Reviewer: Janet Martineau
Venue: The Temple Theatre
No introduction.
No accompanist.
No decorative flower arrangements.
No background projections.
No total lights out in the audience; dimmed ones.
Just a man and his cello. And us.
Making magic Wednesday night (Oct. 2) in downtown Saginaw’s Temple Theater.
“Yo-Yo Ma: Reflections and Music” was what it was titled, and its nearly 90 minutes were an emotional and thoughtful evening from a music superstar who is also quite the philosopher.
Ma started by saying he was thrilled “to make music in this city of makers,” first played a song of gratitude about being able to spend “this moment together,” and quickly expressed a thank you to the late Dr. Samuel Shaheen for saving and restoring this theater and then played Bach’s lengthy and intricate Cello Suite No. 1 “in his memory.”
“I am 68 years old. I first played this piece at age 4, and I am still trying to get it right,” quipped Ma to thunderous from an audience quickly enthralled, and which had given him a standing ovation when he strolled on the bare stage with, as we noted, no announcement.
Ma noted he was born in Paris (to Chinese parents, who had fled its cultural revolution) and they moved to the United States when he was 7. He said he recalls still that John F. Kennedy was the president, the duck and cover drills in school in case of a nuclear attack, and the moon landing pledge by the president.
From there, he launched into music spanning 300 years and pleading words dealing with mankind’s plight; the constant fight for the head, heart, body and soul of its residents; its need to create a new moonshot initiative to inspire the world and create “planetary humanism.”
Represented was music by Copland, Dvorak, Shostakovich, Armenian and Turkish composers, George Crum dealing with and trying to make sense of the ups and downs of society; sometimes played separately and other times collectively.
Summing it all up is impossible because you had to be there, but it dealt with the joys of the Ferris wheel and brownies introduced at a world’s fair, celebrating the new world of America, our tower of babel today, hope vs. despair, accomplishment vs. arrogance, the beauty of nature, the military industrial complex, collaboration, vision, knowledge and more.
Ma’s words softly spoken; his bowing and playing magnificent and delicate and intricate to watch and to hear.
And then he closed the evening with his cello live and a recorded piano played by contemporary Amir Siraj, an 24-year-old astrophysicist/pianist who is quoted as saying, “the more we look to nature, the closer we can get to answering fundamental questions about the world around us – about the past, but also about the future. That is the beauty of science.”
Simple piece actually.
But during it a projection screen was lowered showcasing images taken by the Webb and Hubble telescopes of the galaxy – as well as the blueness of Earth from in space, a close-up image of Michigan, surrounded by its lakes, and closing with an image of the United States lit up at night.
It was at this moment this reviewer lost it and the tears flowed. Ma’s deep and profound words earlier begging for a better world had me on the edge. Seeing those images left me emotionally exhausted.