A Music Prose

This concert is like a mixed media painting, titled “an evening with Yo-Yo Ma: Reflections in Words and Music”. It’s a music prose consisting of pictures, videos, stories, poems and songs. It’s a story of cultures, natures, wars and peace. It’s a lecture of humanity. The program is empty and the format is new, but it feels natural like a summer night chat with your neighbors. Different from the most famous musicians, Yo-Yo Ma is like an old friend and accompanied my grownup years. He has this familiar Asian face, and is always carrying deary and earthy smiles; he is not above us but like one of us. He said “I hate art for the art sake, why not art for the life sake”. This is probably why he went to the Harvard to get a degree of Anthropology after years at Juilliard —he wanted his art rooted in humanity.

The concert has no intermissions, no bands, and no live collaborators. Yo-Yo Ma is the stage from the beginning to the end. When we walked in, the concert hasn’t started. He was on the stage and answering questions from the audience. One of them asked “who is his favorite movie music composer” “John Williams, he uses music to tell stories”

The concert starts with his favorite Johann Sebastian Bach Cello Suite No. 1. No.1 has this prelude feeling. He introduced this music in this way, “I started to learn Cello at year 4. At home, there are tiger parents, not only one, but two. You can imagine my childhood days were lonely, accompanied by music, french poems, Chinese diaries, … As a little kid, I constantly felt unsafe. I found a friend who I can go to and protected me” Then he started playing Bach’s Cello Suite.

“My father wanted me to become an artist but he also wants me to be obedient. Artists need to have their own points of views, how an artist can be obedient” “One of my music professors said, Yo-Yo you play great music, but you don’t have your own voice”. “What is my own voice? what is the voice of us?” Then he played a variety of different pieces, and the screens showed pictures where he visited the north and south Korean border, Mexican and US border, middle east, Africa tribes … It’s his exploration of his own voice.

Then the topic is moved to different cultures and they are connected. One cute point here I remembered vividly is that he played fiddler using his cello with some folk and blue grass style, and then transitioned to Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos (my favorite).

“What is the soul of the America?” Here he played pieces from George Gershwin – Rhapsody in Blue, Dvorak – New World Symphony, and then some jazzy.

He discussed about the war from his own growing up experience, and asked why human can be so cruel to kill each other, and said that we just planetary people. Here, he played the Shostakovich’s piece, quite dark. He said “We want meaning not power. We should do things with a motivation, not because we can.”

He also explored the relations of music and nature. The screen played the video of Humpback whales filmed by Roger Horrocks where he showed that cello can make the whale sound :). The screen also played the pictures from Hubble and James Webb, where Yo-Yo Ma played with the piano recording made by his 25 years-old astrophysics friend.

On the topic of destruction and reconstruction, Yo-Yo played Bach Cello Suite No. 6. The music leads us into a video of newly built Notre Dame, grand ceilings, golden, holly and saint scenes.

Yo-Yo Ma’s performance is always precise and delicate. Of course, the musicality makes all the music notes united into one, and has this power of guiding you through scenes and stories and interpreting cultures and thoughts. At the end of the concert, Yo-Yo Ma explores the theme of truth and trust, and finding peace. The entire concert hall reads the Maya Angelou’s poem, “A Brave and Startling Truth”, accompanied beautiful cello music. Then he leads us to sing ” “Dona Nobis Pacem (Give Us Peace)”.

A Brave And Startling Truth
We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth

And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms

The concert is like a mass, purified our minds, calmed our souls and brought us some clarity of moving forward.