Interviewing Yo-Yo Ma is no easy task. But not because he's one of the most famous musicians alive today, or because he's been playing cello for world leaders since he was seven, or because he answers questions with long stories rather than words. The real challenge is that he prefers to talk about you.
"No one is boring," he explained during a recent interview at the hotel where he was staying during a show in Denver. The night before, he performed Dvořák's Cello Concerto with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra at the Red Rocks Theater for thousands of spectators, delivering a lively and innovative performance. I was assigned to report on his 70-year-old life and how he reconciled age with restless ambition, so I instinctively wanted to bring the conversation back to him. But I soon understood the meaning of what former President Barack Obama said about Yo-Yo Ma: “For every question you ask him, he’ll ask you two back.”
If Yo-Yo Ma wasn't like this to everyone, the way he spoke might come across as evasive or feigned modesty. “It can’t be faked,” said composer Angelica Negron. I followed him throughout the season leading up to the Red Rocks concert: to recitals, concerto premieres, to events far away from any concert hall and that had little to do with music. Whether he was meeting fellow artists, music fans, or community organizers, he was attentive and curious, willing to put aside what he was doing in order to get to know a person.
He was a sincerely committed humanist in an era that preferred to reward cynicism. He sees people as an ecosystem, deeply connected to each other and to nature, even as the algorithms of this era push us into echo chambers. When he talks about immigration or education, he eschews the crude, polarizing rhetoric prevalent today, deftly framing these topics as ethical rather than political issues.
What if we followed his example?
"I look for behavioral models in other people," said Stephen Colbert, a close friend of Yo-Yo Ma. "His stance is transcendent; his actions are not."
And Yo-Yo Ma’s way of being a person is increasingly being integrated into his public work through his organization, Sound Postings. Nearly every stop on his tour includes some kind of community project, such as a conversation about gun violence in Chicago or a farm dinner in West Virginia. He embarks on a years-long project that might take him to a national park, or to a nightclub in Lebanon. As he addressed the audience, he intertwined a sense of wonder at time and memory with concern for the future, especially regarding environmental issues.
Because of who he is, maybe people will listen. "If he put in so much effort," says historian Heather Cox Richardson, "how can we do less?"
By now, Yo-Yo Ma’s excellence and fame are recognized facts. The musician was born in France to Chinese immigrant parents and impressed cello master Pablo Casals when he visited the United States at the age of seven. Soon after, he performed for President John F. Kennedy in a concert hosted by Leonard Bernstein. Since then, he's shared the stage with Elmo and Mr. Rogers on television, sold millions of albums, collected racks of Grammys, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Obama.
"But perhaps the most amazing thing about Yo-Yo Ma," Obama once said, "is that everyone loves him."
You can imagine a very different Yo-Yo Ma: a child prodigy who grew up in the cloister-like environment of a music school, remains a star, but isn't very good at connecting with people. However, Casals told him to go out and play baseball. "I don't think he's a talent scout," Yo-Yo Ma said, "but I think the implication is, 'Live a fulfilling life.'"
Yo-Yo Ma, who ultimately stayed in the United States, was also deeply shaped by his immigration status. "One of the things about immigrants is that they're always trying to understand a new place," he said. “Now that I’m traveling, the immigrant part of me is always thinking, I hope you throw me anywhere, like a game of ‘Finding Waldo,’ and I find a way to do something purposeful and meaningful.”
At the age of 15, while studying at Juilliard, he met pianist Emanuel Ax in the cafeteria, and the two became lifelong friends and musical partners. (“I would say the two luckiest things that ever happened to me were meeting my wife and meeting Yo-Yo Ma,” Akers says.) At that time, Yo-Yo Ma wasn’t sure the world needed another cellist. He would prepare a solo set, play it in concert, and find himself bored halfway through.
"We live in a world where people are always saying, 'I have to achieve, achieve, achieve,'" Yo-Yo Ma said. "But I never think that achieving anything can bring anything. At most, it can give you a moment of pleasure."
Yo-Yo Ma adheres to Casals's motto: "I see myself first as a human being, secondly as a musician, and thirdly as a cellist." Therefore, he chose not to study music full-time, but received a bachelor's degree in anthropology from Harvard University. In a sense, he never left the field. With the enthusiasm of a happy amateur, he devoted his interest in humanity to various projects: such as the ensemble now called "Silk Road", a lasting legacy of the multicultural 1990s; the Bach Project, which introduced Bach to strangers around the world; and the newer outdoor project "Our Common Nature", which aims to bring people together.
“He was thirsty for knowledge,” says Sophie Shackleton, creative producer at Sound Postings. “He was never judgmental of people from different backgrounds and disciplines, and he loved trying to understand them.”
Because of this, a Yo-Yo Ma concert is never just a concert. Even a performance as routine as his performance of the complete Bach cello suites at Boston's Symphony Hall last fall extends to the outside world. The performance was simultaneously broadcast to public libraries around Boston and throughout Massachusetts. In Watertown, the screening room was packed and with nearly 500 people on the waiting list, people gathered over cookies and cider from the café and visited an exhibit upstairs. One mother called it all "a gift."
