📷: United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres with UN Messenger of Peace Yo-Yo Ma at a workshop in Vienna, Austria, bringing together refugee musicians, singers and percussionists to foster understanding and enrich society.
“The diverse group is sending a strong message of openness, respect and inclusion through the universal language of music,” said the Secretary-General.
訪談| 馬友友： 令文化與政治經濟平起平坐 。他談到音樂界的“神童綜合症”與反向年齡歧視，也提起人到中年的困擾和這些年來的悔憾。他對時報說，“我出名完全是個意外”。
2016.11.21
絲路合奏團的表演絕對是最激動人心的音樂饗宴。絲路合奏團是由華裔美籍的大提琴家馬友友於1998年成立，他們運用世界各地的樂器，包括風笛、塔布拉鼓、琵琶等，當然還有 馬友友的大提琴，這些樂器的組合創造出獨一無二的樂風。昨天我有幸到 國家音樂廳聆賞絲路合奏團的表演，真是令人難忘。我最喜歡的是風笛和笙的聯手熱鬧開場、多種打擊樂器振人心弦的律動，以及對艾靈頓公爵的經典名曲「搭乘A號列車」的趣味改編，帶給我無比的驚喜。不過，最精彩的或許是馬友友和笙演奏家吳彤合作的安可曲，他們選擇的曲子是德佛札克《新世界交響曲》最緩板中那耳熟能詳的主題旋律。這段旋律曾分別被填上中文和英文歌詞，中文版就是大家熟悉的《念故鄉》，英文版則叫《Going Home》(歸鄉)，安可的時候由馬友友負責演奏那段悠揚的旋律，吳彤則輕輕唱出這首曲子的中英文歌詞。由於大部分的聽眾都熟悉這首曲子，大家都加入他們的行列一同唱和，這一幕真是讓我感動不已。感謝馬友友和絲路合奏團把世界文化帶到台北的舞台來！ --- 梅健華 #FromAITDirector
One of the most thrilling music events to attend has to be a performance by the Silk Road Ensemble, a musical group founded in 1998 by Chinese-American master cellist Yo-Yo Ma. The Silk Road Ensemble plays extraordinary music, using a combination of instruments from around the world, including bagpipes, tabla, pipa, and, of course, Ma’s cello. I got to see the Silk Road Ensemble yesterday at the National Concert Hall and it was unforgettable. Among my favorite pieces were a playful fanfare between the bagpipes and sheng that opened the concert, a rousing mixed percussion composition, and a surprising and fun rendition of the Duke Ellington classic “Take the A Train.” Perhaps the most delightful moment of the performance was the encore duet between Yo-Yo Ma and sheng player Wu Tong. Ma played the familiar solo lines of Dvorak’s Largo theme from “The New World” and Wu Tong finessed the lyrics to the spiritual ballad “Going Home” in English and Chinese. Most of the audience knew the words and joined in song. It was one of the most moving experiences I’ve had at the theater in a long time. We appreciate Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble for bringing world culture to the Taipei stage…km
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJpAsKPQgnU
Classic Yo-Yo Ma (Documentary of 2010 about Yo-Yo Ma) 54:18
(開頭就說他樂於與人溝通，是世界第一大提琴手。)
馬友友先生從小到2010年的音樂成長紀錄片。
從這兒出發，他花了約16年，廣結絲路的音樂、藝能人才，合作出老多好多的樂聚......
上個月，他們發行新專輯。
馬友友就"馬不停蹄"接受訪問、"打歌"。 (所有的互動，參見Facebook 的"馬友友"。)_
對象多很不俗，{哈佛企管評論}(HBR )跟他談創造力.....
全美廣播NPR 專訪.....
這些是馬友友團隊的成熟、合作學習，enjoy過程的成果。
馬友友
It’s called “The Music of Strangers,” but in fact these are not strangers, and this is not strange music. All of it is our music.
(The Wall Street Journal, Silkroad)
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It’s called “The Music of Strangers,” but in fact these are not strangers, and this is not strange music. All of it is our music.
