Hodgepodge 21/365 - Yo-Yo Ma

A number of years ago a Flickr friend who shares my birthday, Jodi in NYC, said that as part of her birthday observance she was making a yearlong bucket list: thirty-something goals for the number of years she was turning, to be completed by her next birthday.

I thought that was an interesting idea—to consider some things I'd never done and would like to do, or some things I do all too rarely and would like to do more of.

Me, I was turning forty-something, which made the challenge more daunting. But I slapped together a list. Of which, over the course of the year, I ticked off maybe half a dozen items. If that. But one thing I did tick off was seeing Yo-Yo Ma perform.

I've been thinking about that today, in the run-up to my next birthday. Wondering if I'd like to try another such list, and what sorts of entries it should have, if so. Are there any performers I'd love to see? New places I'd like to go, or old favorites revisit? Would I like to make a trip to New York and attend some plays on Broadway? Try to raise potatoes? Get the motorcycle up and running? Buy a nice outfit to go with my new red shoes? I'm already booked to go to Israel, a long-held dream, and return to Rome and Venice—would it be cheating to put those on the list?

I probably won't make such a list. But I'm glad I did that year, because otherwise I most likely would never have seen Yo-Yo Ma. But I did: he was playing, in San Francisco, with Emanuel Ax, as I gather he does frequently. Piano-cello duets. I no longer remember what they played. Some Beethoven, I'm pretty sure. But no Bach—again, pretty sure. I want to say César Franck, but a list of cello-piano duets is not corroborating that notion. Mendelssohn? Rachmaninoff? Well, who knows. (Fickle memory.) Whatever it was, though, I know I liked it.

The writer Mark Salzman, in an excellent New Yorker profile by Lawrence Weschler, "The Novelist and the Nun," describes seeing Yo-Yo in recital when he, Salzman, then an aspiring cellist about to attend Yale to study music, was sixteen.

I'll never forget how Yo-Yo walked out onto the stage. I mean, most performers walk out completely stiff, like this, and you can sense the sobriety, the utter focus, the intense concentration—the barely concealed terror. And I don't even mean that as a criticism: the technical level expected of performers nowadays is so insanely high that you'd be crazy if you weren't terrified. Yo-Yo, by contrast, came out like this—totally relaxed, guffawing, almost slap-happy, casually waving to friends in the audience, you know, "Oh wow, great, what are you doing here?" Completely, but completely unfazed.
     And then he started to play. Bach—the fifth suite for unaccompanied cello. And his playing was so beautiful, so original, so intelligent, so effortless that by the end of the first movement I knew my cello career was over. I kid you not. People talk about Yo-Yo Ma's superhuman technique. Let me tell you: superhuman technique is only the tip of the Yo-Yo iceberg. What really sank my ship was how much he was obviously enjoying himself: he was lost in the music, freed by it, speaking through it, in love with it. He was enjoying himself as much playing as most of the rest of us do when we're listening, and as I myself never did when playing, not to speak of practicing.

I was so struck by that beautiful description of a man completely and utterly at ease with himself and his art. The profile was from 2000. It was probably around that same year that I went to hear Yo-Yo. Perhaps there's a link. I don't remember.

Anyway. Here is Yo-Yo Ma playing the Bach Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major:

But he's not all about classical music. Here's Goat Rodeo Sessions, also featuring Stuart Duncan on fiddle, Edgar Meyer on bass, Chris Thile on mandolin, and singer Aoife o'Donovan:

And finally, I found this video of a seven-year-old Yo-Yo playing with his sister for John F. Kennedy:

If I do make another list for next year, maybe I'll put Yo-Yo on it again. It's almost reason enough to go ahead and just do it.