Yo-Yo Ma at Tanglewood

Yo-Yo Ma is a golden thread in the Tanglewood tapestry. That's a nice sentence of praise, but it's a bad metaphor, because Yo-Yo Ma is more versatile than gold. In my twenty years on the Tanglewood beat, he has been at the heart of a range of programs so diverse that it boggles the mind. From assembling a mini-festival in celebration of Brazilian music, to accompanying James Taylor on various occassions, to his ground-breaking ensembles The Silk Road Project and the Goat Rodeo, Yo-Yo Ma is the quintessential artist - ever searching, ever growing.

Yo-Yo Ma performs Bach’s Six Cello Suites at Tanglewood

Article updated August 15, 2019 by Dave Read

Yo-Yo Ma performed Bach’s Six Cello Suites Aug. 11 at Tanglewood, one of 36 venues on six continents during his Bach Project, an initiative designed to “…bind us together as one world, and guide us to political and economic decisions that benefit the entire species.” When we reached the center of Lenox, two miles from Tanglewood and twenty minutes ahead of show time, we knew we were bound to be late.

Yo-Yo Ma performs Bach's Six Cello Suites at Tanglewood; Hilary Scott photo. — Yo-Yo Ma performs Bach’s Six Cello Suites at Tanglewood; Hilary Scott photo.

We were not alone, though, another eighteen and a half thousands attended the approximately two hour concert that was delayed half an hour. To nobody’s surprise, former cello student and local favorite James Taylor popped up for an encore – Suite Baby James, to bring about a synthesis of pop music stardom and musical artistry.

Yo-Yo Ma is far and away the brightest star in the firmament of classical music, and perhaps the world’s most important artist as well. How generous of him to devise such an ambitious enterprise, built around music composed three hundred years ago, music he recorded during the Reagan administration, music he began playing as a child in the 1950s.

With a home in Tyringham and nearly annual performances at Tanglewood, Ma is a familiar presence in the Berkshires. This is where in 1998 he began another trans-national project, the Silkroad Ensemble. Today, “Silkroad seeks and practices radical cultural collaboration in many forms, cultivating unexpected connections and fostering empathy and trust to create a more hopeful world.”

As we learned a couple weeks ago by attending the master class Mr. Ma conducted, with three Tanglewood Music Center fellows and an Ozawa Hall audience of one thousand, these compositions by Bach invite the musician to examine the full range of human emotion. While attending their performance by Yo-Yo Ma, the auditor can enter a mental realm that may be analogous to a fragrant hot bath – it alters one’s perception of their own mass, while arousing in the mind a broad smile.

So we pinched ourself at regular intervals tonight to keep alert to the performance, especially to marvel at Ma’s own expressive countenance, as varied, and with segues as imperceptable, as those in Bach’s suites. By his very nature, the artist is as restless as any citizen. With a body of work and accomplishments as broad and deep as his, Yo-Yo Ma must be a very restless fellow. Even so, we’ve never seen anybody look as contented and happy as he does, playing the cello.

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2019 Tanglewood schedule

The Boston Symphony Orchestra has released the schedule for the 2019 season at Tanglewood, which will be remembered for the opening of the Tanglewood Learning Institute, the four buildings overlooking Seiji Ozawa Hall on the Leonard Bernstein camopus.

Music director Andris Nelsons will be present for the month of July, conducting 13 programs, including the world premiere of a new work by Kevin Puts, The Brightness of Light, based on letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz on July 20, and a concert performance of Wagner’s complete Die Walküre on july 27 and 28.

Yo-Yo Ma leads master class at Tanglewood

Article updated August 1, 2019 by Dave Read

Sometimes life in the Berkshires will feel like an embarrassment of riches, such as when you can attend a master class led by Yo-Yo Ma, as brilliant as any artist at work today, held in Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, a structure and a setting as aesthetically pleasing as J.S. Bach’s Suites for Unaccompanied Cello. The event is part of Tanglewood’s new Tanglewood Learning Institute OpenStudio program.

