We the People: Yo-Yo Ma plays Bach’s Cello Suites

This November, Yo-Yo Ma will perform Bach’s complete suites for solo cello for the first time in one evening at home, in Boston. It’s music that he has offered to communities on all six continents, in moments of joy and in times of tragedy. For him it exemplifies how culture helps us to seek truth, build trust, and act in service. Watch this incredible concert telecast at the Greenfield Public Library.

This is more than a concert for Yo-Yo: it is an invitation to listen to each other and the world around us, to celebrate our community and the ways in which people all over the world—and here in Massachusetts—are bringing us together, creating shared space for connection, reflection, and action, and imagining a better future. 

**Admission to this simulcast event is free. Registration is required, with a limit of 80 people, and doors will open at 6:30pm. Registration opens on Friday, October 24, 2025 at https://greenfieldpl.libcal.com/event/15022557**

Streamed live from Symphony Hall, Boston

Presented by Celebrity Series of Boston

Produced by Celebrity Series and THE OFFICE performing arts + film in collaboration with Opus 3 Artists and Sound Postings, the office of Yo-Yo Ma.

We the People is made possible by Barbara & Amos Hostetter and the Barr Foundation with additional support provided by the Richard K. Lubin Family Foundation.

Program:

J.S. Bach | Suites 1-6 for unaccompanied cello, BWV 1007-1012

Suite No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007

Suite No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1008

Suite No. 3 in C Major, BWV 1009

Suite No. 4 in E♭ Major, BWV 1010

Suite No. 5 in C minor, BWV 1011

Suite No. 6 in D Major, BWV 1012

Yo-Yo Ma’s career is testament to his faith in culture’s ability to generate trust and understanding —from his iconic performances and recordings to original undertakings such as the Bach Project and Our Common Nature, a cultural journey to celebrate the ways that nature can reunite us in pursuit of a shared future. Yo-Yo was born to Chinese parents in Paris, where he began to study the cello with his father when he was four. Three years later, he moved with his family to the United States, where he continued his cello studies before pursuing a liberal arts education.