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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2008 > September > 12 > Entry
Yo-Yo Ma gives the Long Center two thumbs up
The audience showered him with applause and ovations last night at the Long Center after famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma finished a virtoustic performance of Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E minor.
But the ebullient cello master had praise of his own to bestow. Pointing in animated way to the ceiling of the Long Center’s Dell Hall, Ma then flashed two thumbs up.
The crowd roared back. Ma likes the place — he really, really likes Austin newest jewel of a performing arts center.
Ma was in town as a guest of the Austin Symphony Orchestra at a special gala kick-off concert to its new season. The concert sold out weeks ago.
As it was the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Ma and ASO music director Peter Bay, both fittingly paid tribute.
After a gorgeous presentation of Dvorak’s Eighth Symphony, Bay returned after intermission to lead Carter’s gentle Elegy for String Orchestra and the Bach-Stokowski orchestration of “Sheep May Safely Graze.” Bay asked that both not be rewarded with applause, the silence instead a memorial for the victims of Sept. 11.
Then Ma took the stage for the Elgar concerto. A master musician such as Ma becomes music the music he plays — he doesn’t just perform it.
Interestingly, Ma, a longtime New Yorker, was on the road touring on Sept. 11, 2001 and scheduled to play the Elgar concerto, which he did. We asked him about the experience and you can about it here
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