(The Wall Street Journal, Silkroad)
(The Wall Street Journal, Silkroad)
Monday, May 23, 2016
馬友友
Bobby McFerrin, a one-man orchestra and improviser, once asked me, “What are you doing that’s interesting?” Inherent in that question is the assumption that you can do a lot that *isn’t* interesting. All great music is the result of successful invention. You’re going toward something you think is valuable. There’s risk involved, but you welcome it. Part of being a musician is reporting on what you experience. If you deliberately limit your experiences, your reporting will be limited.
Life’s Work: An Interview with Yo-Yo Ma
The cellist on collaboration, risk taking, and childhood fame
HBR.ORG
https://hbr.org/2016/06/yo-yo-ma
Life’s Work: An Interview with Yo-Yo Ma
FROM THE JUNE 2016 ISSUE
HBR: What’s the key to fruitful collaboration, especially across cultures or disciplines?
Ma: Two words: ego management. It’s easy to get locked into “in my world” or “this is the way I see it,” so you have to move your brain to a different time or structure. If you were nine years old and suddenly went to a new environment, yes, you would make comparisons, but your mind would still be in a somewhat spongelike state, as opposed to a judging one. It’s absorption versus critical thinking. I’ve learned to say, “Maybe there are two opinions. If you think differently than I do, let me put myself in your shoes and see what’s successful according to you, and then you do the same for me.” Once we’ve done that, our minds are more open. We already know two solutions, and often we’ll find a third, where two truths can live together.
How do you pick collaborators?
First I look for generosity; second, mutual respect and admiration. You might do something incredibly well, but if you’re a schmuck, if I don’t think we’d enjoy having dinner together, it’s not a complicated decision. What I love about Silk Road is that we’ve never had an audition. The first time we got together, we put a call out for musicians to do a reading session for a week to 10 days at the Tanglewood Music Festival. We had no money, so the people who came were generous with their time and adventurous—willing to take a risk. Most are still members. It was a preselection of people with certain qualities.
Why do you take so many risks?
I’m not sure that what I do is abnormal for a musician. Bobby McFerrin, a one-man orchestra and improviser, once asked me, “What are you doing that’s interesting?” Inherent in that question is the assumption that you can do a lot that isn’t interesting. All great music is the result of successful invention. You’re going toward something you think is valuable. There’s risk involved, but you welcome it. Part of being a musician is reporting on what you experience. If you deliberately limit your experiences, your reporting will be limited.
You chose to study at Harvard instead of a music conservatory. Why?
I kind of did both, because I graduated from high school early and was at Julliard and Columbia for a while. But I needed to grow up someplace. I knew I was too young to go out in the world. I knew how little I knew. And those four years at Harvard were some of the most influential in terms of exposing me to many fields of knowledge and to people my own age who were at least as passionate about what they were doing as I was about what I was doing. Archaeology and anthropology were my favorite subjects. They helped me look at all the cultures I was experiencing through travel and put them in some context. Also, I learned academic discipline. Intuition might get you to really fast conclusions as a musician, but then you test them out. You’re trying to use both sides of the brain at all times. I left college thinking, “I know one sliver of things about playing an instrument.” So I had a hunger and a curiosity, and I still feel that way.
You were on national television at age five. How did you handle childhood fame?
It’s great to have attention—but not all the time from everybody. When I talk to young people with extreme talent, I tell them, “When you’re excellent at one thing, you want to keep doing it, but after a while, that just doesn’t work. What is special when you’re seven is no longer special when you’re 30.” When I was a child, people said things to me I wish they hadn’t: “Oh, you’re such a talent, such a genius.” That’s dangerous, because it can overwhelm the decisions you make about yourself. I wanted to determine who I was. The best approach is to have a healthy confidence but also the self-knowledge to ask, “What do I and don’t I do well?” so that you can be the architect of your own life.
Did that involve a lot of practice on top of your natural talent?
