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One of the best-known cellists of his generation and of the recording era overall, Yo-Yo Ma is recognized not only for his technical virtuosity but for his engaging interpretative ability, whether the tone is delicate, plaintive, playful, or impassioned. After breaking through with a collection of Bach cello suites in 1983, his ambitions and his appeal stretched far beyond the classical sphere through popular collaborations with such artists as jazz vocalist Bobby McFerrin (1992's Hush) and bluegrass musicians Stuart Duncan and Chris Thile (2011's The Goat Rodeo Sessions). Within the classical repertoire, his performances have spanned the Baroque era through works of his contemporaries, and among his repeat collaborators are pianist Emanuel Ax, violinist Isaac Stern, and bassist Edgar Meyer. Ma is also founder of the Silk Road Ensemble, a collective of musicians with a multicultural Eurasian focus. He won his 18th Grammy Award in 2017 for Silk Road Ensemble's Sing Me Home, his first in the category of Best World Music Album.

Yo-Yo Ma was born in Paris, France in 1955. The child of two musicians, he began music lessons very early, trying piano and all the string instruments before settling on cello. His first public performance was at the age of five. Ma's family moved to New York when he was seven so he could study with Janos Scholz. Before the age of ten, Ma had performed for Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, and had appeared on television with his sister in a concert led by Leonard Bernstein and on The Tonight Show. Ma became a student of Leonard Rose at Juilliard, but did not complete his studies there. Inspired by seeing the commitment of nonagenarian Pablo Casals at the Marlboro Festival, he enrolled at Harvard to finish his bachelor's degree, graduating in 1976.

Following Murray Perahia and Lynn Harrell, Ma became the third recipient of the Avery Fisher Prize in 1978. A year later, he made his recording debut as main artist with Finzi's Cello Concerto alongside the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. He then signed with CBS Masterworks and followed with recordings of Saint-Saëns, Haydn, and Beethoven (Sonatas 1 & 2, with Emanuel Ax), among others, before 1983's J.S. Bach: The 6 Unaccompanied Cello Suites proved to be his breakout. He returned quickly with more Beethoven sonatas with Ax and a Schubert quintet album with the Cleveland Quartet as well as Claude Bolling's Suite for Cello & Jazz Piano Trio. He also recorded an album of Japanese Melodies with accompaniment by bass, percussion, and flute. In 1985, he released Elgar and Walton's cello concertos, performed with André Previn and the London Symphony Orchestra. Some of his other albums in the '80s included recordings with Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Lorin Maazel, and the Berlin Philharmonic, and, in 1988, Brahms' Double Concerto with violinist Isaac Stern and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra led by Claudio Abbado. The following year brought Anything Goes: Stephane Grappelli & Yo-Yo Ma Play (Mostly) Cole Porter.

In the 1990s, amid a stream of at-least-annual classical releases, Ma continued to raise his profile with mainstream audiences on crossover albums such as 1992's Hush, with vocalist Bobby McFerrin. Issued by Sony, that record reached the top half of the Billboard 200 and was followed by a duo tour. In 1996, he appeared with bassist Edgar Meyer and violinist Mark O'Connor on the folk-inspired album Appalachian Journey, which went to number one on the Billboard classical chart. The year 1997 saw Soul of the Tango featuring the music of composer Astor Piazzolla, and Ma was the featured soloist on composer Tan Dun's Symphony 1997 (Heaven, Earth, Mankind) and on John Williams' score for the film Seven Years in Tibet. That year, he also appeared on the soundtrack to the documentary mini-series Liberty!, which featured O'Connor along with Ma, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, and singer/songwriter James Taylor. In 1998, he returned to the Bach suites with Inspired by Bach: The Cello Suites, recorded for six short films in collaboration with director Atom Egoyan, ice dancers Torvill and Dean, dancer Mark Morris, and other artists. He then recorded 1999's Simply Baroque with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, and they followed it a year later with Simply Baroque II. Also in 2000, he reunited with O'Connor and Meyer for Appalachian Journey (another classical number one) and with Tan Dun for the soundtrack to Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. After establishing the Silk Road Ensemble to bring together musicians from diverse cultural backgrounds along the ancient Eurasian trade route, he issued Silk Road Journeys in 2001. Credited as Yo-Yo Ma & the Silk Road Ensemble, they presented music such as a Mongolian love song, traditional Chinese songs, and Finnish folk songs. That year, Ma was awarded the National Medal of the Arts by the NEA.

