01:00 AM EST on Sunday, March 5, 2006

BY CHANNING GRAY
Journal Arts Writer

Although world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma will be playing Brahms and Beethoven this week with the Rhode Island Philharmonic, he is a musician of many tastes.

Ma, one of the best-known classical musicians performing today, has made forays into bluegrass and sultry tangos, and in recent years has been exploring the ancient sounds of the Silk Road, the vast trade route that stretched from China to the Mediterranean.

So what's this interest in crossover all about?

"I think it grows out of my general curiosity," said the cellist, "of living in today's world, and receiving a liberal-arts education. A liberal-arts education is supposed to prepare you to meet the world. Because I was meeting the world in so many ways because of travel, you bump into edges all the time and discover things that were actually right next door."

Ma, for example, has always had a fondness for Brazilian music. So when he heard the haunting voice of a Brazilian chanteuse on a CD, he wrote and asked if she would perform with him.

There were problems, though. She didn't travel much.

But then a note appeared on his doorstep in Cambridge, Mass., saying the singer would be delighted to meet with him and work something out.

By the way, wrote the author of the note, "I'm her sister, and I live in Newton."

"That's today's world," said Ma.

Cello prodigy

Ma, 50, was born in Paris in 1955 to Chinese parents determined to raise a cello prodigy. His mother was a singer, his father a musicologist.

By the age of 6, he showed enough talent to raise the eyebrows of violinist Isaac Stern. The following year, the family moved to New York, where Ma took lessons at the Juilliard School with the legendary Leonard Rose. His Carnegie Hall debut came at age 9.

Ma chose a liberal-arts education over a conservatory program, and graduated from Harvard in 1976. The following year he married Jill Horner, a violinist he met at Mount Holyoke, in Massachusetts, during a performance when he was 16.

In 1978, he picked up the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize.

The Mas have two children -- Nicholas, 22, who has graduated from college and is working, and Emily, 20, an English major who plays violin and guitar.

"They like all kinds of music," said Ma, "which is wonderful."

While Ma lives in Cambridge, he has been spending more and more time in Providence. His Silk Road Project, which began in 1998 and features musicians from around the world, has been headquartered here for the past year or so, putting together projects with students from the Rhode Island School of Design.

The cello, said Ma, is a flexible enough instrument that it can play along with some of the more exotic instruments found in the Silk Road region.

It was the project's executive director, Laura Freid, who suggested that it was important to foster relationships with institutions. The project is also affiliated with Harvard.

Ma seems happy with the RISD connection.

"It's great," he said. "I love it. The students are passionate, and it's great to see what they are doing."

Ma and RISD organizers are still feeling one another out, still trying to find areas in which they can collaborate. Still, he feels the overall project has made progress building bridges.

"I think we can do some good links when there are breakdowns in the political sphere. The cultural sphere can be a powerful engine, I think, to developing better understanding of where people are coming from."

Ma said one of the things the Silk Road Project often talks about is building trust. Members of the ensemble have become fast friends.

"We've visited one another's homes in Iran, Azerbaijan, New York and Brooklyn, and that's made a big difference."

On tap for Tuesday

Ma will be joined by three Silk Road musicians when he performs Tuesday night with the Philharmonic and conductor Larry Rachleff. The concert is a benefit, with tickets going for as much as $1,000.

Ma and friends will perform the Brahms Double Concerto for cello and violin, and the Beethoven Triple for violin, cello and piano. Joining him will be violinists Colin Jacobsen and Johnny Gandelsman, along with pianist Joel Fan.

Although Ma has played these pieces many times with different partners, he did not sit down with the current complement of musicians until about six weeks ago.

The players are doing this program in three venues -- in Albany, N.Y., where the concert has already taken place, and in Providence and New York City.

"We've spent so much time together, playing so many different kinds of music, we said, 'Okay, how are we going to rehearse? Maybe we need a lot of rehearsal time.' But it turned out we met maybe twice before the first orchestra rehearsal.

"We were watching and hearing everything, and that awareness was so amazing, it was as though we'd been playing together for 20 years.

"To me it's a wonderful affirmation. You work together, and that relationship transfers to all sorts of things."

Ma said he's looking forward to his appearance with the orchestra. He's heard good things about the players and conductor Larry Rachleff. He's also looking forward to playing the musical selections, because both the Brahms and the Beethoven blend the solo instruments so well with the orchestra, although he admits that the Beethoven is a hard piece to pull off.

"I think it's gotten a bad rap because it's just so hard to put together."

Just the placement of the instruments in the Beethoven causes visual and acoustical problems. But the piece has benefited from the approach by historical instrument specialists, who tend to take much brisker tempos. The piece, said Ma, had been getting slower and slower, which only hurt the interpretation.

A worldwide audience

Ma has come a long way since he appeared at the defunct Westerly Center for the Arts almost 30 years ago, when he was still a student at Harvard. Today he is not only the premier cellist of his generation, but one of the most famous classical musicians living. Only the likes of Itzhak Perlman and Luciano Pavarotti can claim anywhere near the same celebrity status.

Perhaps that can be chalked up to expert marketing, a huge discography (more than 50 recordings and 15 Grammys), and his wide audience appeal from delving into so many different types of music.

But when asked about his fame, Ma pretty much skirted the question.

"I think, first of all, part of it is age. I'm 50 and started playing after college.

"I think part of what makes me keep wanting to play is the early realization that music is all about relationships with the communities you visit.

"I've spent the last 20 of my 30 years on the road, which is splattering yourself a lot. But what's rich about that is you go to Florence -- you go there five, six, seven times and you develop friendships. You go to enough places and develop these relationships, it's very intense.

"And that's much better than you show up and it's anonymous, if it's Tuesday it must be . . . . I've got to avoid that, because that's the easiest way to get burned out."

Playing it forward

Ma was equally circumspect about his amazing recording output. Even big-name classical artists have had to cut back, now that the recording industry is in such a slump.

But Ma said that the recording industry is cyclical.

"I think when new technologies appear, there is a reorganization process that takes place that eventually gets worked out. No matter what, people will still have music. It's just a matter of how they will have it. But the need is there."

Is there a new recording project on the horizon? Ma said he just finished doing the soundtrack for the film Memoirs of a Geisha, and is now looking for "additional interesting collaborations.

"If we see something that's wonderful," he asked, "how do we turn that into music?"

Next year, Silk Road will be teaming up with the city of Chicago. Chicago calls itself a city of neighborhoods, said Ma, and he wants to explore how those enclaves can connect with one another, and the city's cultural institutions.

He said he wants to look at these issues from a "cultural point of view and a demographics point of view and see how we can do things that might make a difference."

"Those are engaging questions and they may lead to something happening," he said. "We'll see how it evolves."

Yo-Yo Ma and friends perform Tuesday night at 7 at Veterans Memorial Auditorium, Avenue of the Arts, Providence, as a benefit for the Rhode Island Philharmonic. The remaining tickets are going for $150 and $250. Call (401) 831-3123.

cgray@projo.com / (401) 277-7492