“The talk about music being a universal language is a used and abused cliché,” says Kinan Azmeh, the Syrian clarinetist featured in Morgan Neville’s film “The Music of Strangers.” While there are some basic building blocks of music, its sounds, grammar, and syntax—not to mention methods of teaching, learning, and performing—are as various as the cultures of the earth. Instead, perhaps music offers a reminder of roots, a sense of home. The documentary explores the lives of members of the Silk Road Ensemble; it also delves into the story of its founder, the superstar cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who used the intercultural expedition as a way out of the narrowness of the jet set, touring soloist life. Two years ago, director Neville won an Oscar for his film “20 Feet from Stardom.” We met him this week at the Berlin International Film Festival.
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