Timeless Tickets: Remembering Yo-Yo Ma's performance on the QCSO's 100th anniversary (2024)

This is the 57th Timeless Tickets story in our series, but we've never covered anything like this.

Yo-Yo Ma, one of the most recognizable classical musicians in modern American history, performed with the Quad-City Symphony Orchestra at the Adler Theatre on May 14, 2015.

The show was dubbed the concert of the century in the Quad-City Times, a title that was actually literal: Ma's performance was booked to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the QCSO.

That kind of tenure makes the orchestra one of the oldest continually operating local symphonies in the nation, current executive director Brian Baxter said.

But Ma might be the biggest fish the QCSO has ever caught.

"If you only know one classical instrumentalist, it's Yo-Yo Ma," Baxter said. "So it was a gigantic deal."

Ma has won 19 Grammy Awards, earned six honorary doctoral degrees and, in 2011, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He's collaborated with non-classical musicians like Miley Cyrus, James Taylor, Carlos Santana, Metallica and Elton John.

Baxter wasn't around with the QCSO at the time of the show— he joined the symphony in 2018— but he said it was a full effort from music director Mark Russell Smith and the rest of the organization to make it happen.

In its 100 years, the symphony has impacted the community through education, performance and community involvement.Baxter is proud to be part of an organization and industry that makes such an impact.

"Music is one of the only things that touches every region of the brain," he said, referencing a recent neurological study he found about the impact of music.

"So part of me is not surprised that we've had such a place in the community for so long — but another part of me says this goes to show that we've worked over the years to make sure (the QCSO) is a valuable asset for the Quad-Cities as a whole. We're really proud of it."

Former exec. director knew Ma from Harvard days

The QCSO is perhaps as important to the community as community is to Ma.

Then-executive director Benjamin Loeb told the Times in 2013 that, as a music undergrad at Harvard, he served as a liaison to Ma for the cellist's performance at the university. Ma's concert was announced toward the end of 2013, for the 2014-2015 season.

"He was just a phenomenal person," Loeb said in 2013. "He even came to the party after the concert in my dorm room, had a beer and hung out with us."

The two crossed paths a few more times in the years following. But that friendship wasn't enough on its own, Loeb said, to get Ma to town. He needed to align with Ma's personal schedule and "personal mission," too.

It being the 100th anniversary of the QCSO was enough to get it done.

"If it were just any average year, he wouldn't have come," Loeb said. "Yo-Yo has a personal mission of supporting classical music, and he knows his appearance here will make a big difference to our community."

Tickets for the show sold to QCSO subscribers first for between $30 and $110.

It sold out before everyone with local interest could snag a ticket, so the orchestra did fans a solid— they broadcasted the show live on two local radio stations, WVIK and Iowa Public Radio, along with an interview with Ma.

The QCSO also held a one-of-a-kind fundraiser in conjunction with the show, where they asked 100 artists to design 100 cellos, to be auctioned off and raise money for the symphony's educational programming.

Most of the cellos were auctioned at the Figge Art Museum. Artists included Smith and Loeb's sister, the "Stay (I Missed You)" Billboard Hot 100-topping singer Lisa Loeb.

At the show, Ma performed a piece that had become a signature in his catalog,Dvorak's "Concerto in B Minor."

Before the performance, Ma made a funny face to lighten the mood, according to the review by Moline Dispatch writer Jonathan Turner. That small gesture was emblematic of his personality.

"This is one of the many reasons the Chinese-American cellist is so beloved around the world," Turner wrote. "He is unpretentious, friendly, down-to-earth and makes whatever style of music he performs completely accessible, relatable and enjoyable."

David Burke, reviewing the show in the Quad-City Times, wrote that seeing Ma perform in-person blew any recording of his out of the water.

"Within milliseconds he goes from a dreamlike state to intently bobbing his head along to a more intense passage in the music," Burke wrote. "One minute he's manipulating the bow with the precision of a diamond cutter, the next he's bobbing the cello around as if it's a willing dance partner."

The crowd gave a standing ovation that lasted five minutes. Ma smiled.

As a quieter encore, he playedthe sarabande from a Bach cello suite.

The crowd gave another ovation of three minutes.

Principal cellist couldn't sleep that night

The energy of that evening with Ma was tough to tame. Just ask QCSO's principal cellist Hannah Holman, who said it felt like a rock concert at the Adler.

"I could not sleep that night," she said. "I was so wound up. That never happens to me, I'm jaded professionally, but it was really, really, a great, moving, powerful experience."

Holman called Ma a "positive, beautiful spirit" and said she was awestruck by the fact that, before the show, he let every single cellist in the QCSO play his Stradivarius.

"We all took turns, it was really communal," she said. "It just felt like he was part of the team."

Holman, who has been principal cellist at the QCSO since 2008, was positioned right behind Ma on stage during the performance. She said that it felt like he "brought it" more than she'd ever seen, meeting the moment of a centennial anniversary.

That 2015 show wasn't Holman's first time sharing the stage with Ma. When she was with the Richmond Symphony in the late '90s and early '00s, Ma came to play a recital.

And while Holman didn't get to perform with him then, she was asked to turn the pages on Ma's sheet music while he performed a new piece.

"I was sitting on this huge stage, without my cello, feeling kind of naked, next to Yo-Yo," she said. "And then he handed me his Montagnana (cello) and he's like, 'Play this during the intermission, I have to go talk to lots of people.'"

Somebody snapped a picture of her holding the cello while sitting next to Ma. It's been framed and hung in her office ever since.

Outside of the QCSO, Holman is a music educator who has worked at the University of Iowa and University of Northern Iowa, and currently gives private lessons locally.

When thinking about that show at the Adler Theatre, she still gets choked up.It made her feel lucky to be a musician, Holman said. It also served as proof of what she tells her students is possible.

"To sit there and feel that it's actually happening ... is very powerful," she said. "All of the time, I feel (lucky), but that night especially, it was amazing: the power of music, and what the cello is capable of and what this person brings to the music."

This story is part of a series called "Timeless Tickets," where we're aiming to find the most notable concert in the Quad-Cities, every year from 1960 to today. Do you have a story or photo to share from an iconic local show? Send it to entertainment reporter Gannon Hanevold at ghanevold@qctimes.com.

To read more "Timeless Tickets" stories, clickhere.