{"id":193171,"date":"2018-12-08T23:25:31","date_gmt":"2018-12-09T04:25:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=193171"},"modified":"2018-12-08T23:25:31","modified_gmt":"2018-12-09T04:25:31","slug":"renowned-cellist-yo-yo-ma-to-gives-free-concert-in-montreals-subway-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/12\/08\/renowned-cellist-yo-yo-ma-to-gives-free-concert-in-montreals-subway-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Renowned cellist Yo Yo Ma to gives free concert in Montreal’s subway today"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
A Montreal subway station played host to an unusually talented busker on Saturday as world renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma entertained a rapt crowd during a brief free concert. (File Photo By Ralph Daily\/Wikimedia <\/a>commons, CC BY 2.0<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MONTREAL \u2014 A Montreal subway station played host to an unusually talented busker on Saturday as world renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma entertained a rapt crowd during a brief free concert.<\/p>\n

Ma, 63, played both alone and accompanied by local poets, and ended the 20-minute show by inviting the crowd to sing along with what he called \u201cthe song that, for me, means Montreal\u201d: Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.<\/p>\n

The event, which was co-organized by entertainment company Lembas Works, was billed as a way to \u201cexplore connections and disconnections in contemporary lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Chinese American cellist sat on a plastic chair, smiling and gesturing at the crowd as he played in front of a black and white screen.<\/p>\n

The audience sat or kneeled on the floor in a cordoned-off section of the platform, while crowds of commuters streamed by only feet away, hustled along by transit authorities.<\/p>\n

Ma was accompanied by live poets, who were invited to read their works at the microphone, but also by bird chirps and other pre-recorded sounds.<\/p>\n

In fluent French, he invited the audience to contemplate the music, and how it interacted with the sound of the city and the distant trains.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe music of the metro, everything in life, the church bells we heard, it unites us, it dignifies us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He gave a nod to his surrounding, and noted that transit, like music, is a unifying experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re in a metro, in the transport that links us together, because we move every day from one place to another,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The French-born cellist’s concert was part of what his website calls a \u201cday of action\u201d aimed at exploring the topic of culture and its role in humanizing technology.<\/p>\n

His other events on Saturday included discussing music’s effects on the brain with artificial intelligence researchers, and attending a film screening exploring how technology and media can increase the visibility of Indigenous voices in\u00a0Canada.<\/p>\n

Concert-goers Josiane Lefebvre and Anik Filion, who have both seen Ma play in more traditional concert venues, said Saturday’s event was different from his usual settings.<\/p>\n

Filion, an amateur cellist, said this one was aimed more at the general public, which she saw as a good thing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I found touching was that there were many children behind him, many families, and one even had a cello,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Lefebvre, a music teacher, said she felt that hearing 17th century Bach in the modern subway tied in well with Ma’s message of interconnectedness.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt shows there’s continuity, several centuries later,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MONTREAL \u2014 A Montreal subway station played host to an unusually talented busker on Saturday as world renowned cellist Yo-Yo …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":193172,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","mauthors-morgan-lowrie","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}