Bulletin Autumn‧Winter 1993

CITATIONS D r . Yo - Yo Ma, Hon. Ph.D. (Music) In 1955 in Paris Mrs. Ma Hiao-Tsiun gave birth to a son who is destined to become the most famous Chinese name in the world of Western classical music. She named him Yo-Yo, not in the English sense of bobbing up and down in rapid motion, but in the Chinese sense of being very friendly, by which one might deduce that Ma junior must have been bom with a grin on his face, which he has carried to this day, laughing all the way to the leading concert halls of the world. The Mas are a musical family. Father Ma H i a o - T s i u n is a musicologist, violinist and composer, mother Mrs. Ma a mezzo-soprano, and elder sister Ma Yeou-Cheng plays the violin. The violin was young Yo -Yo ' s first musical instrument too, but at the age of four, he wanted to play something bigger, maybe to compensate for the fact that his sister was bigger than he was. So his father made h im a makeshift cello and started him on the voyage of musical exploration and discovery whic h has enriched Yo -Yo Ma and delighted music lovers all over the world. Success came early to the child prodigy. A t the age of 6 and hardly out of kindergarten, he gave a public performance of one of Bach's Unaccompanied Cello Suites at the University of Paris. Two years later, in 1963, at about the time this university was established by the late Choh-Ming L i , Yo -Yo Ma was playing at the American Pageant of the Arts with Leonard Bernstein. The man who recommended h im to Bernstein was Pablo Casals, then 88 years old and without doubt the greatest cellist of his time. The following year, at the age of 9, Ma made his debut at Carnegie Hall. From the ages of 9 to 16, Yo -Y o Ma studied at the Juilliard School with Janos Scholz and the famous cellist Leonard Rose who once said of the young virtuoso, 'He may have one of the greatest techniques of all time.' But the teenage years were not easy ones for Yo -Yo Ma as he tried to come to grips with his enormous talent and equally enormous expectations. Then Harvard beckoned and offered h im the intellectual stimulation and broadening experience which he sought and needed, although, later in life, he would claim he went to Harvard for the co-ed dorms. At Harvard , in addition to his cello playing, young Ma was able to delve deep into music history, theory, and 46th Congregation 9