In 2002, Sony Classical released Yo-Yo Ma Plays the Music of John Williams, an original recording produced and conducted by Williams. That year, Silk Road Ensemble cracked the Billboard 200 with Silk Road Journeys: When Strangers Meet, and Ma's cello could be heard on Philip Glass' score for the film Naqoyqatsi. Featuring over a dozen guests, including bossa nova singer Rosa Passos and the guitar duo of Sergio & Odair Assad, Obrigado Brazil arrived the following year and returned him to the top of the classical chart. He released a concert version of the album in 2004, a year that also saw Silk Road Journeys: Beyond the Horizon, Vivaldi's Cello, and Yo-Yo Ma Plays Ennio Morricone. The latter two charted on the Billboard 200. A year later, he appeared with Itzhak Perlman on the John Williams film score Memoirs of a Geisha. It, too, landed on the U.S. album chart. Silk Road Ensemble's New Impossibilities was recorded at Symphony Center with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2007, and 2008's Yo-Yo Ma & Friends: Songs of Joy & Peace featured collaborations with names like Dave Brubeck, Renée Fleming, and Diana Krall, just to name a few. It was Ma's highest-charting album to that point, reaching number 20 on the Billboard 200. After an appearance at Barack Obama's 2009 inauguration, he climbed two spots higher with 2011's The Goat Rodeo Sessions, an album with Meyer, Stuart Duncan, and Chris Thile that also marked Ma's debut on the Bluegrass Albums chart. That year, Ma was also a recipient of a Kennedy Center Honor, the Glenn Gould Prize, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Another Silk Roads Ensemble album, A Playlist Without Borders, followed in 2013. Issued in 2015, Songs from the Arc of Life presented well-known classical tunes such as Schubert's (and Bach-Gounod's) Ave Maria and Brahms' Lullaby. It went to the top of the classical chart, as did Silk Road Ensemble's 2016 LP Sing Me Home. His next classical number one came just a year later with Bach: Trios, a set of keyboard pieces rearranged for Ma on cello, Meyer on bass, and Thile on mandolin. In 2017, the Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma performed the music for the Ken Burns-Lynn Novick documentary series The Vietnam War, and Ma collaborated with chamber orchestra the Knights on Azul. It offered a performance of the Osvaldo Golijov concerto alongside pieces by Dvorák, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Sufjan Stevens, among others. In 2019, Ma issued Six Evolutions: Bach Cello Suites, his planned final studio recording of the famed suites. He then reunited with Chris Thile, Edgar Meyer, and Stuart Duncan for 2020's Not Our First Goat Rodeo. During the coronavirus lockdowns, Ma and Ax held spontaneous recitals for essential workers. When regular concerts resumed in 2021, the two joined violinist Leonidas Kavakos at Tanglewood with an impressive trio arrangement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 2. Based on that performance, the trio started a successful series of recordings, Beethoven for Three, in 2022. ~ Marcy Donelson & Patsy Morita

One of the 20th and 21st century's most highly regarded pianists, Emanuel Ax has performed all over the United States and Europe. His repertoire includes chamber music literature such as Béla Bartók, Schoenberg, and Mozart. He regularly performs concerts and recitals with Yo-Yo Ma and Yong Uck Kim. A renowned pianist by the age of 25, his popularity as a classical pianist has only increased.

Ax was born in Lvov, Poland, on June 8, 1949. His love for the piano began at the age of six when he started taking lessons in Warsaw. He and his family moved to North America in 1961, where he continued his piano lessons. At the Juilliard School of Music in New York, Ax studied with Mieczyslaw Munz. He made his professional debut recital in 1973. In 1974, Ax earned international fame when he won the first Arthur Rubenstein International Competition in Israel. From this one competition came a lifetime of fame as a pianist. After numerous recitals and performances all over the world and playing in London in 1977, Ax traveled back to New York and won the Avery Fisher Prize for Music in 1979. He regularly performed with the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, and Philadelphia Orchestra. Ax also performs at festivals including Ravinia, Aspen, and Tanglewood. In 1994, he played Mozart's D minor concerto at the London Proms.

In 1987, Ax signed an exclusive contract with the Sony Classical label. He recorded the Liszt Concertos and a Schoenberg Concerto, as well as many works by Beethoven and Brahms, including the Brahms' Second Concerto with the Boston Symphony, conducted by Bernard Haitink. The second and third releases in his Haydn piano sonata cycle each won him a Grammy Award. While touring in Europe during the 1996-1997 season, Ax played Hans Werner Henze's Tristan, conducted by Kurt Masur, for the composer's 70th birthday. His concert tours have been a major part of his international recognition, including concerts with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the European Union Youth Orchestra, and the Berlin Festival Orchestra. During his musical career, he has worked with such conductors as Simon Rattle, Donald Runnicles, and Leonard Slatkin, among many others.

