Biography of Yo-Yo Ma

Yo-Yo Ma is among the finest cellists of his generation, and a musician of unusually broad appeal. His great success is no doubt due to an easygoing, friendly stage personality in addition to his fine, adventurous musicianship. Indeed, Ma appears to have music in his blood: his mother was a singer in Hong Kong, his father a conductor, composer, and teacher. Although he had his first cello lessons at age four, memorizing two bars of Bach's cello suites every day, he had initially studied the violin, then the viola. When he was seven, the family moved to New York so that Ma could study with Janos Scholz. At the age of eight, Ma appeared on American television on "The American Pageant of the Arts," in a concert conducted by Leonard Bernstein. He joined the junior department of the Juilliard School as a pupil of Leonard Rose. However, he left Juilliard in 1971, questioning whether he would continue with his cello studies despite international recognition while still in his teens.Ma eventually enrolled at Harvard, where teachers, including composers Leon Kirchner and Earl Kim, gave him confidence to continue. The most important turning point, though, was a trip to the Marlboro Festival, where he heard the great cellist Pablo Casals perform. Says Ma, "The commitment behind each note, the belief he had, was a wonderful example." In 1978 Ma won the Avery Fisher Prize, establishing himself as one of a very few genuine superstars in classical music. Since then, he has appeared with nearly all of the world's great orchestras and conductors. He also is active in chamber music, often in a piano trio with Young Uck Kim and Emanuel Ax; Ma and Ax won a Grammy award for their recording of the Brahms cello sonatas. In 1982 Ma was invited to appear in the inaugural concert of the London Symphony Orchestra's new concert hall at the Barbican Centre in London, where he played in the presence of Queen Elizabeth II. He has won numerous Grammy awards, recording such diverse music as Brazilian bossa nova, Argentine tango, American roots and bluegrass, and the soundtrack for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. In 1998 he founded the Silk Road Project, to explore the exchange of musical ideas that occurred along the trade route. His CDs of the early 2000s have touched on both traditional and crossover repertory, with two albums of Vivaldi's music recorded with keyboardist and conductor Ton Koopman emerging as successful examples of the former, and the Obrigado Brazil CD becoming another crossover best seller.Playing a Montagnana cello and the "Davidov" Stradivari previously used by Jacqueline du Pré, Ma produces a relatively lean and focused, though warm, tone, with a tight, fast vibrato. His performances are a unique blend of rhapsodic and seemingly spontaneous music-making; at the same time, his playing is tempered by intellectually rigorous analysis and forethought. He places great importance on not repeating performances from the past, either those of other artists or his own.

Biography of Ton Koopman

By his twenties, Antonius "Ton" Koopman was already carving a musical niche for himself in which he would rise to become one of the world's most prominent performers in the early music movement. Koopman was born in the Dutch town of Zwolle in 1944. After what he describes as a "classical education," he went to Amsterdam to study organ (with Simon C. Jansen), harpsichord (with Gustav Leonhardt), and musicology. Koopman's musical interests from the outset centered upon the re-creation of older musics on their original instruments in a thoroughly researched historical performing style. He founded his first Baroque orchestra in 1966, followed by an exuberant career (40 years and counting) of mingled performance, conducting, and scholarship. As a keyboardist, Ton Koopman has appeared on the most prestigious concert stages of five continents and has produced an extensive discography on Erato, Philips, Sony, Teldec, and other labels. He has concertized on many of the greatest historical organs throughout Europe. He plays harpsichord while leading the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir (both of which he also founded), in addition to giving regular guest performances with professional orchestras throughout the world. He has taught harpsichord at the Sweelinck conservatory, serves as a professor of harpsichord at the Hague's Royal Conservatory, and is an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music in London. Koopman's first international prizes -- a pair of Prix d'Excellence -- came for his performances on organ and harpsichord. Koopman's work as a conductor of early music has garnered him a wealth of further awards, including two Edison Prizes, a 3M Prize, a Deutsche Schallplattenpreis, a French Grand Prix du Disque and Prix Hector Berlioz, Grammy nominations in both the U.S. and Britain, and the Silver Phonograph from the Dutch recording industry. Much of his recorded work has been with the period instrument ensemble the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, which he founded in 1979. Together, Koopman and the Amsterdam Baroque have produced scores of recordings; Biber, Charpentier, Handel, Mozart, Purcell, and Vivaldi have been featured, though Koopman is best known now for his massive projects with recording the music of J.S. Bach. Between 1994 and 2004 he conducted and recorded the entire corpus of Bach's cantatas; other projects have included the complete Bach organ works and Passions (including Koopman's own reconstruction of the lost Markuspassion). Finally, Koopman maintains an incredibly active schedule as guest conductor, as well as a lengthy publishing career.

