Yo-Yo Ma Trivia Questions

He was born in Paris, France, to Chinese parents. The family moved to New York City when he was seven. Shanghai is a common misattribution.

Ma played 'Air and Simple Gifts' with Itzhak Perlman, Gabriela Montero, and Anthony McGill. The performance was pre-recorded due to cold weather, but it happened live in spirit.

Founded in 1998, the Silk Road Project connects musicians and artists from countries along the historic Silk Road, promoting cross-cultural understanding through music.

As of 2024, Ma has won 18 Grammy Awards, not over 20. The number is often rounded up, but official count puts him just shy of two dozen.

Ma has collaborated with many pop and rock artists, including James Taylor, Sting, and Bobby McFerrin. He enjoys genre-crossing and rarely sticks to just classical.

His mother, Marina, was a singer, and his father, Hiao-Tsiun, was a music professor. They met in Paris, but she was not a conservatory student—she studied voice elsewhere.

He plays the Davidov Stradivarius, made in 1712, which was owned by Count Mathieu Wielhorski and later played by cellist Karl Davydov—not a czar, but a court musician. The czar part is a common embellishment.

Yo-Yo Ma was born on October 7, 1955, in Paris, to Chinese parents. He later moved to New York as a child.