Music
Yo-Yo Ma
Cellist, winner of 20 Grammy Awards
Born 1955
Photo: Joi Ito · CC BY 2.0
«Culture is not a luxury. It is a necessity, a way of understanding one another.»
Yo-Yo Ma is the world's best-known cellist, a child prodigy who played for President Kennedy at seven and has since recorded everything from Bach to bluegrass and Argentine tango. Founder of the Silkroad ensemble, he holds 20 Grammy Awards and the US Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Key achievements
- Nineteen Grammy Awards
- Founded the Silkroad Ensemble, 1998
Universities
Cambridge, Massachusetts
AB in anthropology, 1976, after training at the Juilliard School; honorary doctorate in 1991.
New York, Manhattan
Briefly enrolled while still a Juilliard student, then left for Harvard.
Facts
- He entered Harvard at 16 and deliberately restricted his concert schedule, taking courses in anthropology, German literature and history to experience life beyond music.
- He chose anthropology because he wanted to understand how music fits into human culture, a question that later drove Silkroad, his ensemble of musicians from countries along the ancient trade route.
- In November 1962, aged seven, he performed at a fundraising concert conducted by Leonard Bernstein with President Kennedy in the audience.
- He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011; in 2021 he gave an impromptu recital at a vaccination clinic in Massachusetts after receiving his second dose.
Photographs
Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences; the author and licence are shown on each image.