Yo-Yo Ma is the last word when it comes to the cello. The prolific performer is known equally for playing the classic compositions of Bach and experimenting with contemporary and indigenous sounds. Thanks to Yo-Yo Ma the cello has escaped its classical confines and reached more audiences than ever before.

Yo-Yo Ma was born to Chinese parents in Paris in 1955 and got his prodigious start playing the cello at age four. Yo-Yo Ma studied with Janos Scholz before becoming the star pupil of cellist Leonard Rose at the Julliard School in 1962 and receiving the prestigious Avery Fisher Award in 1978. Yo-Yo Ma graduated from Harvard and began recording J.S. Bach's Suites for Unaccompanied Cello, for which he first made a name for himself. Later on in his career, Yo-Yo Ma worked with Canadian filmmakers Atom Egoyan and Francois Giraud and choreographer Mark Morris on a series of films titled Inspired by Bach, in which the cellist reinterpreted each of the famed composer's suites.

Yo-Yo Ma is known first and foremost as a classical performer, but the seasoned cellist has also recorded albums that deviate from that vein, such as Hush, an album with vocalist Bobby McFerrin, and Appalachia Waltz, a record of original Nashville music that features Yo-Yo Ma as one part of a trio comprised of bassist Edgar Meyer and fiddler Mark O'Connor. Yo-Yo Ma has also explored the music of his heritage as well as the native sounds of the Kalahari bush people of Africa and contributed to the soundtrack for the Sally Potter film The Tango Lesson with a performance of Astor Piazzolla's music. In 1998 Yo-Yo Ma founded the Silk Road Ensemble, a music collective seeking to fuse the sounds of the East and West.