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.

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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2019 Tanglewood schedule

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!