Yo-Yo Ma (born October 7, 1955) is an American cellist. Born to Chinese parents in Paris, he was regarded as a child prodigy, and began to study the cello with his father at age four. Ma moved with his family to Boston at age seven and later to New York City, where he continued his cello studies at the Juilliard School before pursuing a liberal arts education at Harvard University. He has performed as a soloist with orchestras around the world, recorded more than 92 albums, and received 20 Grammy Awards.
In addition to recordings of the standard classical repertoire, Ma has recorded a wide variety of folk music, such as American bluegrass music, traditional Chinese melodies, the tangos of Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla, and Brazilian music. He has also collaborated with artists from a diverse range of genres, including Bobby McFerrin, Carlos Santana, Chris Botti, Diana Krall, James Taylor, Miley Cyrus, Zakir Hussain, and Sting.
Ma has been a United Nations Messenger of Peace since 2006. He has received numerous awards, including the Avery Fisher Prize in 1978, The Glenn Gould Prize in 1999, the National Medal of Arts in 2001,National Medal of Arts , National Endowment for the Arts. the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011, Kennedy Center Honors in 2011, the Polar Music Prize in 2012, and the Birgit Nilsson Prize in 2022. He was named one of Times 100 most influential people of 2020. Ma's primary performance cello is the Davidov Stradivarius, made in 1712 by Antonio Stradivari.
Early life and education Ma's mother, Marina Lu, was a singer, and his father, Hiao-Tsiun Ma, was a Ningpo city violinist, composer, and professor of music at National Central University (now in Taoyuan, Taiwan). They both migrated from China to France. Ma's sister, Yeou-Cheng, played the violin and piano professionally before obtaining a medical degree from Harvard Medical School and becoming a pediatrician. The family moved to Boston when Ma was seven.
From the age of three, Ma played the drums, violin, piano, and later viola, but settled on the cello in 1960 at age four. When three-year-old Ma said he wanted a big instrument, his father went to see Étienne Vatelot, a foremost violin maker in Paris who, after a chat, lent him a 1/16th cello. He jokes that his first choice was the double bass due to its large size, but he compromised and took up the cello instead. While Hiao-Tsiun handled much of his son's early music education, he eventually conceded that Ma required a more skilled teacher, and signed his son up for cello lessons with Michelle Lepinte. He began performing before audiences at age five and played for presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy when he was seven. At age eight, he appeared on American television with his sister in an event introduced by Leonard Bernstein. In 1964, Isaac Stern introduced them on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and they performed a sonata by Giovanni Battista Sammartini. After moving to New York, Ma enrolled at the Juilliard School, where he studied with Leonard Rose and attended Trinity School and the Professional Children's School, from which he graduated at age 15.Whiting, Jim "Yo-Yo Ma: A Biography" p.39 He appeared as a soloist with the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra in a performance of Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme.
Ma attended Columbia University, but dropped out. He later enrolled at Harvard College. Before entering Harvard, Ma played in the Marlboro Festival Orchestra under the direction of cellist and conductor Pablo Casals, Ma's childhood hero. He spent four summers at the Marlboro Music Festival after meeting and falling in love with Mount Holyoke College sophomore and festival administrator Jill Hornor during his first summer there in 1972.
Even before that, Ma gained fame and performed with many of the world's major orchestras. He has also played chamber music, often with pianist Emanuel Ax, with whom he has a close friendship from their days at Juilliard. Ma received his bachelor's degree in anthropology from Harvard in 1976, and in 1991 received an honorary doctorate from Harvard.
Career
Ma was featured on John Williams's soundtrack to the Hollywood film Seven Years in Tibet (1997). He was heard on the soundtrack of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003). He collaborated with Williams again on the score for Memoirs of a Geisha (2005). He has also worked with Italian composer Ennio Morricone and has recorded Morricone's compositions of the Dollars Trilogy, including The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, as well as Once Upon a Time in America, The Mission, and The Untouchables. He has recorded over 90 albums, 19 of which won Grammy Awards. He received the Award of Excellence from New York's International Center.
In addition to his prolific musical career, Ma collaborated in 1999 with landscape architects to design a Bach-inspired garden. Known as the Music Garden, it interprets Bach's Suite No. 1 in G major, with the garden's sections designed to correspond to the suite's dance movements. Toronto enthusiastically embraced the design, originally planned for Boston, and it was built in the Harbourfront neighborhood.
Ma was named Peace Ambassador by then-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in January 2006. He is a founding member of the influential Chinese-American Committee of 100, which addresses the concerns of Americans of Chinese heritage.
On November 3, 2009, President Barack Obama appointed Ma to serve on the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities. His music was featured in the 2010 documentary Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story, narrated by Academy Award winner Dustin Hoffman. In 2010, Obama announced that he would recognize Ma with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which Ma received in February 2011.
