Yo-Yo Ma

Yo-Yo Ma’s multifaceted career is testament to his belief in culture’s power to generate trust and understanding. Whether performing new or familiar works for cello, bringing communities together to explore culture’s role in society, or engaging unexpected musical forms, Yo-Yo strives to foster connections that stimulate the imagination and reinforce our humanity. 

Most recently, Yo-Yo began Our Common Nature, a cultural journey to celebrate the ways that nature can reunite us in pursuit of a shared future. Our Common Nature follows the Bach Project, a 36-community, six-continent tour of J.S. Bach’s cello suites paired with local cultural programming. Both endeavors reflect Yo-Yo’s lifelong commitment to stretching the boundaries of genre and tradition to understand how music helps us to imagine and build a stronger society. 

Among his many roles, Yo-Yo is a United Nations Messenger of Peace, the first artist ever appointed to the World Economic Forum’s board of trustees, a member of the board of Nia Tero, and the founder of the global music collective Silkroad. 

His discography of more than 120 albums (including 19 Grammy Award winners) ranges from iconic renditions of the Western classical canon to recordings that defy categorization, such as Hush with Bobby McFerrin and The Goat Rodeo Sessions with Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile. Yo-Yo’s recent releases include a series of Beethoven recordings with pianist Emanuel Ax and violinist Leonidas Kavakos. 

Yo-Yo was born in 1955 to Chinese parents living in Paris, where he began studying the cello with his father at age 4. When he was 7, he moved with his family to New York City, where he continued his cello studies before pursuing a liberal arts education. He has received numerous awards, including the Avery Fisher Prize, National Medal of the Arts, Presidential Medal of Freedom, Kennedy Center Honors, Polar Music Prize, and Birgit Nilsson Prize. He has performed for nine American presidents, most recently on the occasion of President Biden’s inauguration. 

Yo-Yo and his wife have two children. He plays four cellos: two modern instruments made by Moes & Moes, a 1733 Montagnana from Venice, and the 1712 Davidoff Stradivarius.