HAPPENING TODAY:
At 12 Noon, Organist Joel Stoppenhagen plays music by Dietrich Buxtehude, Samuel Scheidt and Giovanni Salvatore at the Church of the Covenant.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
by Mike Telin
Today we celebrate cellist, cultural ambassador, and humanitarian Yo-Yo Ma, born on this date in 1955 in Paris. Since his days as a child prodigy, Ma has carved out a remarkably diverse career — one need look no further than his expansive discography to understand why he is a household name around the world.
Ma is a person who enjoys building relationships and finding common ground with everyone he meets. Perhaps his best-known example of using music to find that common ground is The Silk Road Project, a collaborative enterprise to promote artistic exchanges between cultures, named after the 4,000-some miles of ancient trade routes that for two millennia linked parts of Asia with Europe and encouraged the trading of art, knowledge, philosophy and religion — as well as silk and other commercial goods.
Without a doubt, Yo-Yo Ma is committed to bringing people together through music. In a 2013 interview with ClevelandClassical.com, Ma said, “I do believe totally in what I’m trying to do, and I feel incredibly grateful — especially during these hard economic times. The world is changing so quickly and there are people left out. But we want to make sure that while things are changing, we have a sense of where we are going that we can all mutually work towards.”
By his own admission, Ma is a person who enjoys being busy. “I can’t say that I don’t lead an interesting life,” he said in the 2013 interview. “It’s sometimes a little crazy and when that happens I just need to look at myself and say, I am the one responsible for it and I can’t blame anybody but myself.”