Aside from numerous concert and recital appearances per season, Ax still finds time to record with his colleagues. He has regularly appeared with cellist Yo-Yo Ma since the '70s. Together, the two have earned five Grammy Awards; one was for an album of clarinet trios with Ma and Richard Stoltzman. With Isaac Stern, Jaime Laredo, and Yo-Yo Ma, he toured the U.S. performing works by Brahms, Fauré, Beethoven, and Mozart. Ax and Ma continued their partnership in 2020 with a series of recitals at Carnegie Hall, and the pair spontaneously performed several times for essential workers during the coronavirus lockdowns that year. When regular concerts resumed, Ax, Ma, and violinist Leonidas Kavakos impressed the audience at Tanglewood with a trio arrangement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 2. Subsequently the trio began a series of recordings, Beethoven for Three, in 2022, which was also a hit with listeners. Ax teaches at the Juilliard School. ~ Kim Summers

The events of Beethoven's life are the stuff of Romantic legend, evoking images of the solitary creator shaking his fist at Fate and finally overcoming it through a supreme effort of creative will. His compositions, which frequently pushed the boundaries of tradition and startled audiences with their originality and power, are considered by many to be the foundation of 19th century musical principles.

Born in the small German city of Bonn on or around December 16, 1770, he received his early training from his father and other local musicians. As a teenager, he earned some money as an assistant to his teacher, Christian Gottlob Neefe, then was granted half of his father's salary as court musician from the Electorate of Cologne in order to care for his two younger brothers as his father gave in to alcoholism. Beethoven played viola in various orchestras, becoming friends with other players such as Antoine Reicha, Nikolaus Simrock, and Franz Ries, and began taking on composition commissions. As a member of the court chapel orchestra, he was able to travel some and meet members of the nobility, one of whom, Count Ferdinand Waldstein, would become a great friend and patron to him. Beethoven moved to Vienna in 1792 to study with Haydn; despite the prickliness of their relationship, Haydn's concise humor helped form Beethoven's style. His subsequent teachers in composition were Johann Georg Albrechtsberger and Antonio Salieri. In 1794, he began his career in earnest as a pianist and composer, taking advantage whenever he could of the patronage of others. Around 1800, Beethoven began to notice his gradually encroaching deafness. His growing despondency only intensified his antisocial tendencies. However, the Symphony No. 3, "Eroica," of 1803 began a sustained period of groundbreaking creative triumph. In later years, Beethoven was plagued by personal difficulties, including a series of failed romances and a nasty custody battle over a nephew, Karl. Yet after a long period of comparative compositional inactivity lasting from about 1811 to 1817, his creative imagination triumphed once again over his troubles. Beethoven's late works, especially the last five of his 16 string quartets and the last four of his 32 piano sonatas, have an ecstatic quality in which many have found a mystical significance. Beethoven died in Vienna on March 26, 1827.

Beethoven's epochal career is often divided into early, middle, and late periods, represented, respectively, by works based on Classic-period models, by revolutionary pieces that expanded the vocabulary of music, and by compositions written in a unique, highly personal musical language incorporating elements of contrapuntal and variation writing while approaching large-scale forms with complete freedom. Though certainly subject to debate, these divisions point to the immense depth and multifariousness of Beethoven's creative personality. Beethoven profoundly transformed every genre he touched, and the music of the 19th century seems to grow from his compositions as if from a chrysalis. A formidable pianist, he moved the piano sonata from the drawing room to the concert hall with such ambitious and virtuosic middle-period works as the "Waldstein" (No. 21) and "Appassionata" (No. 23) sonatas. His song cycle An die ferne Geliebte of 1816 set the pattern for similar cycles by all the Romantic song composers, from Schubert to Wolf. The Romantic tradition of descriptive or "program" music began with Beethoven's "Pastoral" Symphony No. 6. Even in the second half of the 19th century, Beethoven still directly inspired both conservatives (such as Brahms, who, like Beethoven, fundamentally stayed within the confines of Classical form) and radicals (such as Wagner, who viewed the Ninth Symphony as a harbinger of his own vision of a total art work, integrating vocal and instrumental music with the other arts). In many ways revolutionary, Beethoven's music remains universally appealing because of its characteristic humanism and dramatic power. ~ Rovi Staff