywhere. On its latest release, The Silk Road, the Oslo-based wind chamber ensemble Oslo Kammerakademi presents a beautiful programme inspired by the subject of cultural migration - what happens when cultures meet, for example because of the movement of populations, trade, politics or conflict.

A decade of Armenian disco, funk, and soul, compiled by Darone Sassounian who spent three years tracking down the records and artists; fulfilling a calling to lift his people’s voice, a people that have always faced the threat of erasure. The music was made a generation after the Armenian Genocide, a testament to perseverance. The seven tracks featured are incredibly inventive and unique in their interpretations of these Western seventies sounds.

Digital currencies are a fairly new phenomenon brought about by the spectacular rise of the internet. While Bitcoin is the most famous, there are numerous other digital currencies—from Amazon Coin to Zetacoin. Beyond Bitcoin explores the economic forces underlying the design of their features and their potential. Halaburda and Sarvary argue that digital currencies are best understood by considering the economic incentives driving their creators and users. The authors present a framework that will allow systemic analysis of this dynamic environment and support further discussion of the design of digital currencies' features and the competition in the market.