Yo-Yo Ma , born the October 7th 1955 with Paris, is a American violoncellist of Chinese origin .

Born in France Chinese parents, Yo-Yo Ma begins at four years the study of the violoncello with her father. After a first concert at six years with Paris, it leaves with his parents to New York, where it follows the teaching of Leonard Pink to the Juilliard School. It begins its professional path near Leonard Bernstein and returns to France to play with the National orchestra of France and the Orchestre of Paris, under the direction of Myung-Whun Chung.

Yo-Yo Ma is many times shown opened at the other musical forms, Jazz and Tango but also with the traditional and primitive musics, as when he played with members of the people of the bush of the Kalahari, in Africa. He also worked, on several occasions, with the type-setter of film musics John Williams ( Seven years in Tibet , Mémoires of a geisha )

He sponsored the first years of the Orchestre Westerner-Eastern Couch, the Israeli-Arab orchestra directed by Daniel Barenboim.

He recently joined the long list of the ambassadors of the peace of the UNO, among which one finds many musicians: the Tenor Luciano Pavarotti or the Jazz man Wynton Marsalis, inter alia.

He married with Jill Hornor in 1977 and they have two children, Nicholas and Emily. They live has Cambridge, Massachusetts. His/her older sister, Yeou-Cheng Marie-Therese My, are a violonist, who married with Michael Dadap, a guitarist. They deal with orchestra of children, Children' S Orchestra Society, in Manhasset, NY.