Reuniting with Nature: Yo-Yo Ma’s Birdsong

Acadia National Park, Maine, USA. Photo by Jeff Gun. Wikimedia Commons.

 It’s finally summer! The summer holidays are the perfect time to escape into nature. Take your queue from Yo-Yo Ma, the superstar cellist whose boundless curiosity and idealism lead to many unusual projects. For his recent initiative “Our Common Nature,” Ma visited some of the most breath-taking nature locations in the USA to connect with nature and local communities through music. Every time he propped up his cello on grassy soil to play before mountain ranges or in the middle of a forest, the sound of his cello would create an intangible link between himself, his spontaneous audience and nature. Ma writes about the project on his website: “Let us use culture to remember that we are part of nature; that the survival of the earth cannot be separated from the health of society; and that to love each other is to love our planet.”

Yo-Yo Ma also collaborated with “The Birdsong Project,” an artistic initiative celebrating the joy and mystery of birdsong while drawing attention to the plight of bird life in our world. Seated in the middle of a forest in Maine, Yo-Yo Ma recorded “In the Gale,” a deeply emotional dialogue between his cello and birdsong written for him by the composer Anna Clyne. The piece was inspired by Emily Dickinson’s (1830-1886) poem about hope:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –

And sore must be the storm –

That could abash that little Bird

That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chilliest land –

And on the strangest Sea –

Yet – never – in Extremity,

It asked a crumb – of me.

Yo-Yo Ma and Anna Clyne, "In the Gale" - The Birdsong Project.

Enjoy your summer!