Yo-Yo Ma

Ma's Primary performance instrument is the Davidov cello, made in 1712 by Antonio Stradivari.

Ma's mother, Marina Lu, was a singer, and his father, Hiao-Tsiun Ma, was a violinist, composer and professor of music at Nanjing National Central University (now relocated in Taoyuan, Taiwan; predecessor of the present-day Nanjing University and Southeast University).

They both migrated from the Republic of China to France during the Chinese Civil War.

Ma's sister, Yeou-Cheng Ma, played the violin and piano before obtaining a medical degree and becoming a pediatrician.

The family moved to New York City when Ma was seven.

Yo-Yo Ma (born October 7, 1955) is an American cellist.

Born and partially raised in Paris to Chinese parents and educated in New York City, he was a child prodigy, performing from the age of four and a half.

He graduated from the Juilliard School and Harvard University, attended Columbia University, and has performed as a soloist with orchestras around the world.

He has recorded more than 90 albums and received 19 Grammy Awards.

In addition to recordings of the standard classical repertoire, Ma has recorded a wide variety of folk music, such as American bluegrass music, traditional Chinese melodies, the tangos of Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla, and Brazilian music.

He has also collaborated with artists from a diverse range of genres, including Bobby McFerrin, Carlos Santana, Chris Botti, Diana Krall, James Taylor, Miley Cyrus, and Sting.

From the age of three, Ma played the drums, violin, piano, and later viola, but settled on the cello in 1960 at age four.

In 1964, Isaac Stern introduced them on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and they performed the Sonata of Sammartini.

He attended Trinity School in New York but transferred to the Professional Children's School, where he graduated at age 15.

He appeared as a soloist with the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra in a performance of Tchaikovsky's Rococo Variations.

Ma studied at the Juilliard School at age 19 with Leonard Rose and attended Columbia University, but dropped out.

He later enrolled at Harvard College.

Prior to entering Harvard, Ma played in the Marlboro Festival Orchestra under the direction of cellist and conductor Pablo Casals.

He spent four summers at the Marlboro Music Festival after meeting and falling in love with Mount Holyoke College sophomore and festival administrator Jill Hornor during his first summer there in 1972.

Even before that time, Ma gained fame and performed with many of the world's major orchestras.

He has also played chamber music, often with pianist Emanuel Ax, with whom he has a close friendship from their days at Juilliard.

Ma received his bachelor's degree in anthropology from Harvard in 1976, and in 1991 received an honorary doctorate from Harvard.

He has received numerous awards, including the Avery Fisher Prize in 1978, The Glenn Gould Prize in 1999, the National Medal of Arts in 2001, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011, Kennedy Center Honors in 2011, the Polar Music Prize in 2012, and the Birgit Nilsson Prize in 2022.

In 1997, Ma was featured on John Williams' soundtrack to the Hollywood film Seven Years in Tibet.

In addition to his prolific musical career, Ma collaborated in 1999 with landscape architects to design a Bach-inspired garden.

Known as the Music Garden, it interprets Bach's Suite No. 1 in G Major for unaccompanied cello (BWV 1007), where the garden's sections were designed to correspond with the suite's dance movements.

Toronto enthusiastically embraced the design, originally planned for Boston, and it was subsequently built in the Harbourfront neighborhood.

In 2000, he was heard on the soundtrack of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and of Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World in 2003.

He collaborated with Williams again on the score for the 2005 film Memoirs of a Geisha.

He has also worked with Italian composer Ennio Morricone and has recorded Morricone's compositions of the Dollars Trilogy, including The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, as well as Once Upon a Time in America, The Mission, and The Untouchables.

He has recorded over 90 albums, 19 of which are Grammy Award winners.

He received the Award of Excellence from New York's International Center.

Ma has been a United Nations Messenger of Peace since 2006.

Ma was named Peace Ambassador by then-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in January 2006.

When three-year-old Yo-Yo said he wanted a big instrument, his father went to see Etienne Vatelot, a foremost violin maker in Paris who, after a chat, lent him a 1/16th cello.

He jokes that his first choice was the double bass due to its large size, but he compromised and took up the cello instead.

When his father realized that Yo-Yo was ready for a better teacher, a well-known cello instructor, Mme Michelle Lepinte, was selected.

He began performing before audiences at age five and played for presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy when he was seven.

At age eight, he appeared on American television with his sister in an event introduced by Leonard Bernstein.

He was named as one of Time's 100 Most Influential People of 2020.