Yo-Yo Ma

Yo-Yo Ma (born October 7, 1955, Paris, France) French-born American cellist known for his extraordinary technique and rich tone. His frequent collaborations with musicians and artists from other genres, cultures, and media reinvigorated classical music and expanded its audience.

Ma was born to Chinese parents. A child prodigy, at age five he gave his first public recital, and he later moved to New York City with his family and made his Carnegie Hall debut at age nine. He studied at the Juilliard School under Leonard Rose and János Scholz before graduating from Harvard University (1977) with a degree in humanities. He was the recipient of the Avery Fisher Prize in 1978, and in 1991 Harvard awarded him an honorary doctorate in music.

Ma became celebrated for performances and recordings of the standard cello repertoire and for receiving an unusually large number of commissions from contemporary composers. He frequently performed as part of a trio with pianist Emanuel Ax and violinist Young-Uck Kim and as part of a quartet with Ax and violinists Isaac Stern and Jaime Laredo. Ma and Ax received high acclaim for their recordings of the sonatas of Ludwig van Beethoven (1985) and Johannes Brahms (1991). Of special interest to Ma were the six suites for unaccompanied cello by Johann Sebastian Bach, challenging masterpieces that were some of the first music he learned to play as a young boy. He recorded the suites in 1983 and again in 1998. Accompanying the latter release was a series of six films that interpreted Bach’s suites; Ma collaborated on the project with artists from such varied disciplines as choreography, landscape architecture, ice skating, film directing, and Kabuki theatre. Ma recorded the suites once more in 2018 and began a tour around the world. Each stop included what Ma termed a “day of action,” in which he met with local activists, artists, community leaders, and students to consider the impact of culture. In 2020 he played the six suites in a live broadcast to honour those who had died from COVID-19. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he performed on social media and invited others to join via #SongsOfComfort, which ultimately led to the recording Songs of Comfort and Hope (2020).

In addition to his conventional repertoire, Ma also recorded with improvisational singer Bobby McFerrin on Hush (1992) and with bluegrass musicians on Appalachia Waltz (1996) and Appalachian Journey (2000). On Soul of the Tango (1997), he recorded the tangos of Astor Piazzolla. He also played on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), the sound track recording for the movie of the same name, and in 2003 collaborated with Latin American musicians on Obrigado Brazil. Another collaborative effort recorded with progressive bluegrass musicians produced the critically acclaimed The Goat Rodeo Sessions in 2011. The group released their second album, Not Our First Goat Rodeo, in 2020.

In 1998 Ma founded the Silk Road Project, an arts organization that initially focused on exploring the cultural traditions along the Silk Road, an ancient trading route that linked China with the West. Soon thereafter he established the Silk Road Ensemble, and the group’s first recording, Silk Road Journeys: When Strangers Meet, was released in 2002. The project’s scope subsequently expanded, using the Silk Road as a metaphor for connecting artistic endeavours worldwide and across cultures. A number of additional recordings by the ensemble followed, including New Impossibilities (2007), with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Off the Map (2009), a collection of new pieces by an internationally diverse group of composers; and Sing Me Home (2016).

A prolific musician, Ma recorded several dozen albums and received more than 15 Grammy Awards. He was also the first-ever creative consultant for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (2010–19). Ma was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2010), a Kennedy Center Honor (2011), and the Japan Art Association’s Praemium Imperiale (2021) for music.