A hiker’s mouth dropped when she learned why a small group was forming at a rocky overlook here. “Yo-Yo Ma,” she was told, “is going to do a pop-up concert.”
She waited patiently, leaning against a wooden guard rail, beyond which lay a serenely undulating vista of West Virginia’s tree-covered mountains, bisected by a horseshoe curve of the New River and dotted with the shadows of scattered clouds. From this spot, Grandview, the landscape appeared nearly untouched, interrupted only by a railroad track along the water.
Members of the National Park Service set up a tripod to livestream the performance. The poet Crystal Good stood before the crowd of a few dozen passers-by, and before giving a reading, said, “Let me take a moment, because this is so beautiful.” Then Ma, far from any major concert hall and hundreds of miles from his home in Cambridge, Mass., stood with his cello propped up by its endpin and played a Bach Sarabande.
* * *
The audience, so casually assembled, didn’t know that it was taking part in Ma’s latest project, Our Common Nature, an intentionally broad and searching initiative that explores ways in which we can heal, and enrich, our relationship with the world around us. It has taken him to the Grand Canyon and Acadia National Park, to the Great Smoky Mountains and Hawaii; as it expands beyond national parks, he hopes that it will also lead to Antarctica. And, for a few days in September, it brought him to the coal-rich Appalachians of West Virginia.
The photos accompanying this story speak volumes about class and other issues that divide us. I love, in particular, that Ma appeared with Kathy Mattea, one of my favorite "country" singers.
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