Yo-Yo Ma and TMC Cello Fellow Isaac Berglind (Hilary Scott)

Ma’s students were three Tanglewood Music Center Fellows – Isaac Bergland from Seattle, WA, Shangwen Liao, from Shenzen, Guangdong, China, and Ethan Brown from NY, NY. Each is nearning the end of intense musical educations and the beginnings of careers as cellists. You can’t help but think that such a class must be at least a little bit like a minor league baseball player getting batting tips from Ted Williams – in front of an audience!

Yo-Yo Ma, TMC Fellow Shangwen Liao, and an audience member explore the Bach Cello Suites (Hilary Scott)

And speaking of audience, when Mr. Ma asked for someone who does Irish dance, a gentleman leapt on stage faster than you can spell shilelagh! Whether or not Ma was expecting someone like the frenetic Michael Flatley, his volunteer performed a brief sample of “old time Irish dancing” while Shangwen Liao played a Bach passage.

TMC Cello Fellow Ethan Brown and Yo-Yo Ma during the TLI OpenStudio (Hilary Scott)

The exercise demonstrated some fine point of musicianship that lays beyond my ken, but also revealed something about spontaniety and being available for fun. As wonderful as their playing sounded to these undisciplined ears, each student also manifest aplomb and good humor – even glee, as when Liao grinned a thumbs-up to the audience while Maestro Ma swapped chairs for him!

Yo-Yo Ma cello master class Ozawa Hall; Dave Conlin Read photo.

2019 Tanglewood schedule

JT and Yo-Yo on the porch

Article updated July 15, 2019 by Dave Read

This video of James Taylor being accompanied by Yo-Yo Ma on Sweet Baby James, recorded Sept. 15, 2008 on the porch of the Red Lion Inn at Stockbridge, is blowing up the Internet – at least my little piece of it!

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2019 Tanglewood schedule

Yo Yo Ma’s Goat Rodeo Show at Tanglewood

August 15, 2013 performance by Dave Read

If Tanglewood were simply Tanglewood, summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, its Tanglewood Music Center and eight or nine weeks of classical music performed by the BSO and their various guest soloists and conductors, we Berkshires locals would have plenty to be grateful for. But it is so much more, for so many reasons, not least of which is that Yo Yo Ma claims it as a sort of home for his seemingly boundless musical explorations. Incidentally, he also has an actual home in the Berkshires. (Goat Rodeo Show at Tanglewood photo: Hilary Scott).

His latest musical trip led to the Goat Rodeo Sessions, the 2011 album he recorded with bsssist Edgar Meyer, fiddler Stuart Duncan, and mandolinist Chris Thile, which won Grammys for Best Folk and Best Engineered non-classical. Both the album and tonight’s show featured singer Aoife O’Donovan, of Crooked Still and Sometymes Why. She reprised No One But You, Here and Heaven, from the album and added a stunning rendition of Bob Dylan’s Farewell, Angelina.

Everybody but Mr. Ma took turns on other instruments; Meyer played piano on Franz and the Eagle, and No One But You; Thile, whose singing blended nicely with Ms. O’Donovan’s, also played fiddle and guitar; Duncan also played banjo. Except that Ma seemed to indicate that Meyer is musical director, the impression from the audience is that these are four musicians equally expert in their own domains and equally excited to be making music with peers, just for the fun of it.

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Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble June 24, 2012 concert review

June 24, 2012 Article by Dave Read

Yo-Yo Ma with musicians from the Silk Road Ensemble, Ozawa Hall, Tanglewood.; photo: Hilary Scott.

Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble got the BSO’s 75th anniversary season at Tanglewood off to a rousing start with a pair of concerts in Ozawa Hall June 22 and 24. Whatever Maestro Koussevitsky had in mind when he established the orchestra’s retreat and training center in the Berkshires, not even a visionary of his stature would have forseen a concert opening with a green haired gaita player wending her way through the audience.

