Carnegie Hall

In the 2024–2025 season, Andris Nelsons celebrates 10 years as the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Ray and Maria Stata Music Director. Mr. Nelsons became the 15th music director in the BSO’s history at the start of the 2014–2015 season. He made his debut with the orchestra at Carnegie Hall in March 2011, his Tanglewood debut in July 2012, and his Symphony Hall debut in January 2013. In January 2024, Head of Conducting at Tanglewood was added to his title to reflect his expanded commitment to pre-professional training.

Mr. Nelsons’s 11th season as music director features several major projects, including performances of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony in October, the full cycle of Beethoven’s nine symphonies in January, concert performances of Erich Korngold’s opera Die tote Stadt, and performances of BSO-commissioned works by BSO Composer Chair Carlos Simon, Kevin Puts, and Aleksandra Vrebalov. Mr. Nelsons’s and the BSO’s annual two-concert series at Carnegie Hall in April features pianist Mitsuko Uchida performing Beethoven and cellist Yo-Yo Ma performing Shostakovich. The BSO’s season culminates in a European tour with performances in Vienna and Prague, as well as the orchestra’s first appearance in Mr. Nelsons’s native Riga. The tour concludes in Leipzig, where the BSO joins the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra for the Shostakovich Festival Leipzig, a comprehensive and globally unique celebration of the composer’s music that marks the 50th anniversary of his death.

As both music director of the BSO and Gewandhauskapellmeister of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra (GHO), a position he has held since 2018, Mr. Nelsons conducts both orchestras as they present the composer’s symphonies, concertos, and other orchestral and chamber works. The BSO and the GHO merge for a joint performance of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7. During the festival, Mr. Nelsons also conducts the GHO in performances of Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk at the Leipzig opera house. This festival project stems from the BSO/GHO Alliance, a unique partnership initiated by Mr. Nelsons. To further mark the Shostakovich anniversary, Mr. Nelsons and the BSO’s Grammy Award–winning series of recordings of the complete Shostakovich symphonies, concertos, and Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk was released as a box set by Deutsche Grammophon. This spring, the label also released Mr. Nelsons’s and the BSO’s recent recordings of Messiaen’s Turangalîla-symphonie with Yuja Wang, and the Ravel piano concertos with Seong-Jin Cho.

Yo-Yo Ma’s multifaceted career is a testament to his belief in culture’s power to generate trust and understanding. Whether performing new or familiar works for cello, bringing communities together to explore culture’s role in society, or engaging unexpected musical forms, he strives to foster connections that stimulate the imagination and reinforce our humanity. Most recently, Mr. Ma began Our Common Nature, a cultural journey to celebrate the ways that nature can reunite us in pursuit of a shared future. Our Common Nature follows the Bach Project, a 36-community, six-continent tour of J. S. Bach’s cello suites paired with local cultural programming. Among his many roles, Mr. Ma is a United Nations Messenger of Peace; the first artist ever appointed to the World Economic Forum’s board of trustees; a member of the board of Nia Tero, the US-based nonprofit working in solidarity with Indigenous peoples and movements worldwide; and the founder of the global music collective Silkroad. His discography of more than 120 albums (including 19 Grammy Award winners) ranges from iconic renditions of the Western classical canon to recordings that defy categorization, such as Hush with Bobby McFerrin and The Goat Rodeo Sessions with Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile. Mr. Ma’s latest album, Beethoven for Three: Symphony No. 4 and Op. 97 “Archduke,” is the third in a new series of Beethoven recordings with pianist Emanuel Ax and violinist Leonidas Kavakos. Mr. Ma was born in 1955 to Chinese parents living in Paris. He began to study the cello with his father at age four and three years later moved with his family to New York City, where he continued his cello studies at The Juilliard School before pursuing a liberal arts education at Harvard. He has received numerous awards, including the Avery Fisher Prize in 1978, National Medal of the Arts in 2001, Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2010, Kennedy Center Honors in 2011, Polar Music Prize in 2012, and Birgit Nilsson Prize in 2022. He has performed for nine American presidents, most recently on the occasion of President Biden’s inauguration. Mr. Ma and his wife have two children. He plays three instruments: a 2003 instrument made by Moes & Moes, a 1733 Montagnana cello from Venice, and the 1712 Davidoff Stradivarius.