Yo-Yo Ma

One of the most celebrated cellists to emerge in the modern recording age, Yo-Yo Ma has earned acclaim for both his technical command and his expressive range, whether conveying fragility, melancholy, wit, or intensity. His breakthrough arrived with a 1983 set of Bach’s unaccompanied cello suites, after which his reach extended well beyond concert-hall boundaries through partnerships such as the 1992 collaboration Hush with jazz singer Bobby McFerrin and the 2011 bluegrass project The Goat Rodeo Sessions alongside fiddler Stuart Duncan and mandolinist Chris Thile. Across the classical literature his interpretations have moved from Baroque foundations to music by living composers, and frequent partners have included pianist Emanuel Ax, violinist Isaac Stern, and double bassist Edgar Meyer. Ma established the Silk Road Ensemble to unite performers from many Eurasian traditions, and in 2017 the group’s album Sing Me Home earned him his eighteenth Grammy, his first in the Best World Music Album category.

Born in Paris in 1955 to musical parents, Ma began lessons almost as soon as he could sit at an instrument, sampling piano and every string before choosing the cello. He gave his first public recital at five. When he turned seven the family relocated to New York so he could work with Janos Scholz. Before his tenth birthday he had already played for Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, appeared on television with his sister in a Leonard Bernstein concert, and performed on The Tonight Show. He later studied with Leonard Rose at Juilliard yet left before finishing the program. Witnessing the dedication of the nonagenarian Pablo Casals at the Marlboro Festival prompted him to complete his education at Harvard, from which he graduated in 1976.

After Murray Perahia and Lynn Harrell, Ma became the third artist to receive the Avery Fisher Prize in 1978. The following year he made his debut recording as soloist with Finzi’s Cello Concerto and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. He soon joined CBS Masterworks and issued accounts of Saint-Saëns, Haydn, and Beethoven sonatas (the latter with Ax) before the Bach suites of 1983 established his wider reputation. Subsequent releases included further Beethoven sonatas with Ax, a Schubert quintet with the Cleveland Quartet, Claude Bolling’s Suite for Cello & Jazz Piano Trio, and a collection of Japanese melodies accompanied by bass, percussion, and flute. In 1985 he recorded the Elgar and Walton cello concertos with André Previn and the London Symphony Orchestra. Other 1980s projects featured Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony, Lorin Maazel and the Berlin Philharmonic, and, in 1988, Brahms’s Double Concerto with Stern and Claudio Abbado leading the Chicago Symphony. The year 1989 brought Anything Goes: Stephane Grappelli & Yo-Yo Ma Play (Mostly) Cole Porter.

During the 1990s Ma maintained a steady flow of classical recordings while also reaching broader audiences through crossover releases, notably 1992’s Hush with McFerrin. Issued by Sony, the album entered the upper half of the Billboard 200 and was supported by a joint tour. In 1996 he joined Meyer and violinist Mark O’Connor for the folk-inflected Appalachian Journey, which topped the Billboard classical chart. Soul of the Tango, devoted to Astor Piazzolla, appeared in 1997, the same year Ma served as soloist on Tan Dun’s Symphony 1997 (Heaven, Earth, Mankind) and on John Williams’s score for Seven Years in Tibet. He also contributed to the soundtrack for the documentary series Liberty!, which featured O’Connor, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, and singer-songwriter James Taylor. Returning to Bach in 1998, he recorded Inspired by Bach: The Cello Suites for six short films made with director Atom Egoyan, ice dancers Torvill and Dean, choreographer Mark Morris, and additional collaborators. Simply Baroque with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra followed in 1999 and its sequel a year later. In 2000 he reunited with O’Connor and Meyer for another classical chart-topper, Appalachian Journey, and with Tan Dun for the soundtrack to Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. After founding the Silk Road Ensemble to gather musicians from cultures along the historic Eurasian trade route, he released Silk Road Journeys in 2001, presenting Mongolian love songs, traditional Chinese pieces, and Finnish folk melodies. That year the NEA awarded him the National Medal of the Arts.

Sony Classical issued Yo-Yo Ma Plays the Music of John Williams in 2002, with the composer himself producing and conducting. The same year Silk Road Journeys: When Strangers Meet entered the Billboard 200, and Ma’s cello appeared on Philip Glass’s Naqoyqatsi score. Obrigado Brazil, featuring more than a dozen guests including bossa-nova singer Rosa Passos and guitarists Sergio & Odair Assad, arrived in 2003 and again reached the classical summit. A live version followed in 2004, a year that also brought Silk Road Journeys: Beyond the Horizon, Vivaldi’s Cello, and Yo-Yo Ma Plays Ennio Morricone; the last two entered the Billboard 200. In 2005 he joined Itzhak Perlman on Williams’s Memoirs of a Geisha soundtrack, which likewise charted. Silk Road Ensemble’s New Impossibilities was taped at Chicago’s Symphony Center with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2007, while 2008’s Yo-Yo Ma & Friends: Songs of Joy & Peace included guests such as Dave Brubeck, Renée Fleming, and Diana Krall and became his highest-charting pop album to date, peaking at number twenty on the Billboard 200. After performing at Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration, he climbed two places higher with 2011’s The Goat Rodeo Sessions, recorded with Meyer, Duncan, and Thile, and the album also marked his first appearance on the Bluegrass Albums chart. That year he received a Kennedy Center Honor, the Glenn Gould Prize, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

A Playlist Without Borders appeared with the Silk Road Ensemble in 2013. Songs from the Arc of Life, issued in 2015, offered familiar classics such as Schubert’s (and Bach-Gounod’s) Ave Maria and Brahms’s Lullaby and topped the classical chart, as did Sing Me Home the following year. Bach: Trios, a 2017 collection of keyboard works arranged for Ma, Meyer, and Thile, soon became another classical number-one. Also in 2017 the Silk Road Ensemble supplied music for Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s documentary series The Vietnam War, while Ma collaborated with the chamber orchestra the Knights on Azul, which juxtaposed Osvaldo Golijov’s concerto with works by Dvořák, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Sufjan Stevens. Six Evolutions: Bach Cello Suites, intended as his final studio recording of the suites, was released in 2019. He rejoined Thile, Meyer, and Duncan for Not Our First Goat Rodeo in 2020. During pandemic lockdowns Ma and Ax gave impromptu recitals for essential workers. When live performances resumed in 2021 the pair joined violinist Leonidas Kavakos at Tanglewood for a trio arrangement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2. Drawing on that concert, the three musicians launched the Beethoven for Three recording series in 2022.