As the musicians assembled on stage and settled into an improvisation called Wandering Winds, Christina Pato, a raven-haired Spaniard (streaked with Kelly green), strolled through the audience on the lawn playing the gaita, the bagpipe of the Galician people of Spain. She is the second Galician bagpiper I’ve seen in concert, after Carlos Nunez, who toured with the Chieftains years ago. He drew references to Jimi Hendrix for the novelty his style and flair bore in comparison to highland pipers.

Galician bagpiper Christina Pato

Although fresh and original to all appearances, Ms. Pato is anything but a novelty act. She has a Doctorate from Rutgers and briefcase full of other academic credentials, leads her own touring band, and is a member of the Silk Road leadership council. The prominence of her role in this report is a function of my predilections; the show was so varied and full of treats that one couldv’ve focused on a dozen other elements.

Such as the finale, Turceasca, from the Romanian gypsy tradition. It allowed all 17 musicians to seem to solo simultaenously, until a duet/duel developed between Wu Tong and (oops!) Ms. Pato. Wu Tong plays the Chinese sheng with the verve and personality one remembers from Dizzy Gillespie.

Besides the role of host/MC, Yo Yo Ma was largely an ensemble player, except on Qasida, premiered on the 22nd. A Silk Road commission by Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky, from Uzbekistan, it was written for MA to play with Kayhan Kalhor on the ancient Persian kamancheh.

There were 20-30 minutes of encores, which resulted in as upbeat and cheerful an exiting audience as I’ve ever seen. They are sure to regale their friends about this event, a concert by the Silk Road Ensemble, at Ozawa Hall where Yo Yo Ma founded it in 2000. Depending on their predilections, they may focus their reports on the pipa, or the tablas, or the jang-go.

PBS film of Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble at Tanglewood

Article by Dave Conlin Read.

Yo Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble opens Tanglewood schedule on June 22, 2012 — Yo Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble opens Tanglewood schedule on June 22, 2012

The June 24, 2012 concert by Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble in Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood was great fun, as we reported at the time. We haven’t seen the DVD from the show, but the film that premiered MAy 9 on PBS is a wonderful souvenir of the event. Whereas the concert was over two hours long, the 60 minute TV version, which included perhaps 15 minutes of non-performance material, fully conveyed how brilliant and exciting this ensemble is. Here’s hoping it makes it onto heavy rotation on PBS!

Yo Yo Ma tops Tanglewood program

Report of August 1, 2010 perfromance by Dave Conlin Read.

The composition of a Tanglewood program itself sometimes enhances the enjoyment of the various compositions that comprise a program; a transcending element to go along with the enjoyment of the program as performed by the musicians. On paper, this program at Tanglewood was sure to attact a large audience because of the presence on the bill of cellist Yo Yo Ma and the inclusion of the broadly popular Pictures At An Exhibition (the Maurice Ravel orchestration of Mussogorsky’s composition), under the direction of conductor Charles Dutoit, who has been a frequest guest here and in Boston for nearly 30 years.

And, with the cooperation of the iffy Berkshires weather, the Koussevitsky Music Shed was full and a few thousand more patrons and picnicers populated the lawn. But it was the opening item on the program that we found most remarkable; Jean Sibelius’ “Karelia” Suite, Opus 11, which had never been performed at Tanglewood, and only once by the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Not only would we like to hear it again here, but we wonder why it hasn’t made it onto the regular rotation (if there is such?); it felt like a paean to this place – particularly the immediate Tanglewood environs as well as the greater Berkshires.

Which comports with the composition’s origin as a commission on the history of Karelia, the densely wooded region in northern Europe. Besides a delightful variety of sounds from the percussion section, the piece has an overall deeply sonorous feel. Gazing outside the Shed, the surrounding trees seemed to be as attentive to the music as the paying audience was.

