Lessons from YoYo Ma

Making thin the space between

Spokane, WA, USA. Mid-September, 2023

I am not used to the hardness of the city anymore. Hardness as feet smack concrete, as sounds crack against steel, as suspicion flickers between one passer-by and another. In this hardness I become alien twice over; awkward in my neat city-clothes and, here in Northwest America, an oddity with an accent and weird willingness to walk from A to B. Still in the grip of jet-lag, I wander Spokane wide-eyed, noticing two worlds separated by glass. Curated interiors and purified air, neatly separated from refuse, noise, and neglect. Having no car, I share the sidewalk with Spokane’s outsiders; a growing population who are raving and raging at being shut out. 

My husband Jim has retreated to a distant space inside himself and I am a little envious. While I hear the constant roar of RAM trucks, he hears the music that he will perform in a few days. The present irritates him and I try not to feel offended. I am familiar with this pre-concert zone and am learning to respect the complex process occurring inside him. I’m also aware of the need to be extra sensitive this time. This might be the most high-profile concert of his career.

For the umpteenth time, YoYo Ma will be performing the Dvorak cello concerto. But it will be the first time for this city and I overhear excited snippets of exchange about who has managed to get tickets. My parents and I are feeling deeply privileged to have flown across the Atlantic, let alone to be attending this concert. But we might secretly admit to slight disappointment that, even as the family of the conductor, we will have no chance to meet Mr. Ma. 

Preceding Mr. Ma by some weeks was the information that his space and time would be fiercely guarded. He would arrive 15 minutes before the rehearsal and leave immediately after the performance. I resist the distasteful image of celebrity self-absorption building in my mind.

But after the first and only rehearsal, Jim returns home bursting at the seams. YoYo had embraced him, they had bonded over music and the love of nature. YoYo had shared his impossible dream of becoming an oyster farmer off the Scottish West Coast. Jim had described our home, his artist in-laws and the Borders landscape that inspires them. And YoYo had demanded to meet us. 

It is concert night and I am trying to focus on Schuberts unfinished symphony but I’m a little worried about how we’re going to get backstage in the interval. We’ve been warned that there will be mere minutes in which we might be able to shake YoYo Ma’s hand before he goes on stage. Of course, the theatre is packed and we’re deep in the middle of a long row. To boot, my father, who is sketching along to the music, has dropped the lid to his best pen and is failing to remove the ink on his hands with a scrap of ragged tissue. As the applause erupts, we rush, stepping on toes and clambering over bags to get to the aisle. We move against the crowd surging to the bar and eventually make the stage door where I argue our legitimacy with the bouncer.

On the other side there is sudden silence. Official people are standing rigid, waiting. But a voice, distinctly relaxed and tender, comes through a door halfway along the corridor along with the erratic flash of cameras. I feel a hand touch my elbow. We are given whispered instructions to move this way. No, that way. Now wait, please be quiet.

And then a release, a shift in energy and YoYo Ma is in the hallway with us. Really with us. He embraces us all, and looks each of us directly in the eye with such ease, genuine joy and grace that the world stops. We are immediately chatting about the little things of most importance - gardens, the enjoyment of whisky, things that have made us laugh. My dad and he are so absorbed in a conversation about the coloured badge YoYo is wearing, that they completely ignore the polite insistence that we return to our seats. Mr. Ma has a concert to perform. There is time for one photo and then we are audience members again, as if nothing has happened.

On stage, YoYo Ma is small and far away, but his eyes are still clear to me. The sound swells and he moves with his cello as if in a dance with it, the steps so practiced both bodies move with complete freedom. He turns to the other musicians, meeting each one with his gaze and inviting them to the dance. 

And he invites the audience, too. We applaud each other, as if we had all been responsible for this music. And in a way, we had, because we had received it. There was such a powerful sense of the entire audience leaning forward with hearts and minds, not to receive the celebrity YoYo Ma, but what he was able to channel. He was so clearly and humbly in service to the music which came from somewhere generous, deep and profound. 

For those moments the space between worlds, between audience and orchestra, and between individuals, became so thin it was almost imperceptible. All was soft. We weren’t inside a theatre in our gowns and suits, we weren’t in Spokane or even the USA. We were just humans existing together, somewhere between the ethereal and the earth, able for those brief bars of sound, to feel the most essential thing that we are. If only I could have brought down the walls of the theatre, releasing that music into the street. Music speaks when words fail. What was said in that sound was what we all need to hear.

[photos courtesy of Danny Cordero, Spokane Symphony]

[original painting by my artist father, Simon Blackwood ]

For more on the dark art of conducting, YoYo and the power of music, take a look at my recent article in Beshara Magazine: besharamagazine.org