In 1961, Pablo Casals played for John F. Kennedy at the White House. The concert could be seen as a symbol of the importance of the arts to the Kennedy administration, or as a gesture of honor to a great cellist.
But there’s no question, when the concert is re-created next year as part of the Kennedy Center’s tribute to the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s inauguration, about who will represent Casals. When there’s a commemorative event that calls for classical music, Yo-Yo Ma is almost sure to be the person playing it.
In every generation, a few musicians reach a level of fame that takes them into an orbit beyond their art. They become iconic, like Pavarotti; they become spokesmen, like Bono; they come, at the very least, to represent their field to a wider public.
Ma, 54, has certainly reached this level. He’s one of the most recognizable classical musicians on the planet. Extroverted and smart, he’s a natural spokesman for the arts. It’s almost a matter of course that he represents classical music on the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities and is a U.N. peace ambassador.
Ara Guzelimian, dean of the Juilliard School and former artistic adviser for Carnegie Hall, has known Ma since the 1970s. “I think in Yo-Yo’s case,” he says, “all of the things he does and his public role have helped keep reinventing him as a musician. That’s not only kept him alive, but fresh.”
“I just finished playing a bunch of recitals with him,” said pianist Emanuel Ax, one of Ma’s earliest and most frequent collaborators, speaking by phone last week from Europe. “I think he’s playing better than he’s ever played.”
If Ma weren’t a cellist, he could be a world-class politician. His gift for connecting with people is stunning. Some stars have a presence that commands attention; Ma, by contrast, makes you feel like his best friend, whether you’re an orchestra musician, one of the backstage crew or the owner of the restaurant Henrietta’s Table in Cambridge, a town where he and his wife, Jill Hornor, a German professor whom he met as a teenager at the Marlboro music school in Vermont, have lived for decades.
By Anne Midgette
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 14, 2010 (excerpted)
No comments yet.