In the fall of 1999, a passenger stepped out of a New York taxi and left a 1733 Montagnana cello worth about two and a half million dollars in the trunk. The passenger was Yo-Yo Ma, and the cello, nicknamed Petunia, was recovered unharmed. This deep dive uses that very human moment as a window into a life that runs from a three-year-old in Paris demanding to play the double bass to a United Nations Messenger of Peace who has played for grieving cities and for the stars.

We follow his early performances for Presidents Kennedy and Eisenhower at age seven, his television introduction by Leonard Bernstein at eight, and his surprising pivot from Juilliard to a Harvard anthropology degree in 1976, which reframed the cello as a passport rather than a mountain to summit. From there we explore his omnivorous collaborations, the Silk Road Ensemble, h ...