Virtuoso Reality : Young Pupils Bask in the Effusive Charms of Renowned Cellist Yo-Yo Ma

A row of Grammy awards and worldwide adulation prove that cellist Yo-Yo Ma is a genius at expressing the ineffable beauty of music, but his “master classes” show why he’s also a genius at winning an audience.

Here to kick off the season for the Pacific Symphony Institute Orchestra, Ma used humor, common sense and charm to guide three nervous but gifted teen-age cellists in their art at Cal State Fullerton on Thursday. Each was chosen by the Pacific Institute music directors to benefit from Ma’s guest teaching.

Advice for 16-year-old Leif Woodward was as simple as remembering to breathe, even when getting a private lesson from the master in front of about 600 people.

But Sharon Kim, a 15-year-old Anaheim Hills artist, played her Dvorak concerto to such perfection that all Ma could say was “So Sharon, what are you doing tonight?”

Ma said he loves it.

“It’s emotions and it’s concepts and we deal with all of that, but without pontificating,” he said of his teaching technique. “By having to articulate a nonverbal thing, I have to concentrate and focus.”

For participants and watchers alike, Ma seemed the essence of friendly informality. The bespectacled cellist wore a striped shirt open at the collar and jumped on and off the stage as he first stood in back to hear the students play and then hurdled back up to give instruction. Onstage, he walked around the students, frequently placing his hands on their shoulders or squatting in front of them.

He needed only about five minutes to get Woodward, visibly nervous and pale as the first student up, to laugh.

“The secret is that it’s easier if you have friends,” Ma advised. “And the chords are your friends.”

In between physical demonstrations, Ma managed to illustrate the tension between the body and the music, the need for a balance and the importance of space, both physical and spiritual. “You can almost make time stop, and you’re not even a physicist,” he said.

The students were primarily concerned with proper body form. Cellists, not surprisingly, are obsessed with their right shoulders. Smiling while playing helps relax those muscles, Ma told them. And shoulder tension is very bad. “The cellists’ disease,” as he described it. “You know, the shoulder is the weakest joint. Every once in a while I do a shoulder check when I’m performing. It’s very important.”

He also told them not to search for pat answers.

When Miho Zaitsu, a 16-year-old student from Irvine, asked his opinion of something new she tried, he gave away another secret: how to play Dvorak 40 times in the same year and mean it every time. The trick is to try to hear many voices coming through the same piece.

“In fact, every performance can be different,” Ma said. “That’s the neat thing--you never have to repeat yourself.”

And the master took on the challenge of describing how music does what it does.

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“Musicians always have this big battle between the intellect and the emotion,” he said. “Somehow, you have to join the two. And there is another component--your body has to become that piece of music. Body intelligence is really important.”

How to become a piece of music clearly is indescribable. But by giving Zaitsu a short history on how Bach’s Sarabande went from being an erotic Moroccan number to an elegant French dance, and by putting a hand on her shoulder, Ma helped her do it. The audience testified to her success after Zaitsu gave it a second try.

For the students, the short time on stage with Ma was an unbelievable stroke of luck.

“He was all I thought he would be and more,” Zaitsu said. “I knew he was very intelligent, but he’s so personable and intimate. . . . I’m sure I’ll remember this for the rest of my life.”

Members of the audience also benefited from Ma’s open-house policy on master classes. The immediate feedback helps him and the students, he said.

Carmen Hensley, a music teacher at Capistrano Unified School District, took copious notes at the free event.

“It was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing,” she said, still awed after the performances. “I learned about teaching for myself, how it just comes from within. He is just very personable and warm, and that’s how he plays.”