Cellist Yo-Yo Ma finds meaning
in cross-cultural conversations

By John Mark Rafacz

It’s particularly fitting that Yo-Yo Ma performed at Barack Obama’s inauguration, says pianist Emanuel Ax, because the President and the cellist, in their eagerness to transcend boundaries and seek common ground, are a lot alike.

“I kept saying during the election that Barack Obama is the Yo-Yo Ma of [politics],” Ax says.

If anyone knows Ma it is Ax, who has performed countless times with the cellist since the two met almost four decades ago.

“Manny is such an incredibly generous and loyal friend. I can’t tell you what this friendship with him means. I think I first met him when I was 15, so this is, what, 38 years later,” says Ma, speaking by phone from an island in the Caribbean. “We’ve shared all of these not only playing adventures but friendship adventures: family and children and becoming parents. All of the usual. I think our friendship has just really deepened over the years.”

Ax and Ma meld talents with violinist Itzhak Perlman in concert as a piano trio at 7:30 p.m. Monday, March 30, in Eisenhower Auditorium. The evening features a program of music by German composer Felix Mendelssohn.

“Mendelssohn was one of the people that I look up to … . Not only did he have this incredible talent, but he was also incredibly generous [to other musicians],” Ma says. “He’s someone that I think we all look up to as a fabulous role model.”

Ma, born in France to Chinese parents who were both musicians, has recorded dozens of albums of traditional classical repertoire, but he is perhaps most appreciated for his musical journeys that cross cultures and genres. He has collaborated with an amazing variety of artists, including Edgar Meyer, Mark O’Connor, the Silk Road Ensemble, and Ennio Morricone. 

“I never really know what I’m going to do next. I know there are a lot of things I think about. A lot of things are in my mind for years,” he muses. “But actually, as in so many things in life, I think timing is a lot of it. … So in a lot of ways, and I can’t quite explain it, a lot is also chance. I may have an idea, but it’s not quite good or right or whatever, and then sometimes I would just meet somebody, and it all clicks.”

A lot of his collaborations hinge on what he likes to call “gestation time.” Sometimes, he says, it takes years for an idea to come to fruition.

“I certainly think it’s a very, very huge world, and I guess fortunately, or unfortunately, the longer I live I realize there’s so much more that I don’t know with each passing year. I know how much more I don’t know,” he says. “So I try to look at things with an open mind.”

Songs of Joy and Peace, a CD released in October 2008, is the most recent example of Ma’s eclectic collaborations. The album features Ma performing with Diana Krall, Dave Brubeck, James Taylor, Chris Thile, Alison Krauss, Chris Botti, Natalie MacMaster, Renée Fleming, Joshua Redman, Paquito D’Rivera, and others.

“I literally could not believe that all these people said ‘yes,’ wanted to do it, and showed up being so generous with their art forms, and allowing me in, and offering the best of themselves,” he says.

Ma’s popular and critically acclaimed recordings are doorways into classical repertoire for people who might not otherwise listen.

“I feel deeply committed to the tradition I know best, and I was schooled in, but I also feel that’s part of a world tradition. It’s one of the best things people have invented,” he says. “And then I find that other people feel that way about their traditions, and I say, ‘Well, okay, show me what you know. Show me what you love, so I can love it, too.’”

Ma, who began learning the cello at age 4, solidified his status as a classical music superstar when he won the Avery Fisher Prize in 1978.

As a young child, he had studied the violin and viola before making the switch for good to cello. When he was 7 his family moved to New York City so he could further his musical education. At 8 he appeared in a concert conducted by Leonard Bernstein that aired on the TV show The American Pageant of the Arts. He studied at The Juilliard School, but left, disillusioned, without earning a degree. He later got at Harvard a liberal arts education that he says changed his way of seeing the world.

His concert with the trio is his first appearance at Penn State since he performed as soloist with the German Youth Orchestra in 1991.

The top tier of the classical music world includes only a select few, so Ma’s endeavors have intersected many times with his trio mates.

“Itzhak, Manny, and I have played … chamber music together for fun. [Itzhak would] show up in the Berkshires in western Mass., and he might say, ‘Hey, let’s read something together,’” Ma says. “I know Manny and I played the Beethoven Triple with [Perlman] in Washington, D.C., with the National Symphony a couple years ago. And I’ve done stuff with Itzhak with his Perlman Music Program. … Itzhak and I have both recorded the Brahms Double and the Beethoven Triple with Daniel Barenboim and the Berlin Philharmonic.”

Perlman and Ma’s most famous pairing, of course, is their performance, along with clarinetist Anthony McGill and pianist Gabriela Montero, of John Williams’ Air and Simple Gifts at the January inauguration.

“It was such an extraordinary honor to be asked,” Ma says.

“[Williams] poured his heart and soul into this four-and-a-half minute piece. I think we all wanted to acknowledge the specialness of the moment,” Ma says. “… We knew Mr. Obama liked [Aaron] Copland, and he liked [Abraham] Lincoln. … John was trying to give a sense of both the time from Lincoln to Obama but also the feeling to get it right to the moment of the swearing in. So Itzhak and I, and Anthony and Gabriela, we worked really hard to get it just right for John, as well as for the moment.”

Artistic Viewpoints, an informal moderated discussion featuring violinist James Lyon, professor of music at Penn State, is offered in Eisenhower Auditorium one hour before the performance and is free for ticket holders. Artistic Viewpoints regularly fills to capacity. Seating is available on a first-arrival basis.

TIAA-CREF has joined with the Center for the Performing Arts as the exclusive corporate partner in support of the debut performance by the Ax-Pearlman-Ma trio.

 

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma talks with PreViews Editor John Mark Rafacz about his boundary-breaking collaborations across genres and his four-decade friendship with pianist Emanuel Ax. The cellist also looks back on his performance with violinist Itzhak Perlman at President Barack Obama’s inauguration and discusses his admiration for composer Felix Mendelssohn. An excerpt of Ma’s recording of J. S. Bach’s Prelude from Suite No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007, from the CD The Essential Yo-Yo Ma, enhances the podcast. The music is used with permission of Song BMG Music Entertainment © 2005.