Yo-Yo Ma visited Paranal Observatory in northern Chile in 2019 to perform a concert.Austin Mann
On March 8, 2020, Yo-Yo Ma was at Carnegie Hall giving a chamber music performance with two old friends, the pianist Emanuel Ax and the violinist Leonidas Kavakos. All three soloists travel constantly, and they were thrilled to be reunited. Hugs flew freely that day; neither Ma nor Kavakos had quite gotten their minds around the public health emergency about to descend. They noticed Ax, who had recently been to Italy â then ground zero of the pandemic â was being curiously generous with his applications of Purell.
After the concert, a scientist friend âread us the riot actâ about taking coronavirus seriously, Ma says. Despite being the most famous classical musician on the planet, he frequently takes Amtrak between New York and Boston, en route to his Cambridge home. Yet the day after the concert, he and his wife traveled home by car.