Leonard Bernstein Introduces 7‑Year-Old Yo-Yo Ma: Watch the Youngster Perform for John F. Kennedy (1962)

Asked to think of a vir­tu­oso cel­list, many of us imme­di­ate­ly imag­ine Yo-Yo Ma, not just because of his con­sid­er­able skill but also because of the sheer length of his res­i­den­cy in pop­u­lar cul­ture. Though only 61 years old, bare­ly mid­dle-aged by clas­si­cal musi­cian stan­dards, he’s been famous for well over half a cen­tu­ry, start­ing with his entry into the pres­ti­gious child-prodi­gies-who-per­form-for-Amer­i­can-pres­i­dents cir­cuit. Sev­en years after his birth in Paris, Ma’s fam­i­ly relo­cat­ed to New York, by which time he’d already been at the cel­lo for near­ly half his short life. From there, it took him no time at all to com­mand an audi­ence whose mem­bers includ­ed Dwight D. Eisen­how­er and John F. Kennedy.

The event, a ben­e­fit con­cert called “The Amer­i­can Pageant of the Arts,” hap­pened on Novem­ber 29, 1962. Its oth­er guests, a who’s-who of the Cold War cul­tur­al scene, includ­ed Mar­i­an Ander­son, Van Cliburn, Robert Frost, Fredric March, Ben­ny Good­man, and Bob Newhart. As mas­ter of cer­e­monies, Leonard Bern­stein intro­duced the evening’s wee enter­tain­ers.

“Yo-Yo came to our atten­tion through the great mas­ter Pablo Casals, who had recent­ly heard him play the cel­lo. Yo-Yo is, as you may have guessed, Chi­nese, and has lived up to now in France — a high­ly inter­na­tion­al type.” The same could be said of his sis­ter Yeou-Cheng, who accom­pa­nies him on the piano in a per­for­mance of Jean-Bap­tiste Bré­val’s Con­certi­no No. 3 in A Major.

Three years lat­er, the still extreme­ly young but much more famous Ma would write a let­ter to the con­duc­tor:

Dear Mr. Bern­stein,

Do you still remem­ber me? Now I am ten years old. This year I learned with Prof. Leonard Rose three con­cer­tos: Saint-Saëns’, Boc­cherini’s and Lalo’s. Last week my sis­ter and I played in a Christ­mas Con­cert in Juil­liard School. We are invit­ed to give a joint recital in Brear­ley School on Jan­u­ary 19 1966 at 1:45 p.m.

If you have time, I would be glad to play for you.

Yo-Y0 Ma

Not only did Bern­stein remem­ber him, he also, by pre­sent­ing him as a vision of human­i­ty’s artis­tic future, ensured that every­one else at The Amer­i­can Pageant of the Arts would as well. “Now here’s a cul­tur­al image for you to pon­der as you lis­ten,” he said just before let­ting Yo-Yo and Yeou-Cheng take it away. “A sev­en-year-old Chi­nese cel­list play­ing old French music for his new Amer­i­can com­pa­tri­ots.” Did Ma recall those words of decades and decades ago when he formed the Silk Road Ensem­ble, sub­ject of the recent doc­u­men­tary The Music of Strangers, which brought into the fold musi­cians from Syr­ia, Mon­go­lia, Japan, Arme­nia, Gali­cia, and else­where, all to share, mix, and rein­ter­pret the music of one anoth­er’s home­lands? Now there’s a cul­tur­al image for you.

via Peter B. Kauf­man

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Yo-Yo Ma & the Goat Rodeo Ses­sions

Col­lab­o­ra­tions: Spike Jonze, Yo-Yo Ma, and Lil Buck

Leonard Bernstein’s Mas­ter­ful Lec­tures on Music (11+ Hours of Video Record­ed at Har­vard in 1973)

Leonard Bern­stein Demys­ti­fies the Rock Rev­o­lu­tion for Curi­ous (if Square) Grown-Ups in 1967

Leonard Bernstein’s First “Young People’s Con­cert” at Carnegie Hall Asks, “What Does Music Mean?”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.