World-Renowned Cellist Yo-Yo Ma Headlines 15th Anniversary Season of Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival

FERNANDINA BEACH, Fla.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival today announced that cellist
Yo-Yo Ma will make his first-ever appearance in northeastern Florida by
opening the Festival’s 15th anniversary season on January 14,
2016. Universally considered one of the world’s greatest cellists, he
has made over 90 recordings and received 18 Grammy Awards. Yo-Yo Ma is
acclaimed for his extraordinary technique, rich tone and collaborations
with musicians from other genres and cultures, which have reinvigorated
classical music and expanded its audience.

The January 14 concert is scheduled for 7:30 PM at First Baptist Church,
1600 South 8th Street in Fernandina Beach. Tickets for the
general public will go on sale October 1 at www.aicmf.com
or by calling 904-261-1779.

Mr. Ma’s performance is made possible in part by CBC National Bank’s
Festival sponsorship. Christopher Rex, the Festival’s general and
artistic director, said, “We deeply appreciate CBC’s sponsorship, which
helped make it possible to bring an artist of Yo-Yo Ma’s international
stature to Amelia Island. CBC’s relationship with our Festival extends
back 15 years to our inaugural season when the bank became one of our
first corporate sponsors. We are truly grateful for CBC’s ongoing
support.” Headquartered in Fernandina Beach, CBC operates full-service
branches in Beaufort and Port Royal, S.C.

Born to Chinese parents in Paris, Mr. Ma was a child prodigy and at age
five gave his first public recital. He later moved to New York with his
family and made his Carnegie Hall debut at age nine. He studied at the
Juilliard School under cellists Leonard Rose and János Scholz. He
subsequently sought a traditional liberal arts education to expand upon
his conservatory training, graduating from Harvard University in 1976
with a degree in humanities.

Mr. Ma initially was celebrated for performances and recordings of the
classical cello repertoire. In addition to recitals, he frequently
performed as part of a trio with pianist Emanuel Ax and violinist
Young-Uck Kim and as part of a quartet with Ax and violinists Isaac
Stern and Jaime Laredo. Mr. Ma and Ax received high acclaim for their
recordings of the sonatas of Ludwig van Beethoven and Johannes Brahms.
Of special interest to Mr. Ma are the six suites for unaccompanied cello
by Johann Sebastian Bach, challenging masterpieces that were some of the
first music he learned to play as a young boy. He recorded the suites in
1983 and again in 1998. Accompanying the latter release was a series of
six films that interpreted Bach’s suites. Mr. Ma collaborated on the
project with artists from such varied disciplines as choreography,
landscape architecture, ice skating, film directing, and Kabuki theatre.

In addition to the traditional repertoire, Mr. Ma has recorded with
jazz, bluegrass and tango artists. He also played on Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon
(2000), the sound track recording for the movie of the
same name, and in 2003 he collaborated with Latin American musicians on Obrigado
Brazil
. Another collaborative effort with progressive bluegrass
musicians resulted in the critically acclaimed recording The Goat
Rodeo Sessions
in 2011.

One of Mr. Ma’s goals is the exploration of music as a means of
communication and as a vehicle for the migration of ideas across a range
of cultures throughout the world. Toward that end, he founded in 1998
the Silk Road Project, an arts organization that initially focused on
exploring the cultural traditions along the Silk Road, an ancient
trading route that linked China with the West. Soon thereafter he
established the Silk Road Ensemble, and the group’s first recording, Silk
Road Journeys: When Strangers Meet
, was released in 2002. The
project’s scope subsequently expanded, using the Silk Road as a metaphor
for connecting artistic endeavors worldwide and across cultures. He has
taken time to immerse himself in subjects as diverse as native Chinese
music with its distinctive instruments and the music of the Kalahari
bush people in Africa.

Mr. Ma is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Avery Fisher
Prize (1978), an honorary doctorate in music from Harvard (1991), the
Glenn Gould Prize (1999), the National Medal of the Arts (2001), and the
Presidential Medal of Freedom (2010). In 2011, he was recognized as a
Kennedy Center Honoree.

Appointed a CultureConnect Ambassador by the United States Department of
State in 2002, Mr. Ma has trained and mentored thousands of students
worldwide in countries including Lithuania, Korea, Lebanon, Azerbaijan
and China. Mr. Ma also serves as a UN Messenger of Peace and as a member
of the President’s Committee on the Arts & the Humanities. He has
performed for eight American presidents. In 2010, he was appointed the
first-ever creative consultant for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Mr.
Ma plays two instruments, a 1733 Montagnana cello from Venice and the
1712 Davidoff Stradivarius.

Planning for the Festival’s 2016 season is still underway, but thus far
several highly acclaimed artists are scheduled: two performances by the
Dover Quartet, the Festival’s Quartet-in-Residence; superstar
mandolinist Chris Thile, who will replace Garrison Keillor as host of A
Prairie Home Companion
in 2016; violinist Anne Akiko Meyers; the
American String Quartet; and the Christiania Trio, consisting of
violinist David Coucheron, pianist Julie Coucheron and cellist
Christopher Rex. Visit www.aicmf.com
to keep updated on the 2016 schedule.

About the AICMF
Celebrating its 15th anniversary season in
2016, the Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival has become one of the
most prestigious music events of its kind in the Southeast. The Festival
is a not-for-profit, tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of
the Internal Revenue Code.

Contacts

Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival
Joe Marasco, 904-261-1779
Executive
Director

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