With a global audience, Ma models a way of being that goes against the grain of cynicism, polarization and isolation. It\u2019s up to us to pay attention.<\/p>\n
From The New York Times<\/a><\/p>\n By Joshua Barone<\/p>\n It isn\u2019t easy to interview Yo-Yo Ma. Not because he is one of the most famous musicians alive, a cellist who has been playing for world leaders since he was 7. Nor because he tends to answer questions with long stories rather than sound bites. The challenge is that he would rather be talking about you.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s nobody that\u2019s not interesting,\u201d he said by way of explanation during a recent interview at his hotel while performing in Denver. The night before, he had given a vivid, freshly insightful account of Dvorak\u2019s Cello Concerto with the Colorado Symphony for thousands of people at Red Rocks. I had been sent there to report on his life at 70 and how he is reconciling age with relentless ambition, so my instinct was to shift the focus back to him. But I quickly learned what former President Barack Obama meant when he once said of Ma, \u201cFor every question you ask him, he asks you two in return.\u201d<\/p>\n Ma\u2019s way of speaking would seem like deflection or false modesty if he didn\u2019t behave that way with everyone. \u201cYou can\u2019t fake it,\u201d the composer Ang\u00e9lica Negr\u00f3n said. Before the Red Rocks concert, I had followed him throughout the season: to recitals and a concerto premiere, to events that had little to do with music, far from any auditorium. Whether he was meeting a fellow artist, a fan or a community organizer, he was attentive and curious, willing to put his work on hold if it meant getting to know someone.<\/p>\n He is a sincerely committed humanist in a time that more readily rewards cynicism. He sees people as an ecosystem, deeply connected to one another and to nature at large, in an age of algorithms nudging us into echo chambers. When he speaks about immigration or education, he avoids the brash, polarizing rhetoric that reigns today, subtly treating these topics as matters of ethics rather than politics.<\/p>\n What if we followed his example?<\/p>\n \u201cI look for models of behavior in other people,\u201d said Stephen Colbert, who is a close friend. \u201cHis position is Olympian; his behavior is not.\u201d And, increasingly, Ma\u2019s way of being is being incorporated into his public-facing work through his organization Sound Postings. He can hardly make a tour stop without some kind of community program, like a conversation about gun violence in Chicago or a farm dinner in West Virginia. He has embarked on yearslong projects that may take him to national parks, for instance, or a nightclub in Lebanon. When he addresses audiences, he mixes expressions of wonder about time and memory with worries for the future, especially when it comes to the environment.<\/p>\n Because of who he is, maybe people will listen. \u201cIf he\u2019s putting in that much work,\u201d the historian Heather Cox Richardson said, \u201chow can we do anything less?\u201d<\/p>\n AT THIS POINT, Ma\u2019s eminence and celebrity are givens. This is a musician who, born in France to Chinese immigrants, visited the United States as a 7-year-old and quickly impressed the great cellist Pablo Casals. It wasn\u2019t long before he found himself performing for President John F. Kennedy at a concert hosted by Leonard Bernstein. Since then he has hung out with Elmo and Mr. Rogers on television, sold millions of albums and accumulated shelves\u2019 worth of Grammy Awards, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Obama.<\/p>\n \u201cBut maybe the most amazing thing about Yo-Yo Ma,\u201d Obama has said, \u201cis that everybody likes him.\u201d<\/p>\n Read the full story.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With a global audience, Ma models a way of being that goes against the grain of cynicism, polarization and isolation. It\u2019s up to us to pay attention. From The New York Times By Joshua Barone It isn\u2019t easy to interview Yo-Yo Ma. Not because he is one of the most famous musicians alive, a cellist … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17632,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18925"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18925\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18928,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18925\/revisions\/18928"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/17632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}