Yo-Yo Ma Trades Licks with Bluegrass Jokesters on New CD
Edgar Meyer, Stuart Duncan, and Chris Thile welcome their classical friend into the fold in ‘The Goat Rodeo Sessions’
Cellist Yo-Yo Ma has wrangled in bluegrass buddies bassist Edgar Meyer, fiddler Stuart Duncan, and mandolin and fiddle player Chris Thile for a new Sony Masterworks CD that bears the curious title The Goat Rodeo Sessions. “When you hear the music, it sort of fulfills that curiosity,” Ma says.
A goat rodeo “is about the most polite term used by aviation people . . . to describe a scenario that requires about 100 things to go right at once if you intend to walk away from it,” according to UrbanDictionary.com. Ma further simplifies the concept: “Everything has to go right in order for there to be a good result.”
More of a jam session than an exercise in strategic songwriting (Ma can’t recall who wrote what during the sessions), Goat Rodeo is the result of exceptional instrumentalists commingling musical communities. “ ‘Communities’ is shorthand for a vocabulary that a group of people know,” Ma says. “It reinforces who they are. The way [Meyer, Duncan, and Thile] express community is through jokes—historical jokes, ‘Who did what and said what.’
“I realized that that’s exactly what also happens in the classical community. . . . I started telling them, ‘Hey, you know that reminds me of when Heifetz said that!’”
Classical music remains Ma’s “place of origin,” his “primary language.” But, he adds, in the 21st century, a serious musician needs to stay in touch with the contemporary music scene. “Look at the burgeoning communities we have,” he says. “There are so many that it gets to a point where you get to a Tower of Babble situation. Can those languages interact? You go through an era of specialization, but then you also need to know what the other languages are about because otherwise, the people who speak your language will become more and more isolated.”
The classically trained Meyer, who met Ma years ago and stars with him on Mark O’Connor’s celebrated 1996 recording Appalachia Waltz CD (Sony), introduced Thile to Ma for the cellist’s 2008 cross-genre effort Songs of Joy & Peace (Sony). “There was such loving care between Chris and Edgar,” Ma says. “Edgar is older and he’s a perfectionist. He beats down on himself and Chris is pretty funny about it and totally accepts it.
“Chris is totally remarkable,” Ma adds, “because there is no impediment between his brain and his hands or his voice. He’s totally open and curious to what’s around him. He has unbelievable energy, and he’s a great mixologist—he talks about mixing drinks the way winemakers talk about vines and oak.
“What more do you want?”
Further Resources
Read an interview with Stuart Duncan discussing 'The Goat Rodeo Sessions.'
The jovial pair suggested enlisting Duncan for the project. “Playing with Stuart is amazing because he never does the same thing twice,” Ma says. “He could do a chop on the violin and find an infinite number of ways to make it different.”
And why would the Nashville-based bluegrass-oriented Duncan and Thile want to collaborate with Ma?
“I’m a good guest,” the cellist quips. “They take me in and I know what the basic rules are—I won’t throw food on the table, Iwon’t put my feet on the table.”
Clearly, Ma is energized by his association with younger string players and enthusiastic about the creative ways today’s musicians cross genres to build multi-faceted careers.
“I feel like I’m in touch with a community of people that’s 17 generations younger than I am,” he says, noting the many musicians he’s met who have trained at the Berklee School of Music in Boston. “It’s a cool group of players,” he says. “And it’s bleeding over into a lot of places. It’s in touch with Nashville and with Brooklyn. I see this as nothing but really good news for all of the music communities.”
Walking away with more than fond memories, Ma, being the thoughtful and introspective player that he is, treated Goat Rodeo like a sabbatical. “It’s a little bit like what public school teachers go through during the year,” Ma says. “They have professional development days. My eye doctor tells me that every year or two he has to take a course to get recertified because of all the advances in medicine. So teachers do it. Doctors do it.
“Why shouldn’t musicians do it?”
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