http://www.khabar.kz/print.php?chapter=1051773602
May 1, 2003:
A well-known cellist Yo Yo Ma with the ensemble of «Silk Road» performed the concert, which was visited by the President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev
During the last 25 years the famous musician always traveling around the world with the concerts. Together with the Prince Aga Khan they founded the ensemble «Silk Road», which brought new ideas to the classical music, attracted young talents. The musical work of Kazakhstn, Tajikistan, China, Mongolia and Iran are presented by the musicians of the ensemble.
Yo Yo Ma was born in Paris, and his father began to teach him plying the cello in the age of 4 years. He graduated from Harvard University, the faculty of fine arts. The ensemble unites people who want to join the traditions and innovations of East and West.
Yo Yo Ma
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jh ... right.html
The world at his fingertips
(Filed: 10/06/2003)
Yo-Yo Ma, one of our era's greatest cellists, talks
to Peter Culshaw about his passion for the music
of far-flung lands, and about the day he left his
$2.5m instrument in the back of a cab
Yo-Yo Ma, one of the most famous instrumentalists
in the world, welcomes me into his hotel room at the
Trump Plaza in New York and introduces me to "my
voice", his 1733 Montagnana cello from Venice.
It was this same
instrument that was on
the evening news
worldwide in 1999 after
he left it in a New York
cab. He had the taxi
receipt, and the police,
having valued the
instrument at $2.5
million (£1.7 million),
tracked it down to a
garage in Queens.
"Always keep your taxi
receipt", he advises.
How much is it insured
for now? "I don't know
the exact figure. It's worth a big house, anyway."
Does he still take New York cabs?
"Why not? To do that once was very, very stupid.
But to do it again," he laughs, "would be absolutely
nuts."
He also has a 1712 Davidoff Stradivarius, which he
uses for Baroque music. "The cellos have very
different qualities. The Montagnana is more earthy,
a baritone instrument, and the Strad is a tenor."
He's recently started playing a modern cello, a Moes
and Moes. "The old instruments are getting scarcer,
and the new ones are getting more wonderful. We
may be entering a new golden age of
instrument-making."
Whatever he plays, 47-year-old Yo-Yo Ma has had
an extraordinary run of success. Of the 50 albums
he has released, 14 have won Grammys, and there
have often been three or four of his records in the
classical charts at the same time.
He established his name playing sublime versions of
the great classic cello warhorses from Bach,
Schumann, Elgar, Haydn and others, but in the past
few years has gone wildly eclectic (and off the rails
according to some critics). He has played with vocal
improviser Bobby McFerrin and Appalachian folk
fiddlers, and recorded the modernist tango
compositions of Astor Piazzolla. (The Soul of Tango
disc was a million-seller.)
Ma's new release, Obrigado Brazil, is his tribute to
Brazilian music, which features in his concert at the
Barbican this week with the highly regarded
guitarists the Assad Brothers and others.
In a music world that can be full of back-biting, no
one seems to have a bad word to say about Ma. I
ask him if perhaps, beneath his well-balanced
exterior, he is just as neurotic as everyone else.
"One thing I will admit to is a serious case of
wanderlust," he says. This can be exhausting for
him. "You perhaps don't understand the language,
you're a guest trying not to offend your hosts, and
you have to think about basic safety issues. But I
want to know the world. You can discover incredible
things."
Among the "incredible things" he mentions is a
medieval plectrum he found decorated with an
elephant, a Persian man and a Chinese landscape.
"I'm fascinated by the links between trade and
culture - the silk fragments in Egyptian tombs,
oriental mandalas with the signs of the Zodiac."
Such interests helped trigger his hugely ambitious
"Silk Road" project, named after the trading route
that connected the Mediterranean world with China.
"It was the internet of antiquity," he says.
After new sea routes reduced the importance of the
old Silk Road, Central Asia became something of a
cultural and economic backwater. Ma's project, with
funding from numerous sources such as the Aga
Khan's Foundation, hopes to help re-invigorate
Central Asian music by commissioning and promoting
local composers and organising collaborative music
projects with Western musicians, including himself.
