From now until Dec. 31, contestants can compete to “jam” with Ma. Entrants can download music from the cellist’s new album and then create their own variations to accompany the track “Dona Nobis Pacem” (Give Us Peace), using the free collaboration Web application Indaba Music. Ma will judge the entries himself and will offer the winner an opportunity to record with him.
With 75 albums and 15 Grammy awards, 53-year-old Yo-Yo Ma is one of the most well-known performers in the world, playing both popular and classical music.
His new recording “Songs of Joy & Peace” invites connoisseurs of classical and elegant contemporary music to enjoy the holiday season by traveling with him to every corner of the world. His music celebrates Christmas, the New Year, Winter Solstice, the Muslim Ramadan and Eid, Israeli Hanukkah, Angolan Kwanzaa, and Gregorian Yuletide. All these festivals express people’s hope for peace, joy, and unity, and Yo-Yo Ma enables us to share in this global bounty.
Yo-Yo Ma is well-known for his love of educational programs for the young. He promotes listening to music as well as actively participating in its creation. Wherever he goes, the youthful-looking Harvard graduate gives master classes or organizes sessions for students—musicians and non-musicians alike. His contributions to making music a vital part of children’s lives focus even on the very young; he has appeared in the kid-friendly television shows of “Sesame Street,” “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” and “Arthur.”
This is no coincidence, as Yo-Yo Ma himself started his musical career at the age of 4 when his family moved from Paris to New York. His mother was a singer and his father a conductor. The young boy learned how to play the violin and the viola before taking up the cello in 1960. The child prodigy played for President Kennedy at the age of 7, and just one year later he performed at a concert conducted by the legendary Leonard Bernstein.
Ma has received numerous awards, among them the World Economic Forum’s Crystal Award in 2008. He was appointed a U.N. Messenger of Peace in 2006 by Secretary-General Kofi Annan whose successor, Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, extended the appointment, giving a warm welcome to Yo-Yo Ma in his Oct. 24 remarks at the U.N. Day Concert.
“Yo-Yo Ma,” Ki-Moon said, is one “of my Messengers of Peace, and I thank him for his outstanding contribution to global harmony and understanding through the universal language of music.”
Details of the contest can be seen on IndabaMusic.com/yo-yomacontest.
