Yo-Yo Ma

Yo-Yo Ma

'Every once in a while, an artist goes through their life and transforms the profession by the work they have done.'

Yo-Yo Ma is reflecting on Mstislav Rostropovich, whose death has come just a week before our interview in Manchester. Poignantly, the great Russian had been due to appear at the same international festival at which Ma has just appeared, leading masterclasses and giving an utterly convincing performance of Walton's Cello Concerto - written, of course, for Rostropovich.

With Slava's death, Ma could lay legitimate claim to being the world's most famous living cellist. With mountains of Sony recordings to his name (15 of them Grammy Award winners) covering every genre of music, Ma is certainly the planet's most multi-faceted string player. Equally at home playing solo Bach, exploring Appalachian bluegrass or jamming with zither players from Azerbaijan as part of his Silk Road Ensemble, Ma has - like Rostropovich before him - transformed the musical landscape. He's done so not just through extraordinary musicianship and a willingness to take artistic risks but through a heartfelt desire to communicate his passion for music.

'I love passion because it's free and its own engine,' he explains. 'But the challenge - if you think it's the most important thing in the world - is to figure out where to place it. There's no point being passionate unless it speaks to someone but you also have to remain true to yourself and your own ideals.

'What we're taught as one of our core values as musicians is to always look at what is bigger than yourself - you always have to go into any performance aware of the micro and the macro'

'My biggest goal in life, even as a child, was the wish to understand,' he goes on. 'I was born in Paris to Chinese parents and we moved to America. Everything was so confusing to me and the world was hard to understand because we moved countries and languages but it was also impossible for me to make choices between cultures. Why, as an eight-year-old, should I give up lovely croissants and go for white bread just because I lived in the US, not Paris?'

It's exactly that cross-cultural awareness that has fuelled the Silk Road project, the single most important project of Ma's diverse career. It's an artistic exploration of the cultures found along the ancient trade routes connecting Asia with the Mediterranean. Set up nine years ago, it has led to the formation of a flexible ensemble of classical and folk musicians, concert series around the world, acclaimed recordings and even a year-long, city-wide Silk Road Festival in Chicago that culminates each year in April.

'The Silk Road gives us the ability to engage and in some way share a philosophy,' Ma explains. 'It's a way of examining our differences without looking at present-day political realities. We're exploring a shared cultural history. What we're taught as one of our core values as musicians is to always look at what is bigger than yourself - you always have to go into any performance aware of the micro and the macro. It's just about applying those principles and ways of thinking to the current realities of our world.

'Nobody today grows up listening to just one type of music - it's impossible,' he emphasises. 'I'm neither optimistic nor pessimistic about the outlook for classical music. I think if we partake in a tradition we have to ask how it is going to live on. It doesn't help to moan and groan about something - it does no good. You have to ask if what you are doing is seeding something you actually believe in. I could be playing the cello and have just figured out the most fantastic way to play a phrase - but nobody would realise that point unless I can communicate that to them effectively.

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