yo yo ma

Following the success of the Grammy award-winning album ‘The Goat Rodeo Sessions’, Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile return with their sensational new album ‘Not Our First Goat Rodeo’. ‘Not Our First Goat Rodeo’ combines the talents of the four solo artists, each a Grammy Award- winning talent in his own right, to create a singular sound that’s part composed, part improvised, and uniquely American. The music featured in this stunning album is so complex to pull off that the group likens it to a goat rodeo — an aviation term for a situation in which 100 things need to go right to avoid disaster. Both the first album and the new recording also feature the voice and artistry of singer-songwriter and fellow Grammy Award-winner Aoife O’Donovan, who joins the group as a guest on ‘Not Our First Goat Rodeo’.

The outstanding program spotlights cellist Yo-Yo Ma, pianist Kathryn Stott plus classical guitarists Sergio and Odair Assad, all of whom played on both Soul of the Tango and Obrigado Brazil. They are joined by percussionist Joseph Gramley, who appeared on Ma's gold-certified Songs of Joy & Peace album.

Classic Yo-Yo is a greatest-hits collection for the famous Yo-Yo Ma, something he's fully entitled to after two decades of runaway success. It's "Classic Yo-Yo" in the sense that it presents well-loved and presumably durable selections from a variety of Yo-Yo Ma albums, not because it inclines toward Ma's straight-ahead classical recordings. In fact the division between classical and crossover pieces on the disc is about 50/50, and they tend to alternate.

More close encounters with John Williams away from the silver screen. This time his focus is the cello – not just the cello‚ mind‚ but the cellist:Yo¬Yo Ma. To say thatMa greatly raises Williams’ game may sound like a rather backhanded compliment‚ but it’s hardly intended as such. The fact of the matter is that composers work on inspiration and when the inspiration comes in human form it generally takes on a more human dimension. The Cello ConcertoÊ– the biggest and most significant work of this collection – was written expressly for Ma.