Yo-Yo Ma helms the 2018 Youth Music Culture Guangdong

The 2nd annual Youth Music Culture Guangdong (YMCG), presented by the Guangdong Provincial Department of Culture and organized jointly by the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra (GSO) and Xinghai Concert Hall, will take place in mid-January 2018, and a new YMCG Orchestra comprising young Chinese musicians from China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and abroad will perform under the leadership of Yo-Yo Ma and his teaching faculty. Once again, the GSO facilities, Xinghai Concert Hall and a temporary Music Tent will become a cultural nexus.

The inaugural YMCG was held earlier this year (January 2017), attracting mainstream media both at home and abroad, largely because of the success of Maestro Long Yu, Chairman of the YMCG Artistic Committee and Music Director of the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra, in inviting internationally celebrated cellist Yo-Yo Ma as the YMCG Artistic Director. During the inaugural YMCG, dozens of Chinese print and social media published nearly 100 reports on the event, with short internet videos on YMCG activities receiving more than 15 million viewings. Mainstream media in Europe and America were also drawn to this innovative musical event. Not only was footage of YMCG shown in New York’s Times Square, but the Financial Times, The Strad, Strings and Musical America carried detailed reports of the activities.

Music professionals and general media in China showed great interest in this new cultural project not only because of the presence of Yo-Yo Ma, but also because there are very few projects comparable to YMCG in the world. YMCG is 10 days of exploration, conversation, and performance, dedicated to the creation not only of creative and flexible musicians, but also of artists who think actively about why their music is needed and how to serve that need. Chief Editor Shen Qiang of Chinese Culture Pictorial praised YMCG as “opening a new page for the Chinese symphonic world.” The classical music magazine Strings assigned a writer to travel to Guangzhou to cover YMCG, reviewing the project online and publishing a cover story entitled “Yo-Yo Ma at the Crossroads of Music & Culture,” in which YMCG and its influence on young musicians are characterized as follows: “This isn’t about perfecting intonation or achieving technical accuracy—it is about finding freedom in the music, and revealing a part of themselves.”

World-renowned musician Yo-Yo Ma’s Silkroad has attained global fame. Ma himself is a frequent Grammy winner, totalling 20 awards to date. A few weeks after the inaugural YMCG, the Silkroad Ensemble won yet another accolade with its most recent recording, Sing Me Home, receiving a Grammy for Best World Music Album. Inaugural YMCG faculty members featured on Sing Me Home included violinist Johnny Gandelsman, percussionist Joseph Gramley, yangqin player Reylon Yount and sheng virtuoso Wu Tong. Precisely because his music crosses cultural and ethnic barriers, in September 2006, the United Nations named Yo-Yo Ma a Messenger of Peace. The name “Yo-Yo Ma” is a symbol for an open and embracing attitude in music, as well as an icon for cross-cultural exchange and dialogue.

The 2018 YMCG faculty led by Yo-Yo Ma features renowned conductor Michael Stern as its Music Director, along with core members of the Silkroad Ensemble and principals of America’s leading orchestras. Faculty members include John Yeh, clarinetist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for more than two decades, multiple Grammy-winner double bassist Edgar Meyer, Juilliard School and Curtis Institute viola professor Hsin-Yun Huang, violinist Cornelia Heard, who heads the Strings Department at the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University, violinists Pamela Frank, Mario Gotoh and Hanneke Cassel as well as piano professor Anna Polonsky. Also joining the faculty is Wu Man, the inimitable pipa virtuoso and member of the Silkroad Ensemble originally from China who has built a reputation in America and Europe. Silkroad musicians including percussionist Joseph Gramley, cellist Mike Block and Harvard lecturer Tina Blythe will return to YMCG for a second year.

Members of the YMCG faculty are experts in diverse fields. They are all pioneers in music and arts education and advocates of cross-cultural communication. Even more important, they are all extremely creative artists, the key reason why Yo-Yo Ma invited them to Guangzhou. Coming from Europe and the United States as well as China, the faculty will inspire young musicians with new ideas, connecting different cultures in creating new music, enabling deeper and more expansive communication in exchanges illuminating the diverse cultures behind the music.

In 2018, YMCG will have an emphasis on one composer – Ludwig van Beethoven. In Yo-Yo Ma’s words, “as an improviser, virtuoso pianist, and composer, Beethoven shows us how an artist who is able to be many things produces the great creativity we need to understand change and chart a new course – something of great relevance today.” Led by a faculty imbued with international vision and a pioneering spirit, the young musicians of YMCG will use their experience with Beethoven and related composers to build fluency with repertoire, vocabulary and psychological insight. When the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth arrives in 2020, YMCG students will have an opportunity to share this connection between change and creativity with others.

As the YMCG’s main vehicle in realizing the project’s core philosophies, the YMCG Orchestra—which comprises musicians under the age of 35—was established in 2017. The 2018 YMCG ensemble promises to be filled with vitality, befitting the energy of Guangdong, a city at the forefront of China’s reform and open-door policy. Here, friendships will be made through music, and a large extended family will be fostered by cultural fusion and exchange. The eminent American conductor Michael Stern will serve as its Music Director and Conductor.

Last year, YMCG attracted more than 600 applicants from nearly 100 conservatories, arts organizations and professional institutions across three continents. The inaugural YMCG Orchestra included young Chinese musicians from 20 cities in China and abroad, including competition winners and orchestra professionals. As the Financial Times of London reported, “watching these young players leave their conservatory-educated comfort zone felt almost voyeuristic, but their excitement was palpable.” The organizers look forward to witnessing “conservatory-educated” young musicians interact with our distinguished faculty for the extended YMCG period.

YMCG is not purely a training camp to improve performing technique. It is Yo-Yo Ma’s expressed wish that “the participants will make many, many connections during these nine days - encounters with colleagues, new musical relationships, conversations that develop into friendships.” After the workshop’s conclusion, he hopes that young musicians will bring its ideals of exploration, collaboration, and service into practice, not only in music but also their daily lives.

The main activities and performances of the 2018 YMCG will take place in the state-of-the-art facilities of the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra and Xinghai Concert Hall, renowned for its outstanding acoustics. A multi-function music tent will again be set up on the lawn outside the GSO’s headquarters as a student and media center during the day, transforming into an unconventional performance space in the evenings, where Yo-Yo Ma and the faculty will engage in public events.

As a globally renowned musician of Chinese descent, Yo-Yo Ma is highly supportive of Guangdong Province’s cultural and artistic development. In 2013, the GSO performed the premiere of Duo with Yo-Yo Ma and Wu Tong as soloists. The work, a GSO co-commission from composer Zhao Lin, is a double concerto for cello and sheng. Footage of the GSO performance has since appeared in Morgan Neville’s Grammy-nominated documentary The Music of Strangers. Centering on Ma and the Silkroad Ensemble, The Music of Strangers was selected by the 66th Berlin Film Festival, leading to widespread attention to Ma and Silkroad’s efforts in bridging cultural differences and finding the common ground in music from East and West.

For more than a decade, Ma and the Silkroad Ensemble have put their belief in the power of radical cultural collaboration and passion-driven learning into practice. This in turn will be injected into YMCG, helping Guangdong to strengthen its artistic potential in establishing its own unique cultural brand. Using culture as a nexus and music as a bridge, the YMCG gathers Chinese youths from diverse backgrounds around the world, introducing them to new cultural ideas and artistic sentiments, enriching their wonderful performances to encompass music and life, culture and society, tradition and development, fusion and innovation.