Yo-Yo Ma turns his music into action
What do you do when you have virtually done it all? Ask Yo-Yo Ma.
As the world’s most famous cellist, the Parisian-born, Chinese-American virtuoso didn’t have much else he could do.
At the age of 63 he had already recorded more than 90 albums, won 18 Grammys, played concerts just about everywhere, been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the U.S. and even seen himself identified by People magazine as the world’s sexiest classical musician.
The answer, or part of it, could be found in Montreal last weekend, when he played all six of Bach’s solo cello suites — the Everest for cellists — in one intermissionless Maison Symphonique concert and Leo
nard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” in a subway station.
No, I am not hallucinating. I was there and so was everyone who could buy a ticket to his Montreal Bach Festival concert (an overflow audience had to be accommodated in a neighbouring church) or join hundreds of others trying to squeeze into Place des Arts station.
His Bach Project, as he calls it, involves a two-year, six-continent trip around the world with 36 stops (Montreal being the only one in Canada), in each of which he plans to play all six suites in a single concert followed by a “Day of Action.”
The Day of Action says as much about its instigator as the Bach concerts. As he put it in a 2013 lecture, “As musicians we transcend technique in order to seek out the truth in our world in a way that gives meaning and sustenance to individuals and communities. That’s art for life’s sake.”
In Montreal his Day of Action began with participating in a demonstration and discussion at the Palais des Congrès on how artistic collaboration in machine learning developments “is vital to shaping the future of humanity.”
Then it was off to the subway to perform some Bach and Cohen in an interactive collaboration with projected machine-generated images.
And finally, at the White Wall Studio, he joined an interactive gathering convened by Wapikoni Mobile exploring how technology and media can increase visibility and participation for First Nations voices in Canada and ensure that Indigenous cultures have a say in crafting technology and humanity’s future.
When I thanked him shortly before his Bach concert for including Canada in his extraordinary tour he laughed: “Are you kidding? You’re the last functioning liberal democracy.” And he seemed to mean it. Unlike some of his colleagues, Yo-Yo Ma has long exhibited a liberal social conscience — his ongoing Silk Road Project, for example, brings together touring musicians from many different cultural backgrounds.
He even concluded his Maison Symphonique concert by bringing onstage an Indigenous singer from New Brunswick and accompanying him on his Stradivarius cello.
There are those who might describe such activities as those of a cultural tourist. A Harvard graduate in anthropology, the gentleman from Paris is surely much more than that.
“Montreal is an AI (artificial intelligence) hub,” he pointed out, “so it is a logical place for a Day of Action to discuss how technology can be used humanistically. There is also a lot of talk here about what is happening in First Nations. Canada is in advance of the United States in giving dignity to this talk.
“People in the arts and sciences can do something. We can show that by working together we can do what we can’t do alone. I would like to think, as with everything, that we are looking for meaning in life.
“In playing Bach, I’m not showing off, not proving anything, just pointing to the fact that this music has meaning and can be helpful, it can heal. I’ve played Bach under strange circumstances, in hospitals, at funerals. It is the first music I heard, it is the music I grew up with and you can always go back and find different things in it.”
The new recording of the suites illustrates his point. It is his third, the first having been released when he was still in his 20s. “I like to think I have learned some things since then,” he smiles, and he obviously has.
Playing all six suites in one program nevertheless represents a challenge, not only for him but for his listeners — more than 2 1⁄2 hours of steady playing and concentrated listening.
He encouraged his listeners in Montreal to stand up and stretch between suites, jumping up and down himself. He didn’t have to cue them at the end of the sixth suite. The Montreal audience collectively leapt to its feet.