Yo-Yo Ma’s multi-faceted career is testament to his belief in culture’s power to generate trust and understanding. Whether performing new or familiar works for cello, bringing communities together to explore culture’s role in society, or engaging unexpected musical forms, Yo-Yo strives to foster connections that stimulate the imagination and reinforce our humanity.
In concert with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Ricardo Muti
All the things I love about life outside music have to do with people, and playing the cello allows me to fulfill all those interests through music.
Most recently, Yo-Yo began Our Common Nature, a cultural journey to celebrate the ways that nature can reunite us in pursuit of a shared future. Our Common Nature follows the Bach Project, a 36-community, six-continent tour of J. S. Bach’s cello suites paired with local cultural programming. Both endeavors reflect Yo-Yo’s lifelong commitment to stretching the boundaries of genre and tradition to understand how music helps us to imagine and build a stronger society.
It was this belief that inspired the formation of Silkroad, the global music collective. Through his work with Silkroad, as well as throughout his career, Yo-Yo Ma has sought to expand the cello repertoire, premiering compositions by Osvaldo Golijov, Leon Kirchner, Zhao Lin, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Giovanni Sollima, and John Williams, among many others.
In Mumbai, 2019
At the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, Athens, 2019
In the Kalahari Desert, 1993
With the Silkroad Ensemble at the United Nations Headquarters, 2008
As musicians, we transcend technique in order to seek out the truths in our world in a way that gives meaning and sustenance to individuals and communities. That’s art for life’s sake.
In addition to his work as a performing artist, Yo-Yo has partnered with communities and institutions around the world to develop programs that advocate for a future guided by humanity, trust, and understanding. Among his many roles, Yo-Yo is a United Nations Messenger of Peace, the first artist ever appointed to the World Economic Forum’s board of trustees, and a member of the board of Nia Tero, the US-based nonprofit working in solidarity with Indigenous peoples and movements worldwide.
Working with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and its Negaunee Music Institute
In Guangzhou with Youth Music Culture Guangdong, 2020
Yo-Yo’s discography of more than 120 albums (including 19 Grammy Award winners) ranges from iconic renditions of the Western classical canon to recordings that defy categorization, such as “Hush” with Bobby McFerrin and the “Goat Rodeo Sessions” with Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile. Yo-Yo’s recent releases include “Six Evolutions,” his third recording of Bach’s cello suites, and “Songs of Comfort and Hope,” created and recorded with pianist Kathryn Stott in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yo-Yo’s latest album, “Beethoven for Three: Symphony No. 6 and Op. 1, No. 3,” is the second in a new series of Beethoven recordings with pianist Emanuel Ax and violinist Leonidas Kavakos.
With Fred Rogers, 1985
The Goat Rodeo Sessions with Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile, and Stuart Duncan
Yo-Yo was born in 1955 to Chinese parents living in Paris. He began to study the cello with his father at age four and three years later moved with his family to New York City, where he continued his cello studies at the Juilliard School before pursuing a liberal arts education at Harvard. He has received numerous awards, including the Avery Fisher Prize (1978), the National Medal of the Arts (2001), the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2010), Kennedy Center Honors (2011), the Polar Music Prize (2012), and the Birgit Nilsson Prize (2022). He has performed for nine American presidents, most recently on the occasion of President Biden’s inauguration.
Songs of Comfort and Hope, 2020
With Emanuel Ax, 2016
Yo-Yo and his wife have two children. He plays three instruments: a 2003 instrument made by Moes & Moes, a 1733 Montagnana cello from Venice, and the 1712 Davidoff Stradivarius.
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Culture is the foundation on which we will imagine and build a world in which we reaffirm our commitment to equality and safety for all, we act with empathy, and we know that we can always do better.
At the Trent School, 1962
At the United Nations Headquarters, 2006
