Last Updated Friday March 7, 2008, EST 7:14 AM
Globe-trotting classical musician Yo-Yo Ma will be making a stop at NJPAC this week with a trio of Bach's unaccompanied cello suites. Fresh off the plane from India, he explained how he experiences the musical universe of the Baroque master -- and his vision for the Silk Road Project during its 10th anniversary year.
[Image courtesy of alexrossmusic.typepad.com]
Q. How did you choose your NJPAC program?
It's like getting three very different friends together in one evening, and you're getting portraits of each one. They're friends -- they go to school together and everything. But Suite No. 3 is joyful and kind of proud, earthy. The Suite 2's general character is kind of like Eeyore: It's in the minor key. It's more inward, more meditative and reflective. And No. 6 is totally exuberant. You might say that 3 and 6 are similar, but 6 is almost cosmically exuberant.
Q. You've done some soundtracks for movies such as "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Memoirs of a Geisha." Do you feel a natural affinity for cinematic storytelling?
It's about transporting yourself into another reality, which is just what music tries to do, also. Or if you're reading a fabulous novel and you can't put it down, because you're so much in that world, and you hate to be interrupted and come back to your normal world. You don't want to put it down, and you don't want it to end. It's like your Harry Potter, that you read in one sitting, because you're so into it. That's what all these forms of expression try to do.
... A lot of times, with [composer and conductor] John Williams, we're recording [while] actually watching the films at the same time.
Q. Why did you found the Silk Road Project, which tries to record musical traditions along the former Silk Road?
One of the ways that we can try to understand our planet is to try and understand how different people in different parts of the world use sound or narrative or images to express their deepest feelings and beliefs. If you can get to that point, it actually makes talking to somebody from a different place with different sets of values and belief systems much easier. Because you know something that is so deeply embedded in their identity. That's one way to create an understanding between people.
Q. Being so rooted in the Western classical music tradition, do you ever find it difficult to understand certain musical traditions?
Everything's hard, until you make it easy. Everything at the very beginning feels foreign, and the whole point of doing this work is that you make what is somebody else's thing yours, and you make what is yours also belong to somebody else. This is why I perform and do what I do. The ultimate understanding is being in synch, because you are totally empathetic to what somebody else is thinking and feeling. You're looking at the world from their point of view, but you also know what your point of view is. You're inside both worlds.
Hopefully that's when the lights go on.
Q. What's your vision for this 10th anniversary year of the project?
I think we're going to try and celebrate the year by making sure that at the very top of our agenda is education. Education, not in terms of "You must know these thousand facts and pass the test," but more in terms of how we can inspire passion-driven learning.
In other words, how can you make something so exciting that people will be curious enough to want of their own volition to go out and find out more?
Q. So you're trying to inspire learning in general, not necessarily the learning of music itself?
It's all about understanding. Music is obviously what I do. But music is always trying to express something that is more than music. Otherwise, all we're doing is giving you notes. To be really absorbed, it means it remains active in somebody. A tune that you can't get out of your head, you know.
E-mail: shih@northjersey.com
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