He is an American cellist, virtuosos, orchestral composer and winner of multiple Grammy Awards.
He is one of the most revered cellists of the modern age.
Yo-Yo Ma was born in Paris to Chinese parents and had a musical upbringing. His mother, Marina Lu, was a singer, and his father, Hiao-Tsiun Ma, was a violinist and professor of music.
His family moved to New York when he was five years old.
Ma began studying violin, and later viola, before finding his true calling by taking up the cello in 1960 at age four.
The child prodigy began performing before audiences at age five, and performed for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Dwight D. Eisenhower when he was seven.
At age eight, he appeared on American television with his sister, Yeou-Cheng Ma, in a concert conducted by Leonard Bernstein.
By fifteen years of age, Ma had graduated from Trinity School in New York and appeared as a soloist with the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra in a performance of the Tchaikovsky: Rococo Variations.
Ma studied at the Juilliard School of Music with Leonard Rose and briefly attended Columbia University before ultimately enrolling at Harvard University. Ma received his bachelor's degree from Harvard in 1976. In 1991, he received an honorary doctorate from Harvard.
Prior to entering Harvard, Ma played in the Marlboro Festival Orchestra under the direction of nonagenarian cellist and conductor Pablo Casals. Ma would ultimately spend four summers at the Marlboro Music Festival after meeting and falling in love with Mount Holyoke College sophomore and festival administrator Jill Hornor his first summer there in 1972.
His recordings and performances of the Johann Sebastian Bach: Cello Suites recorded in 1983 and again in 1994–1997 are particularly acclaimed.
He has also played a good deal of chamber music, often with the pianist Emanuel Ax, with whom he has a close friendship back from their days together at the Juilliard School of Music in New York.
Ma currently plays with his own Silk Road Ensemble, which has the goal of bringing together musicians from diverse countries all of which are historically linked via the Silk Road.
Ma records on the Sony Classical label.
Ma has a son Nicholas, born 1983 and a daughter, Emily, born 1985.
PERSONAL QUOTES AND CURIOSITIES
On music: “I think of a piece of music as something that comes alive when it is being performed, and I feel that my role in the transmission of music is to be its best advocate at that moment."
Named People Magazine's Sexiest Classical Musician 2001
Ma's primary performance instrument is the cello nicknamed Petunia, built by Domenico Montagnana in 1733. It was named this by a little girl, after she asked if it had a name and Ma replied "No."
His Domenico Montagnana cello, more than 270 years old and valued at US$2.5 million, was lost in the fall of 1999 when Ma accidentally left the instrument in a taxicab in New York City. It was later recovered undamaged.
Another of Ma's cellos, the Davidov Stradivarius, was previously owned by Jacqueline du Pré who passed it to him upon her death, and owned by the Vuitton Foundation. Though Du Pré previously voiced her frustration with the "unpredictability" of this cello, Ma attributed the comment to du Pré's impassioned style of playing, adding that the Stradivarius cello must be "coaxed" by the player. It was until recently set up in a Baroque manner, since Ma exclusively played Baroque music on it.
He also owns a cello made of carbon fiber by the Luis and Clark Company of Boston.
He was featured on the John Williams’ soundtrack of Seven Years in Tibet, the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and on Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. He collaborated with Jon Williams again on the original score for the film Memoirs of a Geisha.
Yo-Yo Ma has also worked with world-renowned Italian composer Ennio Morricone and has recorded Morricone’s compositions of the Dollars Trilogy including: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
He also has over 75 albums, 15 of which are Grammy Award winners. Ma is a recipient of the International Center in New York’s Award of Excellence.
Ma was named Peace Ambassador by United Nations then Secretary-General Kofi Annan in January 2006.
On November 3, 2009, President Obama appointed Ma to serve on the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities.
Ma has been referred as “omnivorous” by critics, and possesses a more eclectic repertoire than is typical for classical musicians. A sampling of his versatility in addition to numerous recordings of the standard classical repertoire would include his recordings of Baroque pieces using period instruments; American Bluegrass; traditional Chinese melodies; tangos of Argentinean composer Astor Piazzolla; an eclectic and unusual collaboration with Bobby McFerrin (where Ma admitted to being terrified of the improvisation McFerrin pushed him toward); as well as the music of modern minimalist Philip Glass in such works as the 2002 Naqoyqatsi.
He is known for his smooth, rich tone as well as his considerable virtuosity, including a cello recording of Niccolò Paganini’s 24th Caprice for solo violin, Zoltán Kodaly’s cello sonata and other demanding works.
Ma performed a duet with Condoleezza Rice at the presentation of the 2001 National Medal od Arts and National Humanities Medal Awards.
Ma was the first performer on September 11, 2002, at the site of World Trade Center, while the first of the names of the dead were read in remembrance on the first anniversary of the attack on the WTC. He played the Sarabande form Bach’s Suite in C Minor.
He performed a special arrangement of Sting’s “Fragile” with Sting and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir during the opening ceremonies of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah.
He performed John Williams’ Air and Simple Gifts at the inauguration ceremony for Barack Obama on January 20, 2009, along with Ithank Perlman (violin), Gabriela Montero (piano) and Anthony McGill (clarinet). While the quartet did play live, the music played simultaneously over speakers and on television was recording two days prior due to concerns over the cold weather damaging the instruments. Ma was quoted as saying: “A broken string was not an option. It was wicked cold”.
On October 3, 2009, ma appeared alongside Canadian Prime Minister Stephan Harper at the National Arts Centre gala in Ottawa. Harper, a noted Beatles fan, played the piano and sang a rendition of With A Little Help from My Friends while Ma accompanied him on his cello.
On August 29, 2009, Ma preformed at the funeral mass for Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Pieces he performed included the Sarabande movement from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 6 and Franck’s Panis Angelicus with Placido Domingo.
Ma has appeared in an episode of the animated children’s television series Arthur (though D.W. kept calling him “Yo Ma-Ma”), as well as on The West Wing (episode Noel, in which he performed the prelude to the Bach Cello Suite No.1 at a Christmas dinner at the While House), Sesame Street and Mister Roger’s Neighborhood. In the Simpsons episode “Missionary: Impossible”, Ma runs after Homer Simpson along with many other frequent guests of PBS.
He also starred in the visual accompaniment to his recordings of Bach’s Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello.
Ma has also been seen with Apple Inc. and former Pixar CEO Steve Jobs. Ma is often invited to press events for Jobs’ companies and has appeared in a commercial for the Macintosh computer.
Ma was a guest on the Not My Job segment of Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! on April 7, 2007, where he won for listener Thad Moore.
On October 27, 2008, Ma appeared as a guest and performer on The Colbert Report.
According to research done by Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. of Harvard University in 2oo1 for the PBS series Faces of America, in which Ma made an appearance, his relatives had hidden the family genealogy in his home in China to save it from destruction. Ma’s paternal ancestry can be traced back eighteen generations to the year 1217. This genealogy had been compiled in the 18th century by an ancestor, tracing everyone with the surname Ma, through the paternal line, back to one common ancestor in the 3rd century BC. Ma’s generation name, Yo, had been decided by his fourth great grand-uncle, Ma Ji Cang, in 1755.
