Word: ax
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...works, experimenting with electronic instruments, exploring the links between the European tradition and other world music, and involving himself in music education on every level from Sesame Street to Tanglewood. "The whole idea of what music is and what culture and education are has changed so much," says Emanuel Ax, the pianist who is a longtime friend and performance partner of Ma's. "Yo-Yo is in a way the right man at the right time. I think we need people like him if music is to remain a truly vital force...
...spontaneity. "Yo-Yo has an ease of playing that is given to very few. It is a kind of mastery that gives one the greatest possible freedom," says violinist Isaac Stern, a onetime mentor of Ma's. "He is probably the most perfect instrumentalist I have ever seen," says Ax. "I spend hours and hours practicing every day. Yo-Yo can afford to sleep late and have lunch, and he still plays much more perfectly than...
...bassist Edgar Meyer and violinist-fiddler Mark O'Connor (the latter CD has been a fixture on the classical charts for 76 weeks). But life as an elite musician has its dreary side. Ma has a grueling concert schedule that keeps him on the road roughly half the year. Ax's comments notwithstanding, Ma practices where he can--in hotels, airports, trains, the back of limos, by the side of the road and, if he's lucky, at home in Boston's suburbs, where he lives with his wife and two children. During a rehearsal last December with tango musicians...
Aside from sheer intellectual curiosity there is a practical reason for Ma's restlessness. "A pianist," says Ax, "could go on playing for 100 years and not begin to play the complete standard repertoire. For a cellist, if you are a talent like Yo-Yo, by the time you are 25 you have mastered all the cello concertos that are known." Through numerous commissions, Ma has done his best to expand the repertoire. Still, he's swimming his laps in a comparatively small pool...
...pickax and hacked to death Jerry Lynn Dean, 27, her ex-lover, and Deborah Thornton, 32, his companion of the moment, while they slept. Tucker, who left the pickax embedded in Thornton's chest, boasted at her trial that she had experienced an orgasm with each swing of the ax...