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Cellist Yo-Yo Ma to open 2017-18 DePauw Green Guest Artist Series
The 2017–18 season opening concert of the DePauw University Green Guest Artist Series on Sept. 30 will mark the return to Greencastle by the great cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago.
The 7:30 p.m. performance in the Green Center’s Kresge Auditorium — the soloist’s third appearance at DePauw — will be presented in conjunction with the board meeting for the School of Music’s 21st-Century Musician Initiative for which Ma serves as honorary chairman.
A promoter of global awareness and cultural understanding, an internationally revered artist, and a rock star in the classical world, Ma has said he would like to find a word other than “classical” to describe this repertoire. The cellist suggests just saying “music.”
“Bach, Mozart, Beethoven were some of the greatest improvisers of their time, and in fact, were renowned for what they were able to do,” he said. “But then they also wrote things down … so I would have a template.”
In Ma’s opinion, classical musicians are just good musicians, able to compose, to improvise and be virtuosic in what they do — including absorbing other influences and organically incorporating these ideas into their work for constant growth.
The recipient of numerous awards reflecting his own growth as a musician, Ma first performed at the Green Center in 2011 as part of the campuswide tradition known as DePauw Discourse.
In June 2015, after cutting the customary ribbon at the opening of the music school’s downtown venue, Music on the Square, he christened the space with a poignant, impromptu performance of the first movement of Bach’s first “Cello Suite” — the first piece of music that he ever learned.
Earlier this spring, “Sing Me Home,” the companion CD to the feature-length documentary film “The Music of Strangers,” recorded with the cellist’s renowned Silk Road Ensemble, received the 2017 Grammy Award for Best World Music Album.
The diverse group of international instrumentalists, composers and vocalists also returns to the DePauw campus this summer for the Third Annual Global Musician Workshop, May 30-June 5, which includes a series of six free faculty and participant/artist concerts.
For tickets to upcoming Green Guest Artist Concerts and the summer event schedule, stay tuned to music.depauw.edu.
Sale of 2017-18 season passes and individual tickets will be announced in August.