INSIDE THE OMNIVOROUS MIND OF YO-YO MA                 

by Christopher M. Wright    

September 2001

© 2001 Christopher M. Wright     
 All Rights Reserved

FIND YO-YO MA'S CD'S HERE

Yo-Yo Ma has a new CD, 'A Decade of Hits from the World's Favorite Cellist' (on Sony Classical). In all, Ma has recorded some 50 albums and won 14 Grammy awards. He was born in 1955 in Paris to musical parents of Chinese descent ('Yo' means 'friendship' in Chinese). Ma started studying the cello at the age of 4 with his father. The family moved to New York and Ma went on to other teachers, principally Leonard Rose. Ma graduated from Harvard in 1976 and received an honorary doctorate from there in 1991. He owns four cellos: a 1733 Montagnana from Venice, the 1712 Davidoff Straparius formerly owned by Jacqueline du Pre (now specially altered for baroque music), another by Moes & Moes, and the fourth by Mario Miralles.

Asked to name the hardest piece of music he has ever seen, Ma told an MSN Chat audience on the Internet in February 2001, "The next piece of music I have to learn is always the hardest. There are pieces that are physically hard and pieces that are mentally hard. You have to feel that you can fully represent another person. That is a real relationship. That takes a long time. In the same way that it takes a long time to master an instrument [so] that it feels like an extension of your physical self."

During the same chat session, Ma had some advice for music students: "I think the most precious thing that you have is the integrity of your own voice and the passion that you feel for the music," Ma said. "You could do anything as long as you don't lose those two things." He also advised budding cellists who want to control their bowing and fingering without looking at their left hand, "Try closing your eyes and slowing everything down so that you do it by feel."

Ma is glad he went to Harvard instead of a conservatory. He was exposed to a wide variety of academic subjects like anthropology and Russian literature that continue to fuel his curiosity to this day. He also enjoyed living in a community of people doing different things, and collaborating on a smorgasbord of projects from the Bach Society, to Gilbert and Sullivan, to performing new works by his fellow students. Most of his work continues to be collaborative, undertaking new projects where there is good chemistry with the other people involved, he told the chat audience.

So what do you do after you've already become the greatest cellist in the world? The cello repertoire is quite limited when compared to other instruments like the violin, so the choices come down to 'repeat yourself', 'quit', or, as Ma is doing, 'try new things'. Ma now brings the same inquisitiveness that so impressed people at Harvard to the development of new projects (violinist Isaac Stern called him 'an enormous walking sponge'). Ma premieres new works for the cello from contemporary composers. He took a trip to the Kalahari in 1993 to look for connections between Western music and the aboriginal music of the Kalahari Bushmen played on home-made instruments. In 1998, he did a series of videos in which he asked luminaries from different disciplines - landscaping, architecture, choreography, ice dancing - to create new visual settings for the six Bach suites for unaccompanied cello. A music garden was created and is now open in Toronto as a result of one of the videos.

Ma has also made numerous forays into crossover music but, before describing these, a digression is necessary:

In its simplest form, crossover is the fusion of two musical styles. As used here, crossover indicates music that lies somewhere between classical concert music and popular music. Classical composers have long found inspiration in folk music, Dvorak's 'Slavonic Dances' and Vaughan Williams' settings of English folk tunes being prime examples. But crossover is a two-way street. George Gershwin - still the all-time leader in the category in this writer's estimation - came at crossover from the pop side. He began his career in Tin Pan Alley and the theater, but ended up writing rhapsodies, a concerto and an opera that appeal to classical and general audiences alike. The art-rock bands of the 1970's (Renaissance, P.F.M.) borrowed heavily from classical music and its techniques.

None of this was called 'crossover' music, however, which is a fairly new term. Recognition for the category got a big boost around 1980 with Claude Bolling's 'Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano', featuring classical flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal. Things ramped up in 1990 with the Three Tenors. Yo-Yo Ma, as much as anyone else, can lay claim to leading the category in the present day.

