Yo-Yo Ma brings together musicians and civil rights figures for a new project

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma introduced himself to NPR's Karen Brown on the grounds of the Tanglewood Music Festival with characteristic understatement: "My name is Yo-Yo Ma. I'm an aging cellist." He is in fact one of classical music's most famous performers, having played for President John F. Kennedy at age seven and later founded the global collaboration the Silk Road Ensemble.

Now 70, Ma spent the week of August 8 curating We The People, a series of concerts, public conversations and community events at Tanglewood in the Berkshires, timed to the country's 250th anniversary. He framed the project around what he called "we the people, we the species are at an inflection point," and said he hoped its programming pointed toward a future that celebrates diverse voices, including immigrants, Indigenous people and younger generations.

Throughout the week, Ma wove his own performances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra together with high school marching bands and Native American storytellers, and booked a Latino block party and a square dance on the lawn. Explaining how he built the lineup, Ma said he looked for collaborators with a hopeful message, filtered through what he called the lens of a grandfather: "You can't be cynical with your grandchildren. You have to have hope." His youngest granddaughter is two, he said, and he wanted voices that could help him picture the world she would grow up in.

One evening, he introduced a student performance of Beethoven's "Pastoral Symphony" played without a conductor, calling it "an example of musical democracy," with the students agreeing on how to play and feel together without a single leader.

His guest list reached beyond classical music, including folk singer James Taylor, historian Heather Cox Richardson and civil rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson, who has founded several memorials to the legacy of slavery in the US. Stevenson told NPR that music, and especially the spirituals sung by enslaved people, helped millions "cope with the constant terror, violence and assault" of that era, and credited Ma with refusing to stay silent the way he said many classical musicians historically have.

Composer Allison Loggins-Hull, whose work was performed during the week, said institutions like Tanglewood are only now becoming willing to host that kind of conversation, describing "much more willingness to have these type of discussions that maybe aren't directly about music ... but more about the responsibility of being a citizen." Ma closed the week busking on a Berkshires street as part of a local festival, insisting the project carries no political agenda beyond a belief in bringing people together.