What allowed me to practice very little was great early training. My father gave me an unbelievable grounding. I could read scores without going to the piano. I knew how to dissect problems into smaller and smaller increments, so I could systematically solve most technical ones and worry about other things. You know, there are several different ways to practice. One is just music going through your head. Another is to problem-solve away from the instrument. A third is to be tactilely engaged in engineering a solution, translating it to physical sound in physical space in the most efficient way, moving your fingers, arms, and body to elicit that which is in your head. That kind of practicing is deeply fulfilling. It’s not emergency practicing. It’s more like information becomes knowledge becomes love. The final achievement is to say, “I truly love this, and I have enough mastery to be able to share that love with someone else.”
How do you prep to go on stage?
With age, in many different ways. As a young person, when you find one way to do something, you try to repeat it. But we all know that nothing ever turns out the way you want it to, especially if you’re a traveling person. So to be successful, you have to welcome the unexpected. You might have a routine and say, “I need quiet,” but then 10 things happen and you don’t have it. Do you panic or resent it and give a bad performance? Or do you say, “Well, this is unexpected, but I’m going to enjoy trying a new way”?
What do you think about when you perform?
You have a responsibility, one, to know what the narrative is and make sure you’re telling the story and people are receiving it, and two, if anything impedes the narrative, to fix the problem. It’s the biggest thing and the nanomoment, and you have to have both in your head at all times. The main goal is to be memorable. If the next day people in the audience say to one another, “What did we do last night?” that’s utter failure.
Over decades of touring and 90 albums, how do you consistently perform at such a high level? How have you avoided burnout?
By retooling goals. In my twenties, going to new cities, countries, cultures for the first time was unbelievably exciting. Umbria, the Cotswolds, Lapland—it was very heady stuff. In my thirties, I had family, children. If I had to leave home, it couldn’t just be to support them; there are other ways that don’t involve being away 67% of the time. So you have to find meaning. I started teaching at Tanglewood, and that was a really big renewal. In my forties, after Bobby asked, “What are you doing that’s interesting?” I wanted to figure that out. As an immigrant, I started thinking, “What is the soul of the United States?” So I commissioned dozens of composers to write pieces, and made lots of recordings. I also went to the Kalahari and did a documentary on the Bushmen. And then I went back to the basics: Bach suites. I spent a number of years with six filmmakers and six artists going through each one, in the process deepening my relationship with the composer and learning about different art forms. Then came the Silk Road. We started in residence at RISD and Harvard, and now we’ve grown up and have a sense of what our values are. Now, at 60, with Harvard, HBS, and the Ford Foundation, I’m focused on cultural entrepreneurship. The great advantage of being 60 is that any time you don’t make sense, people say, “Well, it’s OK,” but if you say something that makes a little bit of sense, they say, “Wow, this is incredible.” So there’s a greater fearlessness. I can get away with saying that I think all cultural institutions should think about social impact.
Do you see yourself as a leader—either on the micro level, with the Silk Road Ensemble, or on a more macro level, in terms of the music industry?
I just see myself as a human being trying to play my part. I am happy to share what I know and to work with people and be part of a movement in the arts and sciences, humanities, and technology that uses great thinking and invention to solve intractable social problems. But I don’t see myself as much of a leader. I don’t like to make pronouncements.
You’re known for your sunny, optimistic attitude. Is that innate, or did you develop it?
It may be slightly innate, but optimism is definitely a choice, because it’s very easy to be pessimistic and cynical—just read the paper. At the beginning of every trip, leaving my wife and young children at home, it was so pit-of-your-stomach awful. But either you’re going to stay in that state the whole time or you’re going to look for the good in things. The tendency is to feel incredibly guilty, but I try not to. Instead I acknowledge and appreciate what everybody’s done to make this possible.
As someone who’s been touring the world for decades, do you have any travel tips for our readers?
Don’t worry about the things you can’t control. When the inevitable delays happen, when something horrible goes on, just go into neutral and choose the high road. The other way never helps. Always go to the next time zone, and always carry on everything you need.
A version of this article appeared in the June 2016 issue (p.120) of Harvard Business Review.
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