When Yo Yo Ma settles onto the soloists chair near the podium, as he did to perform the Cello Concerto in E Minor, Opus 85, by Edward Elgar, holding cello and bow, it’s as if a new entity comes into being. Well, a pedestrain witness does himself no favor trying to describe artistry at this level. Berkshires resident Ma, who by all accounts is a friendly and humble gentleman, makes music at a level that could inspire composers, as a profound event or dazzling landscape would.

On the other hand, having such a popular soloist, or widely familiar piece on the program, always attracts patrons who are unfamiliar with symphony audience protocal; they’re like new parents who applaud every movement.

James Taylor and Yo Yo Ma video – Sweet Baby James

For more about James Taylor, please see our review of the big surprise 60th birthday celebration that was embedded into the July 4, 2008 James Taylor and his Band of Legends concert at Tanglewood.

Reviews of James Taylor concerts at Tanglewood and the Colonial Theatre, Pittsfield:

Video clips of James Taylor and Yo Yo MA on Good Morning America’s live broadcast from the Red Lion Inn, Stockbridge, Sept. 15, 2008

Tan Dun’s The Map, with Yo Yo Ma at Tanglewood

August 7, 2004 performance by Dave Read

Among the many memorable images from this Tanglewood program was this tableau: a Paris-born Chinese cellist and a Siberian violinist trading jazzy licks with the video-taped image of a Chinese leaf blower. Coming during the second movement of Tan Dun’s nine-part composition The Map, Concerto for Cello, Video, and Orchestra, the cellist was Yo Yo Ma, the violinist was B.S.O. Associate Concertmaster Tamara Smirnova, and it drew a round of amused applause from the audience of 9,021.

Somehow this was a night of roots music, perhaps the last thing you’d expect on a Saturday evening in the midst of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s annual sojourn in the Berkshires. And it demonstrated that music is blissfully ignorant of geography, having a way of melding ethnic sounds to speak a language known by each of us, regardless us where, or to whom, we were born.

stone drum, I Ching, shamanism

Maybe the oddest thing is that, in the most literal sense, this evening of brilliant playing by the Boston Symphony was rooted in rock music! That’s right folks, it all came about because of an encounter Maestro Dun had during a visit to his native Hunan province in 1981, while a student at Bejing’s Central Conservatory, with an old man who practiced ba gua stone drumming.

Tan recalled of the old man, who combined principles of the I Ching with shamanistic vocalizations, “The man talked to the wind. He talked both to this life and the past one. I had nothing to offer him, or even to make a record of him, but I promised that one day I would return.”

By the time of his return in 1999, no longer a student but a graduate of Columbia University (Doctor of Musical Arts), with a commission for Yo Yo Ma and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the ba gua drummer, and his tradition, had died. In order to reconstruct his “personal memory of someone who could do something that no one else could do,” Dun made two trips to capture the musical life of the Tuija, Miao, and Dong people, 3 of China’s 55 ethnic minority groups.

Tan describes The Map as being “about minority cultures in China, looking at the past as well as the future” – and as a reconstruction of his own “personal memory of someone who could do something that no one else could.” His aim was to invent an entirely new form, keeping the source material in its pure state on the video screen while simultaneously exploring its timbres in orchestral terms. (Source: program notes by Ken Smith.)

The evening opened with Yo Yo Ma and The Silk Road Ensemble presenting Music from The Silk Road Project.

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Yo-Yo Ma’s Brazil at Tanglewood

August 3, 2003 Tanglewood concert review by Dave Read

The esteem for Yo Yo Ma is widespread, extending even to the climate gods, who transformed Tanglewood into a rain forest August 3 to accommodate the five Brazilian, one Cuban, and one British musician who collaborated with him in the Koussevitsky Music Shed for a concert billed as Yo Yo Ma’s Brazil: An Evening of Latin American Music.

