Yo-Yo Ma still revels in the joy of learning
Yo-Yo Ma is a relentlessly global musician. His travels are wide, his interests even wider.
Yet Ma, a Cambridge resident, is also a local musician, rooted in his hometown and committed to appearing with Boston ensembles as circumstances allow.
His next local gig happens Sunday, a gala concert at Symphony Hall with the Boston Youth Symphony, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Ma will play the Dvorak Cello Concerto with the BYS, which also performs Dvorak's Eighth Symphony under music director Federico Cortese. The BYS comprises 120 students from grades seven through 12, the vast majority of whom, it seems safe to say, will be pretty fired up to be sharing the stage with the world's most famous cellist.
A concert like this might seem like a charitable donation. The students get a thrill, the organization gets additional prominence and the chance to bring in more revenue. But what about Ma? What does he get out of the deal?
"Oh my gosh - do you have five hours?" is his response when the question is posed over the phone. This is immediately followed by a warm laugh, a reminder that the cellist is one of the most good-natured people to have made it to the top of the music world.
It turns out that the rewards for Ma are plentiful. "First of all, this is my backyard," he says. He has numerous connections to the BYS in the form of "people that were friends or classmates of my children when they were growing up, or I see them as adults in various parts of the profession. It's such a wonderful thing to be able to do this with people from my community."
There is also the sheer delight of revisiting a familiar work in the company of young performers, many of whom will undoubtedly be playing this music for the first time. "There's no greater thrill to me than to be there when somebody is discovering a piece, a world for the first time. The eyes get really wide, it kind of becomes a forever thing. And you really want the first experience to be a fabulous one," he says. "I think this piece also makes it very special, because it demands so much of different members of the orchestra. Dvorak just wrote such specifically interesting music for the inner voices, for solo winds. There's something for everybody to do and to shine in."
Ma expects it to be a learning encounter for him, as well. "I think the thing about passion-driven education, which I so believe in, is that there's no difference between teaching and learning," he says. "As a 52-year-old, I'm always learning. And if you're a passionate student, you're always teaching, because you're sharing what you know. It's the best way to participate in something."
Finally, there's the satisfaction in being able to participate in the mission of one of the country's leading youth orchestras, which dovetails nicely with Ma's longtime advocacy of arts education. For him it's a crucial counterpoint to what he calls our increasingly "measurable society."
"But the inside of us, our inner lives, the part that's strong but vulnerable - you can't measure that," he explains. "I don't want to say, 'We must have music education' because I'm a musician. Rather, I'd like to say that what music offers society, or people in general, is one more tool to actually code what is going on inside ourselves. And that's one of the tools that really helps us get along in life."
Elsewhere, Ma has been busy, juggling his usual array of varied undertakings. His intercultural Silk Road Project was in residence at Harvard University last year, developing a chamber version of an Azerbaijani opera called "Layla and Majnun." ("It's sort of the Romeo and Juliet of the Persian world," he says.) He was recently in Toronto to celebrate the 10th anniversary of that city's Music Garden, which he helped design, and last month he joined longtime collaborator Bobby McFerrin onstage at Carnegie Hall.
The mix of projects plays a large role in maintaining Ma's artistic vitality, so that each new project is vital and worthwhile, be it the arrangement of a traditional Chinese song or one more performance of the Dvorak concerto.
"I think that's sort of a measure of anybody's life," he says. "You're always learning if you keep your learning curve high. You feel more alive. But then, how good does it feel to go back to the things that you do know? How reassuring, how loving, how enhanced is it when you bring the new back to the old? I think that's sort of a fact of life for a lot of people. But I must say I enjoy it."
Information: 888-266-1200, bysoweb.org
Haimovitz at Longy
Matt Haimovitz will be the featured speaker at the Longy School of Music's commencement exercises Sunday. Known for his efforts to get classical music into new and different places, Haimovitz will receive the school's Distinguished Achievement Award. longy.edu
Hahn, from the top
Violinist Hilary Hahn will be a special guest at a live taping of "From the Top" at Jordan Hall on Wednesday. The popular NPR show, hosted by pianist Christopher O'Reilly, showcases talented young musicians. To close the show, three of the participants will join Hahn and O'Reilly in the finale of the Dvorak Piano Quintet. 617-585-1260, fromthetop.org
