He’ll be performing at the 2024 BBC Proms with Emmanuel Ax and Leonidas Kavakos. But who is cellist Yo-Yo Ma?
Who is Yo-Yo Ma?
Yo-Yo Ma is an American cellist of Chinese descent. A child prodigy, he played for John F Kennedy when he was just seven years old, and studied at the Juilliard School and Harvard University.
A world-renowned performer, he has made more than 90 recordings, encompassing Western classical music, American bluegrass, traditional Chinese melodies, Argentine tango and Brazilian music. He has also won 19 Grammy Awards. In 1998, he founded the Silk Road Project to promote collaboration between musicians from all over the world.
Ma is particularly associated with the music of JS Bach. But he has also appeared on film soundtracks, such as Tan Dun’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and John Williams’s Seven Years In Tibet.
He was appointed a United Nations peace ambassador in 2006, and appeared at the inauguration of US president Barack Obama in 2009. He has played for eight presidents throughout his career.
When and where was Yo-Yo Ma born?
Yo-Yo Ma was born in Paris in 1955 to Chinese parents. His mother was a singer and his father was a violinist, composer and professor of music. Ma’s parent’s migrated from the Republic of China to France during the Chinese Civil War. The family moved to New York in the US when Ma was seven.
When did he first learn to play the cello?
Yo-Yo Ma began the playing the cello at four years old. At the age of seven, he performed for US presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John F Kennedy. Here is that performance, introduced by a certain Leonard Bernstein:
After a brief spell at the Juilliard School, studying with acclaimed cellist Leonard Rose, he graduated from Harvard in 1976. By that time, he already had a successful career as a concert soloist.
What is Yo-Yo Ma most famous for?
Ma has a particular association with Bach’s Solo Cello Suites, which he has recorded three times. In 2018 he launched ‘The Bach Project’, a two-year tour that involved playing JS Bach’s Six Suites in 36 famous locations around the world.
‘I have been playing the Suites for Solo Cello by JS Bach for 55 years,’ he told BBC Music Magazine in 2015. ‘I recall the first time I sat down to the Prelude from Suite No. 1, aged four, learning two bars a day, day by day, taking it all in. In a month I would get through one movement; a rich, worthwhile pursuit for a child.
‘Bach is central to an understanding of music, an all-encompassing intelligence. In that Prelude you find endless permutations of regularity and irregularity, an infinite variety, the basic building blocks of music – and of our digital world – and Bach’s observation of nature through the prism of human experience.’
What is Ma’s Silk Road Project?
Yo-Yo Ma founded the Silk Road Project (now called Silkroad) to promote collaboration and exchange among musicians from across the globe in 1998. The project was named after the route across Asia, which for more than 2,000 years was used for trade between Europe and China. Through this, Ma has embraced musical traditions from the Arab world to Africa, from central Asia to China and India.
‘Silkroad was one of these moments in which I followed my curiosity, sought answers to questions that had been with me since I was very young,’ he told us in 2020. ‘My family’s experiences of immigration – my parents emigrating from China to France, and our journey from Paris to New York – taught me that our shared humanity is a much stronger force than boundaries of culture or nation or discipline. I’m more human for having been part of Silkroad.’
What are Yo-Yo Ma’s best recordings?
Yo-Yo Ma has released more than 90 recordings – his first release was Finzi’s Cello Concerto with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Vernon Handley in 1979. In October 2018, Yo-Yo Ma spoke to BBC Music Magazine about his favourite recording…
Shostakovich
Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor
Isaac Stern (violin), Yo-Yo Ma (cello), Emanuel Ax (piano)
Sony MK44664 (1988)
‘Isaac Stern introduced me to Leonard Rose when I was nine years old, and he became my main cello teacher. I grew up listening to them and to the Stern Rose Istomin Trio. I knew Isaac as this really scary figure, when I was growing up; he had glasses on the top of his head and he’d stare at you – I would cower or run away! Of course, later on I knew him and he wanted to play chamber music with me.
‘Occasionally Isaac and I would play trios, with Emanuel Ax, and it was one concert that we played in Osaka, Japan, that I remember. It featured Shostakovich’s Piano Trio. No. 2, which we did a recording of. The last movement of that trio is based on Jewish folk themes, and it builds and builds and builds, like the whole world is on fire. It’s a very powerful piece of music.’
Here is Yo-Yo Ma in another great Shostakovich work, the First Cello Concerto:
Who are Yo-Yo Ma’s regular musical partners?
A much sought-after chamber music collaborator, Yo-Yo Ma has performed with pianist Kathryn Stott since 1985. He also plays regularly with pianist Emanuel Ax and violinist Leonidas Kavakos.
Has Ma played at the Proms before?
Yo-Yo Ma joins pianist Emanuel Ax and violinist Leonidas Kavakos to perform Beethoven piano trios at the BBC Proms on 31 August 2024 at London’s Royal Albert Hall.
He has appeared many times at the Proms over the years: his first performance was in 1978, playing Beethoven’s ‘Triple’ Concerto with pianist Yefim Bronfman and violinist Shlomo Mintz. Most recently he appeared in 2015, performing Bach’s complete Cello Suites in a single Late Night Prom.
What cello does Yo-Yo Ma play?
Ma’s primary performance instrument is the ‘Davidov’ cello, made in 1712 by Antonio Stradivari. Its previous owners include Karl Davydov and Jacqueline du Pré.