Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2002 | 8:28 a.m.
"Nobody wants to starve."
With that humble statement, master cellist Yo-Yo Ma begins describing the incredible journey music has taken him on for more than four decades, from his earliest days as a child prodigy to his current status as one of the world's most recognizable classical artists.
What began simply as a means to ensure he'd always be able to afford meals has taken Ma around the world many times over, making him one of the genre's few household names.
He has appeared on "Sesame Street" and "The West Wing," earned a spot on last year's People magazine Sexiest Men Alive list and became a pop-culture icon when Kramer repeatedly yelled his name on an episode of "Seinfield."
The 47-year-old virtuoso performs tonight at Artemus Ham Hall at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas with his Silk Road Ensemble. Before a rehearsal Monday, he took time for a phone interview from his Las Vegas hotel room.
"Of course you want to have a chance to be needed," Ma said. "But then you also want to make sure that what you have to say has truth or depth or interest ... the drive for really great content that's bigger than you are."
That drive began for Ma at age 4, when he picked up his first cello and began receiving instruction on the instrument from his father. It later took him to the Juilliard School and then to Harvard University, where he completed his studies in 1976.
Since then, Ma has recorded more than 50 albums 14 of them producing Grammy Awards and has continued to push classical music in new directions both in the studio and on the road.
The seeds for his latest endeavor, the Silk Road Project, date back to his many travels over the years, particularly to regions of the world that once formed the famed Silk Road trade route: Central Asia, Persia, India, China, Korea and Japan.
"My life as a musician has taken me to many places," Ma said. "In traveling you are always confronted with new things, new ideas that you have no understanding of. And then you make these connections between things."
In old times, Ma explained, those connections along the Silk Road promoted the exchange of ideas between diverse cultures, something modern society may take for granted in this age of technology.
"During the last 10 or 20 years, the term 'globalization' has been in the news a lot. And when you start thinking about it, you realize there have actually been a number of times in the last couple thousand years when the world was fairly global.
"So I think of the Silk Road as the Internet of antiquity, but obviously without the Internet. They did it with camels, with ships and with horses."
Tonight, Ma and his ensemble will perform pieces native to several countries associated with that "Internet of antiquity," including music from Iran, India, China, Persia and Mongolia.
"You have pieces that are really based in strong traditions, but that also got reviewed and reinvigorated," Ma said. "It's really neat because it forces us to figure out what we need to know to in order to get something performed. And it builds trust, and that's another thing that we try to really focus on."
As always, Ma will bring his two most beloved instruments to the stage: a Montagnana cello dating to 1733 and a Davidoff Stradivarius cello circa 1712. The latter was feared lost briefly in 1999, when Ma left it in the trunk of a New York City cab in his haste to make it to a show on time. Hours later the valuable instrument was returned to him unmarked.
Ma's current project is simply his latest attempt to think outside traditional classical music parameters. Over the past two decades he has done so regularly, releasing albums comprised of traditional Nashville sounds, recording on numerous popular soundtracks and film scores and working with vocalist Bobby McFerrin.
While classical traditionalists may frown down upon some of those diverse efforts, such crossover successes have only expanded Ma's vast worldwide appeal.
"I think audiences are incredibly intelligent in their perceptions of how something is and how it comes over, and you build on that ... and try new things," Ma said. "But you do it respectfully.
"You make sure that you're not doing something just wacky because it's wacky, but that you've really thought through it and you feel there's both artistic and musical justification for it."
And, of course, that audiences will want to buy it. Because as popular as he may be these days, Ma takes nothing for granted.
"You may think something is great, but if everybody else disagrees then you go back to starving."
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