Yo-Yo Ma performs at The Green Music Center

‘Goat Rodeo Sessions’ has been at the top of my playlist for the past six months,” says Green Music Center artistic director Jeff Langley.

He’s talking about cellist Yo-Yo Ma’s latest genre-bending album, “The Goat Rodeo Sessions,” a twangy classical collaboration with bluegrass artists Stuart Duncan, Chris Thile and Edgar Meyer.

“It’s pure Yo-Yo,” Langley says, “venturing beyond boundaries of style and idiom to the joy of pure improvisation.”

Pushing beyond the obvious has become the norm for the 57-year-old string virtuoso, widely regarded as the most talented cellist in the world.

Since he came on the scene in the 1970s and ’80s, Ma has collaborated with everyone from modern composer Phillip Glass and vocalist Bobby McFerrin to pop TV icons Mr. Rogers and Big Bird, while recording over 75 albums and taking home 15 Grammy awards along the way.

Before the Tanglewood regular makes his first visit to the Green Music Center, here are the five things you should know about Yo-Yo Ma:

1. Born in Paris to Chinese parents, Ma first picked up the cello at age 4. After the family moved to New York, he began studying at The Juilliard School at age 9, later graduating from Harvard University.
Today, two of his most prized instruments are a $2.5 million 1733 Montagnana cello nicknamed “Petunia” (which he once briefly lost in a New York taxi) and his 1712 Davidoff Stradivarius cello.

2. For a classical musician, Ma gets around like a rock star. President Obama invited him to play at his historic 2009 presidential inauguration. Ma played at memorial services for Apple founder Steve Jobs and U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy.
He played a duet with then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the 2001 National Medal of Arts Awards and played with rock star Sting and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics.
But one of his most powerful performances came one year after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001; Ma was the first musician to sound a note in a remembrance at the former site of the World Trade Center while victim’s names were read aloud.

3. One of his most ambitious projects, The Silk Road Ensemble, is an ongoing East-meets-West collaboration that re-imagines the ancient Silk Road merchant route as a musical tapestry created by modern musicians from countries along the 4,000 mile road, which once ran from the Mediterranean Sea to the Pacific Ocean.
Founded in 1998, Ma’s multi-cultural opus continues today in various concerts and as a non-profit organization, the Silk Road Project, that commissions educational programs and musical collaborations around the world.

4. Among his major, if unlikely, pop cultural contributions are the appearances on the TV shows “Sesame Street” and “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”
He played original music on soundtracks to the movies “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and “Memoirs of a Geisha,” made an appearance on “West Wing” and was turned into an animated Yo-Yo Ma chasing Homer on “The Simpsons.”

5. When Yo-Yo Ma’s 30-year retrospective Sony CD box set first came out in 2009, it was one of the most expensive on the market at $789.
“To me, that’s a bargain,” a Sony exec would say at the time. But before you balk, know this — it contains 90 discs, a 312-page book and an Annie Leibovitz portrait of Ma. These days, you can find it on Amazon for a mere $300.

Bay Area freelancer John Beck writes about entertainment for The Press Democrat. You can reach him at 280-8014, john@sideshowvideo.com and follow on Twitter @becksay.

IN CONCERT
Who: Cellist Yo-Yo Ma
When: 7 p.m. Saturday
Where: Green Music Center, Weill Hall, Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park
Note: The show is sold out but the Green Music Center recommends checking the website prior to the performance in case any “subscriber turn-back tickets” become available.
Information: gmc.sonoma.edu