The many-faceted career of cellist Yo-Yo Ma is a testament to his search for new ways to communicate with audiences and to his own desire for artistic growth and renewal. Whether performing a new concerto, revisiting a familiar work from the cello repertoire, reaching out to young audiences and student musicians, or exploring cultures and musical forms outside the Western classical tradition, Ma strives to find connections that stimulate the imagination. Sony Classical has been his partner throughout his career, documenting his interpretations of the mainstream repertoire and collaborating in his search for new ways of making music. 

Born in Paris in 1955 to Chinese parents, Yo-Yo Ma began his cello studies with his father at the age of four. He later studied with Janos Scholz and, in 1962, became the pupil of Leonard Rose at the Juilliard School of Music. He received the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize in 1978 and is a graduate of Harvard University, from which he also received an honorary doctorate in 1991. Ma and his wife, Jill, have two children, Nicholas and Emily. 

Ma is an exclusive Sony classical artist, and his discography of over fifty albums includes thirteen GRAMMY Award winners. It also demonstrates his wide-ranging interests. In addition to the standard concerto, chamber and solo repertoire, he has recorded many of the works he has commissioned or premiered. His most recent recordings reflect his diverse musical interests and his quest for stimulating new sounds. 

In November 1997 Ma was named Artist of the Year in the Gramophone Awards. 

The magazine noted, "In a year of quite extraordinary diversity, the cellist Yo-Yo Ma has shown that the boundaries of "classical" music need not be restraining as he has vaulted spectacularly from classical cello concertos, to blue-grass music via a disc of tangos to a host of specially composed works featuring his remarkable talent.... With Ma, there is only one category of music - the kind he wants to make." The Gramophone prize capped a remarkable year of achievement in recording, with Sony Classical releases that include Soul of the Tango, featuring the tango music of Astor Piazzolla (awarded the 1999 GRAMMY for Best Classical Crossover Album); a trio of new cello concertos by Richard Danielpour, Leon Kirchner and Christopher Rouse; Tan Dun's Symphony 1997; the string quintets of Schubert and Boccherini; the music of Andr?revin, recorded with the composer and soprano Sylvia McNair; and the soundtrack recording of Liberty!, a PBS documentary series about the American Revolution. 

Ma's remarkable year also included the continued success of Appalachia Waltz, an original recording of traditional American fiddle music that featured Ma with Nashville-based violinist Mark O'Connor and bassist Edgar Meyer, as well as his performance in a music video for director Sally Potter's feature film The Tango Lesson, in which he plays Astor Piazzolla's "Libertango." In the last two years, two of Ma's Sony Classical recordings - Hush with vocalist Bobby McFerrin and the soundtrack to Immortal Beloved - have been certified gold records by the Recording Industry Association of America. 

As a performer, Ma maintains a balance between his engagements as soloist with orchestras throughout the world and his recital and chamber music activities. He draws inspiration from a wide circle of collaborators, having created programmes with such artists as Emanuel Ax, Daniel Barenboim, Pamela Frank, Jeffrey Kahane, Young Uck Kim, Jaime Laredo, Bobby McFerrin, Edgar Meyer, Mark O'Connor, Peter Serkin, Isaac Stern, Richard Stoltzman and Kathryn Stott. Each of these collaborations is fuelled by the interaction between or among the artists, and often that process produces music that extends beyond the boundaries of a particular genre, classical or otherwise. One of Mr. Ma's goals is to understand and demonstrate how music serves as a means of communication in both Western and non-Western cultures. To that end, he has taken time to immerse himself in projects as diverse as native Chinese music (and distinctive instruments) and the music of the Kalahari bush people in Africa. 

In keeping with his limitless interest with the entire world around us, Mr. Ma is a key player in The Silk Road Project, a new initiative aimed at exploring the cross-cultural influences among and between the lands comprising the legendary Silk Road and the West, beginning in 2001 with an ambitious program of concerts, festivals and educational outreach activities in North America, Europe and Asia. Led by renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma in coordination with a distinguished team of scholars, musicians and artists from around the world, the Silk Road Project is designed to illuminate the historical contributions of the Silk Road; support innovative collaborations among artists from the East and West; and resituate classical music within a broader global context. 

Contemporary music has for many years been an important part of Ma's repertoire. He has premiered works by a diverse group of composers, including Stephen Albert, Chen Qigang, John Corigliano, Richard Danielpour, John Harbison, Leon Kirchner, Peter Lieberman, Christopher Rouse, Bright Sheng, Tan Dun and John Williams. Alongside his performing and recording activities, Ma devotes time to work with young musicians in educational programs such as the Interlochen and Tanglewood festivals in the United States. He seeks to include educational outreach activities in his regular touring schedule through master classes and more informal interaction with students. He is also working to develop concerts for family audiences, and he appears with Emanuel Ax in Carnegie Hall's family series. 

Credit: allstarz.org