Highlights (including Brahms and Beethoven) from the career of what may be the preeminent cellist of the 20th century.

Highlights (including Elgar, Brahms, and Dvořák) from the career of what may be the preeminent cellist of the 20th century.

Cellist Jean Hatmaker is a founding member of the Kontras Quartet and the principal cellist of the Elmhurst Symphony Orchestra. She teamed up with pianist Michael Finlay to play music by Brahms and Coleridge-Taylor.

Chicago Musical Pathways Initiative aims to diversify American orchestras by preparing promising young artists from underrepresented communities for careers in music.

From the Chicago Cultural Center, cellist Paula Kosower and collaborative pianist Kuang-Hao Huang present works of Nadia Boulanger, Claude Debussy, and Ludwig van Beethoven.

The duo’s stirring performance was given to an empty audience but was broadcast via WFMT and WFMT’s social channels.

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma will perform J.S. Bach’s six cello suites live as a memorial for those we have lost in the pandemic and a tribute to the resilience of our communities.

Two young Chicago-area cellists have risen to the challenge of social distancing, bringing together 24 young artists from around the world for one moving performance.

In 2018, 1.9 billion people around the world watched the young cellist — he was just 19 years old at the time — perform during the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Now, he’s released his second album, a collaboration with Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra.

Looking for a productive, diverting way to spend your downtime? Why not hone your musical skills and learn from some of the greatest musicians in the world?

“I would not consider myself a composer at all,” says Kian Soltani, shortly after playing a piece of music that he composed called Persian Fire Dance. “I’m really a cellist first and foremost, but I try to be creative also.”

It’s not every day an artist can re-discover a piece of music by a master from the Romantic era. Yet this was the enviable privilege of cellist Juliette Herlin, who in 2017 gave one of the first performances since 1919 of a lost cello sonata by Camille Saint-Saëns.

Yo-Yo Ma shared that Bach’s cellos suites have served as “a sanctuary for [him in] good times and less good times.”

In a moving sidewalk tribute across the street from the cathedral, cellist Gautier Capuçon performed Gabriel Fauré’s Après un rêve as the fire was being subdued. In the video captured by Europe 1, the fire department can be seen across the street as they work to contain and extinguish the fire.

Cellist Hee-Young Lim and pianist Kuang-Hao Huang performed in a WFMT Facebook Live from the Brennan Family Recital Hall at the DePaul University School of Music.

“Culture — the way we express ourselves and understand each other — can bind us together as one world.”

Cello maestro Yo-Yo Ma will perform at the foot of the Arc de Triomphe as part of the ceremonies marking the centenary of the end of the World War I next month in Paris.

What makes a piece popular? How does a piece survive its first few performances? What makes something a warhorse, played over and over again, easily marketed from decade to decade? Who decides what’s good, anyway? Here are 18 underrated concertos – ones that don’t get played all that much, but maybe should be more widely known.

Yo-Yo Ma, the CSO’s creative consultant, learned about the decades-long commitment to social justice and outreach within the Faith Community of St. Sabina, and wanted to see how he could honor its work through music.

13-year-old cellist Noah Chen of Chicago recently performed on WFMT’s Introductions. Watch him perform David Popper’s Concert Polonaise, a brilliant showpiece for cello, with pianist Kay Kim.

Franz Joseph Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 1 collected dust for nearly 200 years in the National Museum in Prague before it became a staple of the cello repertoire. Music historians had always known of the concerto’s existence, thanks to Haydn’s diligent records: the work is included in both of his personal catalogues, dating it circa 1765.  Beyond those brief mentions, …

“Yo-Yo Ma wanted to meet with me, and I thought it was a joke,” Reverend Michael L. Pfleger said to an audience of over 1,000 people at St. Sabina Church.

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma is not only one of the world’s most renowned musicians; he’s also a passionate advocate for using the power of music to create community.

“I try to take Rostropovich’s example, who had incredible relationships with composers and of course was the muse to Shostakovich and Prokofiev,” Alisa Weilerstein said. “Without him, we might not have these titanic 20th century cello works.”