The concert opened with Ma and his long-time pianist and fellow-musical traveler Kathryn Stott playing three songs: first by the contemporary Peruvian composer Antonio Mariano and then Brazilians Heitor Villa Lobos and Carmargo Mozart Guarnieri, each of whom came to Boston in the 1940s to conduct the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Sérgio and Odair Assad guitar duets

Ma doubled on mic as MC to introduce the first tunes and then the guitar duo Sérgio and Odair Assad who played an assortment of songs including compositions by Mariano, Villa Lobos, Bandolim, Jobim, Piazzolla, and one composed by Sérgio called Menino.

As Ma noted, the Assads are in the vanguard of the re-emergence of the popularity of the guitar duo, and their performance tonight showed why. The brothers play matching Millenium guitars (by Thomas Humphrey; Sérgio plays a cedar-top, Odair plays a spruce-top). Their harmonies are intricate and engaging, and they play such clear tones that at points it sounded like one was hearing a piano.

Sérgio introduced Menino by calling it “an innocent piece about a child,” and it evoked an image of a child’s day as it unfolded: busy and restful, with daydreams and excitements. Ma’s cello part served to create the frame within which the Assads painted their charming portrait of childhood. On their next piece, Bandolim’s Noites carlocas, Ma listened along with the rest of the audience as the brothers cut loose for some very impressive, very jazzy playing.

Yo Yo Ma introduces Nilson Matta, Rosa Passos

Next to come on stage, with Ma’s introductions, were: Nilson Matta, “to join me in playing a lower bass instrument,” Cyro Baptista, with 75 percussion instruments, lots of flair and humor, and Rosa Passos, “with a miraculous voice.” In various combinations, they closed out the first set with three pieces by Antonio Carlos Jobim (1925-1994), the man whose song The Girl From Ipanema brought global popularity to Bossa Nova in the early 1960s.

The whole ensemble but Odair played Jobim’s O Amor em Paz, which was a highlight of the evening, showcasing both the translucence and seductive wistfulness of Passos’ singing and Ma’s virtuosity which he demonstrated by following her first verse with a cello solo – in Portugese! – which echoed her phrasing note-for-note.

The set’s last song was introduced by Baptista, who is from Brazil’s rain forest: to some applause he said the song is called The Rains of March, – but wait, I forgot something – tonight it is called The Rains of August!. The highlight of his contribution on that piece was the delicious percussion he produced by rubbing his palms and wrists up and down against each other, looking something like a pizza tosser with limbs as pliable as dough.

virtuosity and charm of Paquito D’Rivera on display

The second set opened with Ma’s introduction of “the legendary Paquito D’Rivera,” who ambled onto the stage and displayed his Victor Borge-like playfulness before he displayed his virtuosic clarinet playing. The first five songs of the set had Paquito D’Rivera playing along with a variety of ensembles; the first and fifth were compositions of his, Preludio Y Merengue and Afro. The latter tune was something of a showcase for Baptista, who played a berimbau, an Afro-Brazilian instrument with which he produced haunting, ethereal sounds.

Before closing with two rousing full-ensemble pieces, Ma played a duet with his pianist Stott, Gismonti’s Bodas de Prata/Quatro Cantos, which was elegant and showed their affection for each other; and then Piazzolla’s Tango Suite with the Assads, which was dazzling and included all three musicians at times tapping out the rhythm on their instruments.

The encores turned out to look like a courting ritual between Rosa Passos and Paquito D’Rivera, as amid the spirited playing around them and with the audience dancing up to the foot of the stage, they couldn’t take their eyes off one another, and D’Rivera even suggested a way to a tryst when he segued into Take the A Train! That’s about when Passos, who had expressed her love for Mr. Ma several times already, declared, I love Paquito D’Rivera.

And off to the muddy parking lots of Tanglewood slogged a few thousand, not a few carrying crushes for Ms. Passos, and all full of gratitude to Yo Yo Ma for his brilliance as a musician, excellence as a talent scout, and overall generosity of spirit.