Yo-Yo Ma's surprising Canadian connections

Yo-Yo Ma turned 69 on Oct. 7, and after a lifetime of accumulating prestigious awards and nearly 20 Grammys, the renowned cellist's curiosity and passion feel just as fiery as a musician who is just starting their career. 

"There are people that actually use culture to strengthen their community everywhere, as these people and musicians have," Ma told the New York Times in 2022, while working on Our Common Nature, a project through which he wants to build community and connect with nature through music. "There are wonderful people everywhere, and I want to meet them."

While Ma's projects have spanned decades and crossed many geographical borders, he does have a particular soft spot for Canada. In honour of the oft-named world's greatest cellist, we look at some of Ma's most notable Canadian connections.

Raffi 

During the early days of the pandemic, Ma started a series on social media called Songs of Comfort, with the hopes of bringing isolated people together through music. As part of the project, Ma reached out to Raffi Cavoukian about doing a duet together — and they settled on a 40th anniversary edition of Cavoukian's hallmark song, "Baby Beluga."

"He's an artist at his prime," Cavoukian told CBC Music at the time. "He's just at the top of his game. I'm just so thrilled with this joining of talents." 

Before Cavoukian's new verse, aimed at "beluga grads," Ma makes the delightful addition of whale sounds from his cello. 

Diana Krall

Award-winning jazz pianist and singer Diana Krall joined Ma on his 2008 Christmas album, Songs of Joy & Peace. Along with American jazz musician John Clayton, Krall and Ma take on "You Couldn't Be Cuter," composed by Jerome Kern with lyrics by Dorothy Fields. Krall adds a few notes of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" on the piano before her contralto beautifully leads Ma and Kern through the 1938 classic. Artists including Alison Krauss, Dave Brubeck and Renée Fleming appeared on Ma's Christmas album — as well as a certain Cape Breton-raised fiddler.

Natalie MacMaster 

Natalie MacMaster also joined Ma on Songs of Joy & Peace: the now longtime Ontarian recorded "A Christmas Jig" and the fiddle reel "The Mouth of the Tobique" with Ma and harpist and pianist Marta Cook. It's a doubleheader track that sets the holiday mood, then gets you off your feet — as any great reel should. 

MacMaster would join forces again with Ma in 2023 for her album with fiddler and husband Donnell Leahy, titled Canvas. The album also featured banjo great Rhiannon Giddens.

Narcy

For his 2021 album, Notes for the Future, Ma collaborated with artists from five continents "to explore how culture can help us imagine and build a better world," according to the album description. This included the moving "prayer for home" titled "Ha'oud (I Will Return)," which Ma recorded with Iraqi Canadian rapper Narcy and Lebanese indie band Mashrou' Leila. Sung and rapped in both Arabic and English, "Ha'oud (I Will Return)" brims with longing. "So honored to be alongside these legends and to hear Hamed Sinno's voice beside mine again," Narcy wrote on Instagram when the track was released. "The experience of recording this song was as disjointed as displacement is," he told news agency the National. "We all did our parts separately."

Jeremy Dutcher 

The Mi'kmaw "Honour Song" has been sung and interpreted many ways since songwriter George Paul originally brought it to life in the 1970s, and in 2021 Jeremy Dutcher and Ma collaborated on their own version of it for Notes for the Future — appearing just a few spots ahead of Narcy's contribution on the tracklist.

The two artists first performed the song together in 2018, when Ma had a concert in Montreal and invited the then first-time Polaris Prize winner onstage with him. Ma later asked Dutcher to record it for his upcoming album. Dutcher, who is from the Wolastoqiyik community of Tobique First Nation, added a verse in Wolastoqey, the language of the Wolastoqiyik or Maliseet, to his version of the honour song with Ma. The result of the two powerhouse musicians joining forces is an unforgettable recording. 

Leonard Cohen

When the BBC asked Ma what music he'd take to a desert island, his response was: "Our dearly departed Leonard Cohen. There's something extraordinary about his voice. He sounds like the monk that he kind of wanted to be, but in musical form as a performer."  

When Cohen died in November 2016, many tributes and covers poured in, including a version of "Suzanne" that Ma recorded with American singer-songwriter James Taylor. On BBC's Desert Island Discs, though, he singled out "Hallelujah" as Ma's most beloved track — and it's what he chose to beautifully cover in 2018 at the end of a free performance in a Montreal metro station. 

Toronto

"I feel like it's almost a second home," Ma said of Toronto, in a 2016 interview with the Globe and Mail. Ma said that Canadian pianist Anton Kuerti invited him to the city to perform when Ma was still in college, and he continued his relationship with the city through work with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, among other engagements. 

But there's another way Ma is connected to the city: as co-designer of the Toronto Music Garden. Originally meant to be located in Boston, just 15 minutes from Ma's own home of Cambridge, the Music Garden is the brainchild of Ma and landscape designer Julie Moir Messervy. "We started this whole project thinking it would be practically impossible to do," Ma said in an episode of Inspired by Bach, a six-part series exploring his collaborations with various artists. When funding for the project fell through in Boston, and they were able to instead get money for Toronto, the garden landed in Ma's second home. The design is inspired by Bach's Suite No. 1 for Unaccompanied Cello, with each movement corresponding to a section of the garden.