In 2010, Ma was named Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He launched the Citizen Musician initiative partnership in partnership with the orchestra's music director, Riccardo Muti. Also in 2010, he appeared on a solo album by guitarist Carlos Santana, Guitar Heaven: The Greatest Guitar Classics of All Time, playing alongside Santana and singer India Arie on the Beatles classic "While My Guitar Gently Weeps".
In 2015, Ma performed with singer-songwriter and guitarist James Taylor on three tracks of Taylor's chart-topping album Before This World. In 2019, Ma directed the orchestra at the annual Youth Music Culture Guangdong. Ma is represented by the independent artist management firm Opus 3 Artists. Ma contributed to the charity tribute album The Metallica Blacklist, released in 2021, backing Miley Cyrus on a cover of the Metallica song "Nothing Else Matters".
Ma serves on the Board of Trustees of the World Economic Forum.
Silk Road Ensemble
Ma formed his own collective, the Silk Road Ensemble, named after the route across Asia which for more than 2,000 years was used for trade between Europe and China. His goal was to bring together musicians from diverse countries that were historically linked by the Silk Road. The ensemble's recordings are issued on the Sony Classical label. He also founded Silk Road Connect, an educational pilot program for children from middle schools in the United States, including New York City.
Our Common Nature
In 2022, Ma created Our Common Nature, a series of collaborative events bringing together diverse groups of local stakeholders for music and cultural exchange in wilderness locations in the U.S. (mostly in national parks or national historic parks). These events were documented in a seven-episode companion podcast of the same name, which was released in 2025, hosted by Ana González, and produced by Alan Goffinski.
Playing style Critics have called Ma "omnivorous"; he has an eclectic repertoire. In addition to numerous recordings of the standard classical repertoire, he has recorded Baroque pieces on period instruments; American bluegrass music; traditional Chinese melodies, including the soundtrack to the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; the tangos of Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla; Brazilian music, including traditional and contemporary songs by Antônio Carlos Jobim and Pixinguinha; a collaboration with Bobby McFerrin; and the music of Philip Glass, in such works as the 2002 Naqoyqatsi.
Ma is known for his smooth, rich tone, soulful lyricism, and virtuosity. He released a cello recording of Niccolò Paganini's Caprice No. 24 for solo violin and Zoltán Kodály's Solo Sonata.
Instruments Ma's primary performance instrument is the Davidov cello, made in 1712 by Antonio Stradivari. It was previously owned by Jacqueline du Pré, who bequeathed it to him. Du Pré voiced her frustration with the cello's "unpredictability", but Ma attributed du Pré's sentiment to her impassioned playing style, adding that the Stradivarius cello must be "coaxed" by the player.: "Jackie's unbridled dark qualities went against the Davydov. You have to coax the instrument. The more you attack it, the less it returns." Before the Davidov, he performed on a 1722 Matteo Gofriller cello for much of his early career. The instrument previously belonged to the French cellist Pierre Fournier.
Ma also plays on a 1733 Domenico Montagnana cello, named the "Petunia". In 2005, it was valued at $2.5 million ($ million in prices). A student approached Ma after one of his classes in Salt Lake City and asked if the cello had a nickname. Ma replied, "No, but if I play for you, will you name it?" The student chose Petunia, and it stuck. In 1999, Ma inadvertently left the cello in a taxicab in New York City, but it was quickly returned undamaged. Also in 1999, when the cello's neck was damaged during X-ray baggage inspection, Ma borrowed the Pawle Stradivarius cello from the Chimei Museum for a concert in Taiwan. The damage was repaired in time, but Ma played both Petunia and Pawle in the concert nonetheless.
Ma also owns a modern cello made by Peter and Wendela Moes of Warrenton, Virginia; one of carbon fiber by the Luis and Clark company of Boston; and a Samuel Zygmuntowicz cello. Zygmuntowicz said he wanted to give Ma "a reason to leave his Montagnana at home."
Performances On July 5, 1986, Ma performed in the New York Philharmonic's tribute to the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty, which aired live on ABC Television. The orchestra, with conductor Zubin Mehta, performed in Central Park.
Ma performed a duet with Condoleezza Rice at the presentation of the 2001 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal Awards. He was the first performer on September 11, 2002, at the site of the World Trade Center, while the first of the names of the dead were read on the first anniversary of the attack on the WTC; he played the Sarabande from Bach's Cello Suite No. 5 in C minor. He performed a special arrangement of Sting's "Fragile" with Sting and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in the opening ceremonies of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah. He also appeared as a Pennington Great Performers series artist with the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra in 2005.
At the first inauguration of Barack Obama on January 20, 2009, Ma performed John Williams's Air and Simple Gifts with Itzhak Perlman (violin), Gabriela Montero (piano), and Anthony McGill (clarinet). The quartet played live, but a recording made two days earlier played simultaneously over speakers and on television out of concern that the cold weather could damage the instruments. Ma said, "A broken string was not an option. It was wicked cold."– Quartet pre-recorded Obama music. BBC News (January 23, 2009). Retrieved on July 1, 2011.