College Taught Ma to Play His Own Tune

On April 1, 1998, Yo-Yo Ma ’76 made a shocking announcement.

He told National Public Radio that he planned to give up the cello for the bandoneon, an Argentinian accordion. Instantly, NPR’s phone lines were jammed with listeners despondent over the loss of their favorite instrumentalist.

Crisis was averted when the network clarified that Ma, the world’s most famous cellist, was just helping out with its April Fool’s Day prank.

Ma is more than just a musician—he is a cultural celebrity. His name has been dropped on “Seinfeld” and he made a cameo appearance on the Christmas special of “The West Wing.” Even children recognize him: Ma has chatted with Elmo on “Sesame Street” and stopped by “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”

His fame has attracted a worldwide following that far exceeds the popularity of almost every other classical musician.

He has recorded more than 50 albums and won Grammy Awards for more than a dozen.

Ma’s playing is not the only source of his appeal. His projects are far from the stereotype of a tuxedo-clad classical musician playing stuffy music in a centuries-old symphony hall.

In a recent six-hour video project for PBS, Ma collaborated with artists from various disciplines to present Bach’s “Suites for Unaccompanied Cello.” Choreographer Mark Morris, Olympic figure skaters Torvill and Dean, filmmaker Atom Egoyan, a Kabuki actor and a landscape designer worked with Ma on different suites to create what The Washington Post called an “18th-century music video.”

Appalachian bluegrass, tango and the jazz stylings of Bobby McFerrin are just a few of the musical genres that Ma has explored over the years.

He recently performed with Itzhak Perlman at the Academy Awards, playing themes from movies nominated for Best Score, including Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Ma is featured on the soundtrack from that movie, which won the Oscar in that category.

Lynn W. Chang ’75, a violinist with the Boston Chamber Music Society and lifelong friend of Ma, says that it is Ma’s ability to connect with the audience that makes him such a successful performer.

“There is a certain personality and persona in his playing—he is just a wonderful communicator,” Chang says. “There are many who play their instruments well on stage, but there are a select few who are able to go beyond that—who have a certain charisma that goes over the footlights—that makes the audience fall in love with them.”

Ma developed his communication skills during his four undergraduate years at Harvard.

“He was just so shy at the beginning,” Chang remembers.

Chang says that before Harvard, Ma’s life was intensely focused on his family and his cello. Born in Paris to Chinese parents, he took up the cello at the age of four (because, Ma has said, he was attracted to its large size). He was performing in Carnegie Hall by the time he was nine and he was soon studying with Leonard Rose at Julliard’s pre-college program.

“The family was very Chinese and conservative,” Chang says. “The father had a pretty tight grip on the family. The father insisted that Yo-Yo do his practicing, learn his Chinese and lead a very disciplined life.”

Coming to Harvard taught Ma that there was more to life than music.

Despite his notoriety in the music world, at Harvard, Ma was just another student.

“Nobody knew who he was,” Chang says. “He hadn’t started his career yet—he was basically completely unknown.”

In his first year at Harvard, Ma’s performances were mostly outside of school. He says that he probably did too much outside playing that year.

“I actually overslept one of my exams,” Ma says.

So he shifted his focus to college life and chose to play with Harvard groups like the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, Bach Society Orchestra, Lowell House Opera and Gilbert & Sullivan Players.

“I actually discovered college as a community,” Ma says.

And soon, the community discovered Ma.

“He was a star,” says David J. Schraa, a former residential tutor in Kirkland House. “Even people who didn’t know or care anything about classical music knew he was a big deal.”

But Chang says that Ma was not the most famous man on campus—that distinction went to the quarterback and receiver.

“Yo-Yo was a distant third after the football players,” he says.

By the time Ma, a resident of North House, graduated with a B.A. in music, his outlook on life had been forever shaped by his undergraduate experiences.

“I met so many people who were as passionate in their interests as I was passionate in music.” Ma says. “That opened up so many worlds to me.”

“By the end of four years he was much more outgoing—he just opened up,” Chang says. “More than what he gleaned academically, he gleaned the most from how to communicate and interpersonal relationships.”

Ma also credits his Harvard years as the inspiration for many of his projects.

“What I’ve been doing is directly a reflection of a liberal arts education,” he says. “Every single thing that I take on has a direct link to something I’ve first been exposed to or thought about in college.”

One of Ma’s most famous projects is an extension of an anthropology course that he took his freshman year with Professor Irven DeVore. Fascinated by DeVore’s lectures about the Bushmen of Africa, in the late 1980s, Ma traveled to the Kalahari Desert in Southern Africa to study and perform music with them.

“It’s so far a field from what a normal cellist would do, but because I had that experience in college,” Ma says, “I’ve been encouraged to go a little further.”

Ma says that his teachers taught him to “break out of the ordinary into the extraordinary.”

“I always encouraged people who have a choice of going to a conservatory or going to college, try not to close the door to college for as long as they can,” Ma says. “The years of college are your emotional bank account—whatever you put in there, you have to withdraw from for the rest of our life.”

With his 25th reunion this week and his son Nicholas, 18, set to attend Harvard next year, Ma is reminded of the two greatest influences on his life.

Although Harvard has been responsible for much of his education, he credits his family—his wife Jill Horner, daughter Emily, 15, and Nicholas—for his real growth.

“For me, there’s nothing more precious or important than [family],” he says. “And in fact, I think that your children end up teaching you the most things.”

—Staff writer Sarah Dolgonos can be reached at dolgonos@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Amit Paley can be reached at paley@fas.harvard.edu.