Sony Classical is proud to announce the release of Yo-Yo Ma’s new album Six Evolutions: Bach Cello Suites, his third and final recording of these works. Bach and his Cellos Suites entered Yo-Yo Ma’s life when he was four, when he learned the first bar of the Prélude to Suite No.1 under his father’s instruction. Ma has never lost his initial fascination.

“Bach’s Cello Suites have been my constant musical companions,” Ma writes of the music. “For almost six decades, they have given me sustenance, comfort and joy during times of stress, celebration and loss. What power does this music possess that even today, after three hundred years, it continues to help us navigate through troubled times?”

Ma is more convinced than ever of the suites’ ability to create shared meaning that extends far beyond the here and now. The suites’ collective vision – at once divergent and coherent, empathic and objective – reminds us of all that connects us despite an increasingly discordant public conversation.

The release of Six Evolutions also signals the beginning of a two-year, six-continent journey in which Yo-Yo Ma will devote himself to Bach’s music, playing all six Cello Suites in a single setting in familiar and unlikely locations.

Six Evolutions: Bach Cello Suites will not only offer an essential encapsulation of what this music means now to one of the world’s most celebrated artists, it begins a new chapter in the cellist’s 58-year relationship with this music.