Ma has produced a veritable blizzard of crossover projects which, taken as a whole, evidence his boundless curiosity. One was his collaboration with vocalist Bobby McFerrin on 'Hush' which went gold in 1992 and spent 135 weeks on Billboard's Classical Crossover chart. The album includes reworkings of the Bach/Gounod 'Ave Maria' and Rimsky-Korsakov's 'Flight of the Bumblebee'.

Ma performed on the soundtrack to 'Immortal Beloved', a 1995 film starring Gary Oldman. The soundtrack went gold. Ma also played the music of Tan Dun in 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' which won Academy Awards in 2001 for Best Original Score and Best Foreign Language Film.

'Soul of the Tango' won the 1999 Grammy for best classical crossover album. Ma plays newly composed music on top of outtake bandoneon recordings of deceased Argentinian tango master, Astor Piazzolla, with help from Piazzolla's colleagues and friends. Tango was the music of the lower classes in Paris but swept through Argentina. It is music of freedom, passion and ecstasy. "Tango is not just about dancing," Ma said in the liner notes. "It is a music of deep undercurrents... Music is always one way people can speak when they aren't allowed to express themselves otherwise. And Piazzolla's tangos have the great strength of true voice."

The Appalachian series - 'Appalachia Waltz' (1996), 'Appalachian Journey' (winner of the 2001 Grammy for best classical crossover album), and now 'Heartland: An Appalachian Anthology' - is a synthesis of Appalachian folk, jazz, bluegrass and contemporary classical music. Appalachian folk is itself a fusion of Norwegian fiddling, British Isles traditions and other influences. 'Waltz' includes renditions of classic American instrumentals like 'Star of the County Down' as well as originals by crossover violinist Mark O'Connor and bassist Edgar Meyer. 'Heartland' is a broader compilation of the best tracks from Sony's continuing series of Appalachian CD's by various artists. In addition to Ma, 'Heartland' features several other virtuoso's, including the phenomenal Bela Fleck whose jazz albums take the banjo to a whole new place.

Don't expect much in the way of pure song-form on the Appalachian albums. There are Stephen Foster songs sweetly sung by James Taylor and bluegrass star Alison Kraus. But for the most part, the albums feature artsy hoe-downs lying somewhere between the music of Aaron Copland and bluegrass originator Bill Monroe. There is more here than can be absorbed in a single listening. The texture is mostly that of a string band - violin, cello and bass. Ma is not out front, except on occasion as in the 'Duet for Cello and Bass' on the 'Journey' album.

The connections between musical styles on the Appalachian albums extend to the technical level. "When I first started working with Mark O'Connor, his articulation was so much like Baroque playing that the only way I could match it, and match the speed of his articulation, was to take my modern bow and play it so that it felt more like a Baroque bow," Ma said in the liner notes to his 'Simply Baroque' album. "So in a funny way I came to playing the Baroque cello from watching very carefully a really great fiddler. Because of course that is also a centuries-old tradition."

Currently, Ma is embarked on his most ambitious project ever. His multi-year collaborative Silk Road Project is examining the cross-pollination of musical ideas and cultural traditions along the ancient trade route that in earlier times extended from East Asia to Europe. Ma has called the Silk Road the "Internet of antiquity", with everything from algebra to Islam moving along its length. European bowed instruments, it is believed, originated in Asia. "How did a biwa, a medieval Japanese stringed instrument, become decorated with Persian designs and African gemstones, for example," Ma wonders in his official statement for the Project. His goal is to preserve rich traditions that might otherwise get lost in a global culture which is rapidly homogenizing. The project is producing new works, recordings, educational programs and festivals all celebrating traditions from such far-flung regions as India, Persia, Tibet and Greece. Among the performances will be one at the Smithsonian's Folklife Festival on the Mall in Washington, D.C. in the summer of 2002.

Classical music is in a crisis. It's losing its audience. Concert and CD sales are declining. It could be argued that classical music must embrace new elements and remain flexible, or die. Crossover projects, like Yo-Yo Ma's, are breathing new life into classical music and perhaps, as some argue, may even be helping to introduce new audiences to the music of the masters.

© 2001 Christopher M. Wright     
 All Rights Reserved

© 2001 Christopher M. Wright      
All Rights Reserved - This material may not be republished, rebroadcast, rewritten, redistributed, resold, or manipulated in any form.