The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra Announces One-Night-Only Concert with Yo-Yo Ma

MILWAUKEE, WIS. – August 19, 2025 – The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra announced today a one-night-only performance with renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma on March 25. MSO Music Director Ken-David Masur will lead the orchestra and Ma in a performance of Dvořák’s Cello Concerto in B minor.

Yo-Yo Ma last performed at the Bradley Symphony Center in recital with pianist Kathryn Stott in April 2022, and he last performed with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra in June 2016. This will be the first time that Ma will perform with the orchestra at the Bradley Symphony Center.

Tickets are now available to MSO subscribers only. Tickets will go on sale to the general public beginning at 9 AM on October 1.

Yo-Yo Ma’s multi-faceted career is testament to his belief in culture’s power to generate trust and understanding. Whether performing new or familiar works for cello, bringing communities together to explore culture’s role in society, or engaging unexpected musical forms, Ma strives to foster connections that stimulate the imagination and reinforce our humanity.

Most recently, Ma began Our Common Nature, a cultural journey to celebrate the ways that nature can reunite us in pursuit of a shared future. Our Common Nature follows the Bach Project, a 36-community, six-continent tour of J. S. Bach’s cello suites paired with local cultural programming. Both endeavors reflect Ma’s lifelong commitment to stretching the boundaries of genre and tradition to understand how music helps us to imagine and build a stronger society.

Yo-Yo Ma is an advocate for a future guided by humanity, trust, and understanding. Among his many roles, Ma is a United Nations Messenger of Peace, the first artist ever appointed to the World Economic Forum’s board of trustees, a member of the board of Nia Tero, the US-based nonprofit working in solidarity with Indigenous peoples and movements worldwide, and the founder of the global music collective Silkroad.

His discography of more than 120 albums (including 19 Grammy Award winners) ranges from iconic renditions of the Western classical canon to recordings that defy categorization, such as Hush with Bobby McFerrin and the Goat Rodeo Sessions with Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile. Ma’s recent releases include Six Evolutions, his third recording of Bach’s cello suites, and Beethoven for Three: Symphony No. 4 and Op. 97 “Archduke,” the third in a new series of Beethoven recordings with pianist Emanuel Ax and violinist Leonidas Kavakos. Ma’s latest album, Merci, with pianist Kathryn Stott, features the music of Gabriel Fauré, following the arcs of Fauré’s inspiration and influence in a deeply personal expression of gratitude for the relationships that make music magic.

Yo-Yo Ma was born in 1955 to Chinese parents living in Paris. He began to study the cello with his father at age four and three years later moved with his family to New York City, where he continued his cello studies at the Juilliard School before pursuing a liberal arts education at Harvard. He has received numerous awards, including the Avery Fisher Prize (1978), the National Medal of the Arts (2001), the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2010), Kennedy Center Honors (2011), the Polar Music Prize (2012), and the Birgit Nilsson Prize (2022). He has performed for nine American presidents, most recently on the occasion of President Biden’s inauguration.

Yo-Yo Ma and his wife have two children. He plays three instruments: a 2003 instrument made by Moes & Moes, a 1733 Montagnana cello from Venice, and the 1712 Davidoff Stradivarius.

 

About the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra

The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, led by Music Director Ken-David Masur, is among the finest orchestras in the nation and the largest cultural institution in Wisconsin. Since its inception in 1959, the MSO has found innovative ways to give music a home in the region, develop music appreciation and talent among area youth, and raise the national reputation of Milwaukee. The MSO’s 72 full-time professional musicians perform over 125 classics, pops, family, education, and community concerts each season in venues throughout the state. A pioneer among American orchestras, the MSO has performed world and American premieres of works by John Adams, Philip Glass, Geoffrey Gordon, Marc Neikrug, Camille Pépin, Matthias Pintscher, Roberto Sierra, and Dobrinka Tabakova, as well as garnered national recognition as the first American orchestra to offer live recordings on iTunes. The MSO’s standard of excellence extends beyond the concert hall and into the community, reaching more than 30,000 children and their families through its Arts in Community Education (ACE) program, Youth and Teen concerts, and Family Series.

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