The man behind much of the research is Ted Levin, a
musicologist who spent much of the past 25 years
exploring the area, writing a revelatory book, The
Hundred Thousand Fools of God, in the process. The
rich musical life of the courts of Bukhara, for
example, is something most people will have no
inkling of, let alone guess what its music was like.
Ma has great faith in the power of culture to "help
build bridges and understanding" in this particularly
volatile region. "Just to go to somewhere like
Kazakhstan as a foreigner and to be concerned with
something other than oil is a positive thing to do."
A "Silk Road" music festival in Washington last year
was a stunning success for an event featuring such
apparently obscure music. More than 800,000
people attended. Ma is very aware of the power of
fame. "You have to use yourself well," he says.
When I met him he had just premiered new works
by two contemporary Chinese composers in a
programme that would normally struggle to sell
tickets. Ma's fame ensured a sell-out.
He also loves to study the connections between
things such as the violin-like Chinese erhu and the
fiddlers of Scotland or Tennessee, or to discover
earlier versions of the cello, such as the Mongolian
morin khuur, "which means horse-hair fiddle
because of the shape of the scroll. The cello is a
relatively modern upstart."
Ma concurs when I suggest his connecting East and
West in this way may have a personal, perhaps
therapeutic effect for him. "Of course, because I was
born of Chinese parents in Paris, it helps make
sense of my own life."
Having been brought up on both French and
Chinese music, he ended up studying at the Juilliard
School in the States. Unusually for a musician, he
also studied such subjects as anthropology at
Harvard.
He has a vast array of interests, collaborating with
gardeners, dancers and even ice-skaters Torvill and
Dean in his film of interpretations of Bach's Cello
Suites: "I get terribly excited when I discover great
artists in whatever field."
I ask him if he ever yearns for a quiet life. He says
he is trying to slow down and has set up home in
Boston with his wife and two children.
"There have been times at the end of the year when
I can't even remember where I've been. I'm trying to
spend more time with my family and only to go to
places there's a good reason for going and do only
things I really care about."
When I met him he was just off to Uzbekistan - it's a
safe bet that he's not going to throw his passport
away yet.
Yo-Yo Ma performs with the Assad Brothers at the
Barbican on Saturday. 'Obrigado Brazil' is released
on Sony Classical.
The world at his fingertips
(Filed: 10/06/2003)
Yo-Yo Ma, one of our era's greatest cellists, talks
to Peter Culshaw about his passion for the music
of far-flung lands, and about the day he left his
$2.5m instrument in the back of a cab
Yo-Yo Ma, one of the most famous instrumentalists
in the world, welcomes me into his hotel room at the
Trump Plaza in New York and introduces me to "my
voice", his 1733 Montagnana cello from Venice.
It was this same
instrument that was on
the evening news
worldwide in 1999 after
he left it in a New York
cab. He had the taxi
receipt, and the police,
having valued the
instrument at $2.5
million (£1.7 million),
tracked it down to a
garage in Queens.
"Always keep your taxi
receipt", he advises.
How much is it insured
for now? "I don't know
the exact figure. It's worth a big house, anyway."
Does he still take New York cabs?
"Why not? To do that once was very, very stupid.
But to do it again," he laughs, "would be absolutely
nuts."
He also has a 1712 Davidoff Stradivarius, which he
uses for Baroque music. "The cellos have very
different qualities. The Montagnana is more earthy,
a baritone instrument, and the Strad is a tenor."
He's recently started playing a modern cello, a Moes
and Moes. "The old instruments are getting scarcer,
and the new ones are getting more wonderful. We
may be entering a new golden age of
instrument-making."
Whatever he plays, 47-year-old Yo-Yo Ma has had
an extraordinary run of success. Of the 50 albums
he has released, 14 have won Grammys, and there
have often been three or four of his records in the
classical charts at the same time.
