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Tales from the Appalachian Journey
Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, and Mark O'Connor take a break from their tour to talk with Berklee students about their unique collaboration.
By Sarah Godcher
(November 13, 2000)
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Yo-Yo Ma (right) and Edgar Meyer gave their clinic hours before performing for the general public. |
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Photo by Justin Knight |
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There was an almost poetic logic to the trip Berklee students took across the Charles River to attend a class in Cambridge last spring. Students landed on the campus of Harvard University, at the Sanders Theater, to hear a lecture and performance by three of the world's most inventive musical travelers, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, bassist Edgar Meyer, and violinist Mark O'Connor. The trio squeezed in the clinic just prior to a sold-out concert they would give that night in support of their latest recording "Appalachian Journey."
Just as the words "Appalachian Journey" call to mind travels along scenic mountain trails, so Ma, Meyer, and O'Connor have traversed vast musical landscapes. In speaking to Berklee students during the clinic, they seemed to describe their musical lives as ongoing journeys. Never content to stay in one place for too long, they are always moving forward and always learning. And in their collaborations, they spur each other on to new heights.
"Night after night, year after year, I keep hearing amazing things," Ma said. "These are two of the greatest musicians I've ever met."
This is high praise, coming from one of the world's most critically acclaimed and universally recognized classical musicians — winner of 13 Grammy Awards and the Avery Fisher Prize. But success seems to have inspired Ma to push himself further and explore new realms, like the tango music of Astor Piazzolla and the traditional music of ancient China, as well as American folk tunes.
Ma's fellow travelers on "Appalachian Journey" also are musical adventure seekers. Meyer and O'Connor are considered virtuoso players and gifted composers in both the classical and bluegrass worlds. They are committed to crossing the lines that separate musical genres. In this way, they are ideal partners for "Appalachian Journey," which blends original classical compositions with old-time jigs, reels, and breakdowns.
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| Mark O'Connor, Edgar Meyer, and Yo-Yo Ma (from left to right) held a Q&A session for Berklee students and faculty members after performing. |
| Photo by Justin Knight |
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Aside from simply enjoying each other's company, the three work together because they want to explore how disparate styles can unite to create a new form of American music, O'Connor said. Over the course of the clinic, they talked about these explorations and encouraged students to do some musical traveling of their own.
As a child performing in youth orchestras, Meyer said he noticed his peers felt limited by their classical training. While they loved other musical styles, they did not feel their classical instruments were appropriate to jazz or folk or pop. Meyer was more fortunate in this regard, since the bass is so widely employed in other genres.
"Classical music … was not interacting with all the other kinds of music around it. It was on a pedestal," he said.
Meyer refused to limit himself to a single style of playing. A native of Nashville, he absorbed the bluegrass and country traditions of that city, while honing his classical technique. Before rising to the highest echelon of the classical world, Meyer played with Sam Bush and Bela Fleck as a member of the bluegrass supergroup Strength in Numbers — a group that also featured Mark O'Connor. His more classical playing and composing reflect this experience.
"Personally, I find music to be not boundary driven at all," he said.
O'Connor also rejected the categorization of music very early in his career. Rather, his approach has been to realize all the possibilities his violin holds.
"When I was a kid growing up, my record collection included everything great — Beethoven, Bird, (Texas fiddle great) Benny Thomasson," O'Connor said. Lifting his violin to show the audience, he said, "I see this as the thing that brings it all together."
O'Connor first earned acclaim as a Texas fiddle whiz kid, walloping the competition at fiddling contests throughout the country. He was a protégé of two of the 20th century's most acclaimed fiddle stylists, first Benny Thomasson, then the jazz innovator Stephane Grapelli. After an impressive stint in Nashville as a session musician and bluegrass all-star, he fashioned himself into a first-rate classical violinist and composer, while still drawing upon his accomplished history as a fiddler.
"That's been a goal of mine: not having to go through the conventional way of training and still getting to play with Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer," O'Connor said.
But even when O'Connor is playing fairly conventional classical pieces, he continues to employ some fiddle techniques. For example, he said, many classical violinists would strive to play a series of eighth or sixteenth notes as evenly as possible, giving each note equal weight within the phrase. But in many folk fiddle styles, the lengths and dynamics of the notes are much more varied, resulting in a more swinging rhythmic effect. O'Connor's playing — like Meyer's — often has the melodic feel of classical music, yet retains a lively sense of rhythm.
O'Connor played a few lines of melody to emphasize the point. "They're all written as eighth notes, but I'm using lots of dynamics to make the melody really fly," he said.
But the rhythmic variation is never haphazard, Meyer pointed out.
"When you talk about not playing the notes all the same length, you're actually talking about playing with more control," he said. "You're talking about playing with two or three different levels of dynamics at the same time."
Ma agreed that this style of playing can be very challenging. Although he is among the most widely respected cellists of all time, Ma modestly admits he sometimes has difficulty mastering such rhythms.
"I'm terrible at getting a groove the way you guys would want it," he said to O'Connor and Meyer. "It takes an incredible degree of concentration and precision."
Both Ma and O'Connor told students that their collaboration has made them better players. Each is constantly learning a new skill from the other. O'Connor said he has improved his sense of romantic phrasing and his ability to blend his sound in a classical setting. Ma finds that playing with O'Connor improves his precision and sharpens his ears.
"When I go back to playing an orchestral concert after playing with Mark and Edgar, I listen better," Ma said. "I find it incredibly fertile to go back and forth."
All three players agreed that classical music would benefit from a bit more of this variation, or swing — and that this is just one example of how musicians can blend styles to enrich their sound.
"The ultimate point," Meyer said, "is that we want things to be alive."
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