- Yo-Yo Ma performed Bach during the 9/11 remembrance ceremony in New York.
- The music accompanied the reading of victims’ names at Ground Zero.
- He performed the Prelude from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1008.
Yo-Yo Ma performs Bach as names of 9/11 victims are read
Cellist Yo-Yo Ma has performed Bach during the 9/11 remembrance ceremony in New York, as family members read the names of the victims at Ground Zero. The performance formed part of the annual commemoration marking the anniversary of the 2001 attacks, when nearly 3,000 people were killed in coordinated terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
In the ceremony, loved ones gathered at the 9/11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan to honor those who died. After moments of silence timed to the key moments of the attacks, family members and friends took turns at the podium to read each name aloud, often adding short personal tributes. Yo-Yo Ma’s cello playing provided a gentle, reflective backdrop to this reading of names, offering a musical space for memory and mourning.
For readers following how leading cellists shape major public moments, this performance sits alongside other recent highlights, such as Gautier Capuçon’s performance of Massenet’s Thaïs – Méditation and the news that Julian Lloyd Webber’s prostate cancer treatment was successful.
A familiar role for music in moments of national grief
Yo-Yo Ma is no stranger to performing at occasions of public remembrance. He has played Bach at memorial services connected to 9/11 before, including at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., in the aftermath of the attacks, and at anniversary events in subsequent years. At this year’s Ground Zero ceremony, he performed the Prelude from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1008. His choice of Bach’s solo cello music spare, meditative and deeply structured has become closely associated with moments of collective reflection.
Reporting on the ceremony notes that the reading of names at Ground Zero lasted several hours, with readers representing victims from the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Flight 93. Many speakers were relatives, some of them grandchildren of those who died, sharing updates on their lives and messages to the people they lost.
From early memorials to today
Yo-Yo Ma’s involvement in 9/11 commemorations goes back to the earliest memorial services. Archive footage shows him performing at events in the years after the attacks, including at the National Cathedral and at later anniversary ceremonies. For many viewers, his presence has become a recurring musical element of how the nation remembers that day.
This long arc of remembrance echoes another striking moment in his career: the archival film of seven-year-old Yo-Yo Ma playing for President Kennedy, which reminds us how deeply his musical life has been intertwined with public history from childhood to the present.
Why this performance matters
For many viewers, Yo-Yo Ma’s presence at the 9/11 ceremony underlines how music can function in public life: not as commentary or explanation, but as a shared language of grief, memory and continuity. In a ceremony built around names, stories and silence, his Bach performance offers a thread of sound that holds the space open for remembrance without trying to fill it.
For cellists and classical-music listeners, it is also a reminder of how repertoire written centuries ago can still meet us in moments of acute contemporary pain and how a single instrument, in the hands of a musician like Yo-Yo Ma, can become part of a nation’s ritual of mourning.