Yo-Yo Ma Is Finding His Way Back to Nature Through Music

Yo-Yo Ma Is Finding His Way Back to Nature Through Music

NEW RIVER GORGE NATIONAL PARK, W.Va. — A hiker’s mouth dropped when she learned why a small group was forming at a rocky overlook here. “Yo-Yo Ma,” she was told, “is going to do a pop-up concert.”

She waited patiently, leaning against a wooden guard rail, beyond which lay a serenely undulating vista of West Virginia’s tree-covered mountains, bisected by a horseshoe curve of the New River and dotted with the shadows of scattered clouds. From this spot, Grandview, the landscape appeared nearly untouched, interrupted only by a railroad track along the water.

Members of the National Park Service set up a tripod to livestream the performance. The poet Crystal Good stood before the crowd of a few dozen passers-by, and before giving a reading, said, “Let me take a moment, because this is so beautiful.” Then Ma, far from any major concert hall and hundreds of miles from his home in Cambridge, Mass., stood with his cello propped up by its endpin and played a Bach Sarabande.