TRAVELING THE SILK ROAD JOURNEY ACROSS ASIA WITH YO-YO MA AND HIS ENSEMBLE.

Byline: David Mermelstein Correspondent

Though classical music as we've known it is unlikely to disappear, almost no one these days expects its traditionally starchy presentation to remain unchanged. The era of the big symphony orchestra, with musicians dressed identically in white tie, may not be over, but its days of hegemony are numbered.

Indeed, transition is already occurring. And one example of that shift can be found in the music making of the Silk Road Ensemble, a fluid group of artists that unites Western classical players - most famously cellist Yo-Yo Ma - with instrumentalists from other, mostly Asian, classical traditions. The ensemble, which makes its Los Angeles debut at the Hollywood Bowl tonight, is the most visible manifestation of a larger effort called the Silk Road Project, which Ma founded in 1998 to examine and encourage points of tangency among various musical traditions.

The name Silk Road refers to the celebrated ancient trade route that united East and West, and the ensemble takes its players from various regions - everywhere from the American heartland and Europe to China, Azerbaijan, Israel, Iran and India.

``Very simply, the last five years have marked the sharpest learning curve and been the scariest of my life,'' said Ma by telephone from Cambridge, Mass., referring to his involvement with Silk Road. ``It's been about meeting unbelievably great musicians, whose music I may have known very little about, and then realizing that we really want to work together to accomplish something.''

For the Bowl concert, 18 other musicians, the same group that just returned from a 10-day stint at the World Exposition in Japan, will join Ma, the ensemble's artistic director. The program features typical Silk Road fare, a combination of traditional material, new compositions and improvisations, all of it deeply rooted in the authentic sounds of various cultures.

Among the performers, the best-known, besides Ma, is pipa player Wu Man, a native of China and, as she puts it, ``a senior member'' of the ensemble, having been invited by Ma to participate in the project early on. She says things have evolved considerably since then.

``In the beginning, it was just an idea,'' recalled Wu, who now lives near San Diego. ``But five years later, it's amazing to see everything make sense. There were a lot of questions about authenticity vs. Western music back then. But to me, as a world musician, what we do really works. And I've found a new way to help my instrument survive. Silk Road lets audiences know about other types of music and about how the forms intersect. It's all related. It doesn't matter whether the origins are East or West.''

Venerated in China, Wu's instrument - a pear-shaped, lute-like instrument with four strings that's plucked like a guitar - was little known in this country before Silk Road. But by touring and recording with the group, Wu has brought attention to the pipa, so much so that she now has a viable career as a soloist in America.

Along with the pipa, the Silk Road Ensemble's current tour features two other Chinese instruments, the sanxian (a long-necked lute) and sheng (a mouth organ), and three from Persia, the santur (a hammer dulcimer), ney (an end-blown flute) and kamancheh (a spike fiddle).

But if Silk Road concerts have brought exotic sounds to audiences more familiar with Western classical music, they have also exposed listeners to the talents of several young musicians playing familiar instruments - albeit not in familiar ways. At the Bowl, the young and gifted include several string players, including violinists Jonathan Gandelsman and Colin Jacobsen, violists Nicholas Cords and Max Mandel, cellist Mike Block and double-bassist DaXun Zhang.

The 23-year-old Zhang could arguably be a poster boy for Silk Road, as he embodies not just the project's hopes, but also its founding principles. Born into a family of Chinese bassists - his father, uncle and four cousins all play the instrument - he was initially educated by his father and then attended Beijing's Central Conservatory. He continued his studies in America, most recently at Indiana University. And in September, he'll begin teaching at Northwestern University.

Zhang's association with Silk Road happened almost by chance, after Ma heard him play when both were in Orange County. Impressed, the cellist suggested Zhang apply to a Silk Road workshop taking place on the East Coast last fall. That, in turn, led to Zhang's being invited to join the ensemble and play on its most recent album, ``Silk Road Journeys: Beyond the Horizon,'' the group's second for Sony Classical.

Ironically, it took a project based in the United States to return Zhang to his roots. ``I have always been raised as a classical musician,'' he said earlier this week, fresh from Japan. ``I never could improvise. But with Silk Road, there are such possibilities. We've even learned some scales that sound out-of-tune to Western ears. I think for a musician it's very important to know those things.''

Ma shares his protege's feelings, a sort of exhilarating befuddlement that gradually gives way to empowerment. ``We Western-trained musicians have practiced for years where we think a note should be,'' he says, illustrating the point. ``But then you have to unlearn it, to make it out-of-tune. But that means I don't understand it, because it isn't out-of-tune, using, for example, one of the five major Persian modes. You have to learn to love it and not think of it as out-of-tune.''

That fundamental unlearning and relearning appeals to Ma. ``Almost everything I'm doing today had its beginning in the first 20 years of my life,'' he says. ``I'm still trying to work out what I was exposed to then. That's the definition of a liberal education. You keep making those connections, and you hope it starts to make sense.''

YO-YO MA AND THE SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE

What: The great cellist and 18 other musicians from around the world demonstrate the links between Western and Eastern musical forms in various combinations.

Where: Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave., Hollywood.

When: 7 tonight.

Tickets: $4 to $92, available at the Hollywood Bowl box office; Ticketmaster, [phone]; or hollywoodbowl.com.

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Cellist Yo-Yo Ma, left, and his Silk Road Ensemble play music from East and West tonight at the Hollywood Bowl. This will be the ensemble's L.A. debut.