Mongolian fiddle, cousin to the cello

Yo-Yo Ma’s instrument of choice is a 300-year-old Stradivarius cello. But you can’t accompany a Mongolian long song on a Strad. For that, you need a morin khuur.

It has a long thin neck, a trapezoidal body, two soft nylon (traditionally, horsehair) strings, no fingerboard and a peg box carved in the shape of a horse head -- horses being the Mongols’ best friend. Similar instruments can be traced to the 14th century, and, says Ma, a morin khuur sounds “intimate,” more like a Baroque cello than a modern steel-stringed model.

Ma first encountered the instrument three years ago in Amsterdam, where he says he fell in love with the sound and fell in with four morin khuur players. “They let me try to play theirs and the first thing I learned was that even though it has two strings as opposed to the cello’s four, it’s not twice as easy to play, it’s twice as hard.”

Still, it was good practice. Since 1998, Ma has been a guiding force behind the ongoing Silk Road Project, which explores traditional and new music from the countries along the fabled Asia to the Mediterranean trade routes -- China, Iran and everything in between. On Friday, Ma and 12-plus musicians in the Silk Road Ensemble bring the sound of the morin khuur and dozens of other unusual instruments to Royce Hall.

It took Ma five months to master his Mongolian fiddle. He says when he first put bow (horsehair, again) to strings -- one thick, one thin and tuned in fourths -- he couldn’t even make a sound. “Eight months later a group of Mongolian musicians I was working with gave me a morin khuur, making it possible to practice.”

The hard part is the lack of a fingerboard. On a cello or a violin, a player pushes a string against the board to create the desired pitch. On a morin khuur, says Ma, “you either have to push down with your fingernail or pull up on the string, making it harder to play fast, shifting notes.”

Don’t expect any cadenzas, then, when Ma demonstrates his prowess as he accompanies singer Khongorzul Ganbaatar from Ulan Bator in “Legend of Herlen,” a piece the Silk Road Project commissioned from contemporary composer Byambasuren Sharav. In long song, says Ma, which was developed as a means of communication in the desert, the singers take huge, deep breaths to sustain loud, extended phrases. The work, true to Silk Road Project’s dedication to East-West musical fusion, also features trombones, piano and percussion.

Just in case you miss hearing the Strad, don’t worry. The ensemble also plans to play a new piece from Iranian composer Kayhan Kalhor that blends a Persian zither, a Japanese bamboo flute and Western strings, including Ma on his main ax.

And for die-hard classicists? There will be an off-the-Silk-Road interlude, in which Ma and pianist Joel Fan perform Debussy’s lush cello sonata.

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Morin khuur, in play

Who: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble

When: Friday, 8 p.m.

Where: Royce Hall, UCLA

Price: $20 to $80

Contact: (310) 825-2101