The Sound Postings team manages Yo-Yo Ma’s performances, recordings, and public engagement and collaborates with partners around the world to develop and produce cultural projects that advocate for a world guided by humanity, trust, and understanding.
Beginning in 2018, Sound Postings produced the Bach Project, a 36-community, six-continent tour of Bach’s cello suites paired with local programming which explored culture’s role in imagining and building a better world. From 2021, it produced Our Common Nature, a cultural journey made up of live events, new commissions, and digital storytelling which celebrated the ways that nature can reunite us in pursuit of a shared future.
Executive Director
Jonathan Bays has more than 25 years of experience advising companies, foundations, and nonprofits on strategy and operations, including as a policy advisor in the Office of the Prime Minister of Canada and seven years in McKinsey & Company’s Social Sector Office, where he was a senior member of the philanthropy practice. He has written and spoken on issues of social innovation, and was a lead author of “And the Winner Is … ,” McKinsey’s 2009 report on the creative role of prize-based philanthropy. Jonathan studied history at the University of Toronto and journalism at the University of King’s College in Halifax before entering Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, where he received a D.Phil. in international relations.
Deputy Director
Ben has held leadership positions in communications and strategy at international cultural organizations including Silkroad, the global arts organization founded by Yo-Yo Ma, and the Centre for Policy Research, a New Delhi-based think tank focused on Indian society, where he also contributed to “Cities of Delhi,” a qualitative study of informal settlements in the city. He began his career as a radio journalist, collaborating with Christopher Lydon to produce programs on arts, ideas, and politics for public radio. Ben studied literature at Brown University.
Creative Producer
Sophie is a director and creative producer of events and performances that bring people together in new and meaningful ways. With Yo-Yo, she has led programming and producing for Our Common Nature and the Bach Project tour, as well as Notes for the Future and many other special projects. Sophie’s background is in international performing arts, including managing Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)’s dance partnership with the US Department of State. She studied theater at Brown University and music of Asia and Africa at SOAS University of London. Sophie began her career working with dancers and musicians in Bamako, Mali.
Senior Project Manager
Jennifer Chen was the founding Managing Director of AMOC* (American Modern Opera Company) and has previously worked with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, New York City Ballet, Peabody Essex Museum, Celebrity Series of Boston, and Villa I Tatti (the Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies). Jennifer is also a Registered Piano Technician and graduate of the Piano Technology program at the North Bennet Street School. She studied History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University and is a 2017 MBA graduate of the Yale University School of Management.