He established his name playing sublime versions of
the great classic cello warhorses from Bach,
Schumann, Elgar, Haydn and others, but in the past
few years has gone wildly eclectic (and off the rails
according to some critics). He has played with vocal
improviser Bobby McFerrin and Appalachian folk
fiddlers, and recorded the modernist tango
compositions of Astor Piazzolla. (The Soul of Tango
disc was a million-seller.)
Ma's new release, Obrigado Brazil, is his tribute to
Brazilian music, which features in his concert at the
Barbican this week with the highly regarded
guitarists the Assad Brothers and others.
In a music world that can be full of back-biting, no
one seems to have a bad word to say about Ma. I
ask him if perhaps, beneath his well-balanced
exterior, he is just as neurotic as everyone else.
"One thing I will admit to is a serious case of
wanderlust," he says. This can be exhausting for
him. "You perhaps don't understand the language,
you're a guest trying not to offend your hosts, and
you have to think about basic safety issues. But I
want to know the world. You can discover incredible
things."
Among the "incredible things" he mentions is a
medieval plectrum he found decorated with an
elephant, a Persian man and a Chinese landscape.
"I'm fascinated by the links between trade and
culture - the silk fragments in Egyptian tombs,
oriental mandalas with the signs of the Zodiac."
Such interests helped trigger his hugely ambitious
"Silk Road" project, named after the trading route
that connected the Mediterranean world with China.
"It was the internet of antiquity," he says.
After new sea routes reduced the importance of the
old Silk Road, Central Asia became something of a
cultural and economic backwater. Ma's project, with
funding from numerous sources such as the Aga
Khan's Foundation, hopes to help re-invigorate
Central Asian music by commissioning and promoting
local composers and organising collaborative music
projects with Western musicians, including himself.
The man behind much of the research is Ted Levin, a
musicologist who spent much of the past 25 years
exploring the area, writing a revelatory book, The
Hundred Thousand Fools of God, in the process. The
rich musical life of the courts of Bukhara, for
example, is something most people will have no
inkling of, let alone guess what its music was like.
Ma has great faith in the power of culture to "help
build bridges and understanding" in this particularly
volatile region. "Just to go to somewhere like
Kazakhstan as a foreigner and to be concerned with
something other than oil is a positive thing to do."
A "Silk Road" music festival in Washington last year
was a stunning success for an event featuring such
apparently obscure music. More than 800,000
people attended. Ma is very aware of the power of
fame. "You have to use yourself well," he says.
When I met him he had just premiered new works
by two contemporary Chinese composers in a
programme that would normally struggle to sell
tickets. Ma's fame ensured a sell-out.
He also loves to study the connections between
things such as the violin-like Chinese erhu and the
fiddlers of Scotland or Tennessee, or to discover
earlier versions of the cello, such as the Mongolian
morin khuur, "which means horse-hair fiddle
because of the shape of the scroll. The cello is a
relatively modern upstart."
Ma concurs when I suggest his connecting East and
West in this way may have a personal, perhaps
therapeutic effect for him. "Of course, because I was
born of Chinese parents in Paris, it helps make
sense of my own life."
Having been brought up on both French and
Chinese music, he ended up studying at the Juilliard
School in the States. Unusually for a musician, he
also studied such subjects as anthropology at
Harvard.
He has a vast array of interests, collaborating with
gardeners, dancers and even ice-skaters Torvill and
Dean in his film of interpretations of Bach's Cello
Suites: "I get terribly excited when I discover great
artists in whatever field."
I ask him if he ever yearns for a quiet life. He says
he is trying to slow down and has set up home in
Boston with his wife and two children.
"There have been times at the end of the year when
I can't even remember where I've been. I'm trying to
spend more time with my family and only to go to
places there's a good reason for going and do only
things I really care about."
When I met him he was just off to Uzbekistan - it's a
safe bet that he's not going to throw his passport
away yet.
Yo-Yo Ma performs with the Assad Brothers at the
Barbican on Saturday. 'Obrigado Brazil' is released
on Sony Classical.