| Yo Yo Ma - saturday 2003-02-22 1759 | last modified 2006-01-30 0053 |
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Thanks to Julia, I had a chance to see Yo Yo Ma in concert this past Friday under the direction of Tan Dun, the composer who wrote the soundtrack for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which I just happened to receive in the mail on Friday after ordering the DVD over a week ago. I popped it in to listen to some of Yo Yo Ma's solos and again felt the desire to go out and buy (or rent) a cello and start learning how to play. So about the concert -- allow me to first disclaim by saying I'm not a regular symphony attendee by any means, nor did my years suffering with the violin give me particularly good sense on what's good and what isn't. I do know, however, that the more modern the music, the less likely I am to find it enjoyable, and the bulk of last night's program both didn't include Mr. Ma and came from the last sixty years or so (John Cage, if that means anything to you). That portion wasn't particularly memorable. Then Tan Dun premiered a piece he wrote based on old musical traditions in central China, which, as I can so professionally say, was pretty fun. You'd have to see it and hear it to know. It was interesting. But now I want to see Yo Yo play something a little more traditional. |
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Comments
some Yo-Yo Ma recordings
was the "Silk Road Ensemble" involved in the performance you saw? they have an album that i recommend (Yo-Yo Ma is one of the performers on the album).
yeah, Ma keeps one foot pretty firmly in the world of modern and experimental music. he has done a whole lot of crossover work (the Silk Road stuff is a good example, as is Hush w/ Bobby McFerrin (very good!)), and he spends a lot of time performing debuts for contemporary composers (see the latest John Williams release, which is pretty good but very non-traditional).
if you really want to pig out on cello music, i'd suggest Ma's latest rendition of Bach's Unaccompanied Cello Suites... note that it's all solo music, so you may get sick of the cello by the time it's done.
and, of course, there's about a jillion other recordings featuring Yo-Yo Ma, especially more traditional symphonic pieces.
Matt Libby on January 30, 2006 12:54 AM
Nope, it was j...
Nope, it was just Yo-Yo and the BSO. Thanks to your pointers, I'm now seriously contemplating the addition of a few choice cello CD's to my scant music collection. The Unaccompanied Cello Suites in particular, which, after previewing them on Amazon, happened to solve a minor mystery about which piece was being played during a car commercial.
I happened to hear Hush a long time ago, when we first got a computer with a CD-ROM...
Ryan Lee on February 26, 2003 06:37 PM
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