Biography of Ton Koopman

By his twenties, Antonius "Ton" Koopman was already carving a musical niche for himself in which he would rise to become one of the world's most prominent performers in the early music movement. Koopman was born in the Dutch town of Zwolle in 1944. After what he describes as a "classical education," he went to Amsterdam to study organ (with Simon C. Jansen), harpsichord (with Gustav Leonhardt), and musicology. Koopman's musical interests from the outset centered upon the re-creation of older musics on their original instruments in a thoroughly researched historical performing style. He founded his first Baroque orchestra in 1966, followed by an exuberant career (40 years and counting) of mingled performance, conducting, and scholarship. As a keyboardist, Ton Koopman has appeared on the most prestigious concert stages of five continents and has produced an extensive discography on Erato, Philips, Sony, Teldec, and other labels. He has concertized on many of the greatest historical organs throughout Europe. He plays harpsichord while leading the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir (both of which he also founded), in addition to giving regular guest performances with professional orchestras throughout the world. He has taught harpsichord at the Sweelinck conservatory, serves as a professor of harpsichord at the Hague's Royal Conservatory, and is an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music in London. Koopman's first international prizes -- a pair of Prix d'Excellence -- came for his performances on organ and harpsichord. Koopman's work as a conductor of early music has garnered him a wealth of further awards, including two Edison Prizes, a 3M Prize, a Deutsche Schallplattenpreis, a French Grand Prix du Disque and Prix Hector Berlioz, Grammy nominations in both the U.S. and Britain, and the Silver Phonograph from the Dutch recording industry. Much of his recorded work has been with the period instrument ensemble the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, which he founded in 1979. Together, Koopman and the Amsterdam Baroque have produced scores of recordings; Biber, Charpentier, Handel, Mozart, Purcell, and Vivaldi have been featured, though Koopman is best known now for his massive projects with recording the music of J.S. Bach. Between 1994 and 2004 he conducted and recorded the entire corpus of Bach's cantatas; other projects have included the complete Bach organ works and Passions (including Koopman's own reconstruction of the lost Markuspassion). Finally, Koopman maintains an incredibly active schedule as guest conductor, as well as a lengthy publishing career.

Biography of Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra

The Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra is not a full-time ensemble, but nevertheless a quite busy group of about 26 or so musicians, many of international renown, who assemble several times yearly to perform a series of concerts devoted mostly to Baroque-era music. The repertory range falls in the period 1600 to 1791 (the year of Mozart's death, not a coincidental cutoff point, according to the group's founder, conductor Ton Koopman). The ABO regularly appears on recordings, its discography actually outpacing its concert work in later years. Perhaps the recording project the ABO is best known for is a cycle of the J.S. Bach cantatas (sacred as well as secular), which by its 2004 completion, ran to well over 20 volumes (67 discs in a 2007 release of the complete set). Of course, this massive undertaking would be impossible without a choir, and the ABO fields its own, with a talented ensemble of mostly Dutch singers that can range from around 15 to over 30 members. The ABO has appeared on more than 50 recordings, mostly for the Challenge Classics and Erato labels. The Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra was founded by Ton Koopman in 1979. Most of the players had already earned international reputations for their work in Baroque repertory. Typically, the ABO would perform in Amsterdam (the Concertgebouw), the Hague, Utrecht, Rotterdam, as well as in other major concert halls throughout Europe and the U.S.: New York's Lincoln Center, London's Barbican Center, Paris' Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, and the Vienna Musikverein are among the many major concert venues in which it has scored critical success. By the 1990s the group was among the most celebrated Baroque ensembles in Europe. In 1992 Koopman founded the Amsterdam Baroque Choir, which debuted at the Holland Festival of Early Music that year with a Biber Requiem and Vespers. In 1994 Koopman and the ABO and Choir launched the massive Bach cantata undertaking for the Erato label. The latter half of the cycle was issued on the Challenge Classics label, however. The ABO and Choir have received numerous awards for their recordings: the first four issues in the Bach project received the 1997 Deutsche Schallplattenpreis Echo Klassik, and other citations included a Gramophone Award, a Diapason d'Or, and two Edison Awards. Among the more important later recordings by the ABO and Choir was a June 2007 Kultur Video DVD of five J.S. Bach religious cantatas.

Biography of Jonathan Manson

No biography available