Yo-Yo Ma & The Goat Rodeo Sessions

Cel­list Yo-Yo Ma is famous for his eclec­ti­cism. From Baroque cham­ber music to tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese melodies, Ma delights in dis­solv­ing bar­ri­ers. His lat­est genre-hop­ping project is The Goat Rodeo Ses­sions, an inven­tive blue­grass col­lab­o­ra­tion with bassist Edgar Mey­er, fid­dler Stu­art Dun­can and Man­dolin­ist Chris Thile. Vocal­ist Aoife O’Dono­van joins the group on two songs. The expres­sion “goat rodeo” refers to a chaot­ic sit­u­a­tion where a group of peo­ple with dif­fer­ing view­points have to work togeth­er to avert dis­as­ter. When the group showed up recent­ly at Google’s New York offices for a brief per­for­mance and dis­cus­sion (see above), Ma com­pared The Goat Rodeo Ses­sions to the eco­log­i­cal “Edge Effect,” where con­trast­ing eco-sys­tems come togeth­er. “You have the least den­si­ty of life forms, but you actu­al­ly have the most vari­ety of new life forms,” explained Ma. “I think we all prob­a­bly, as a group, enjoy going to the edge because it’s thrilling to dis­cov­er new life forms. It’s thrilling to take from what you know and try some­thing that real­ly has­n’t quite hap­pened in the same way before.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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