Yo-Yo Ma - Early Life

Early Life

Yo-Yo Ma was born in Paris on October 7, 1955, to Chinese parents and had a musical upbringing. His mother, Marina Lu, was a singer, and his father, Hiao-Tsiun Ma, was a violinist and professor of music at Nanjing National Central University. His family moved to New York when he was five years old.

At a very young age, Ma began studying violin, and later viola, before settling on the cello in 1960 at age four. According to Yo-Yo Ma, his first choice was the double bass due to its large size, but he compromised and took up cello instead. The child prodigy began performing before audiences at age five, and performed for Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy when he was seven. At age eight, he appeared on American television with his sister, Yeou-Cheng Ma, in a concert conducted by Leonard Bernstein. Ma attended Trinity School in New York but transferred to the Professional Children's School, from which he graduated at fifteen years of age. He appeared as a soloist with the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra in a performance of the Tchaikovsky Rococo Variations.

Ma studied at the Juilliard School at age nine with Leonard Rose and briefly attended Columbia University before ultimately enrolling at Harvard University later on. Prior to entering Harvard, Ma played in the Marlboro Festival Orchestra under the direction of nonagenarian cellist and conductor Pablo Casals. Ma would ultimately spend four summers at the Marlboro Music Festival after meeting and falling in love with Mount Holyoke College sophomore and festival administrator Jill Hornor his first summer there in 1972.

However, even before that time, Ma had steadily gained fame and had performed with most of the world's major orchestras. His recordings and performances of Johann Sebastian Bach's Cello Suites recorded in 1983 and again in 1994–1997 are particularly acclaimed. He has also played a good deal of chamber music, often with the pianist Emanuel Ax, with whom he has a close friendship back from their days together at the Juilliard School of Music in New York.

Ma received his bachelor's degree from Harvard in 1976. In 1991, he received an honorary doctorate from Harvard.