The opening of Bach's first cello suite is probably the most famous thirty seconds ever written for my instrument. Everybody has heard it, in a commercial or a movie or at a wedding, even if they don't know what it is. The first time I heard it was on a cassette of Yo-Yo Ma that my grandmother gave me when I was eight and had just started lessons on a rented half-size cello. I wore the tape out. I'm seventeen now, I'm a senior, I play principal cello in my youth orchestra, and this fall I'm working on that same prelude for my conservatory auditions. So in a way I've been practicing it for nine years.

This page is about the cellist on that cassette. It's also, on a separate page, my practice notebook for the prelude and for the auditions, which I'm putting online partly to keep myself honest. If you're a cellist too, I hope it's useful. If you're not, I hope you'll at least go listen to the prelude.

Yo-Yo Ma was born in Paris on October 7, 1955. His parents were Chinese: his father was a violinist and a music teacher, and his mother was a singer. He started the cello when he was four. When he was about seven, his family moved to New York, and that same year he played on national television in a concert for President Kennedy, which Leonard Bernstein hosted. Seven! When I was seven I was still learning to tie my shoes.

He studied at Juilliard with Leonard Rose, and then, instead of going straight into a career, he went to Harvard and studied everything else, and graduated in 1976. I think about that a lot right now, because I'm trying to decide between a conservatory and a regular college with a good music department, and he's the most famous argument there is for the second one. (My teacher says he's also the most famous exception to every rule, so don't count on it.)

Since then he's played with every orchestra you can name, made more recordings than I can keep track of, and won a shelf of Grammys. But the reason he's my hero isn't the fame. It's that he plays everything. Bach and Brahms, yes, but also fiddle tunes, Argentine tango, brand-new music by living composers, a whole album with Bobby McFerrin, and he's been on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood and Sesame Street. He seems interested in every kind of music there is, and every kind of person. He lives in the Boston area, too, which means that somewhere, not that far from me, he's probably practicing right now.

The Davidov Stradivarius. Made by Antonio Stradivari in 1712, and named for Karl Davidov, a great Russian cellist of the 1800s. It used to be played by Jacqueline du Pré, who was one of the greatest cellists of the century before illness ended her career, so it's a cello with a lot of history in it. On recordings you can hear how it sings at the top.

The Montagnana. Made in Venice by Domenico Montagnana in 1733. Montagnanas are big, broad cellos with a dark, deep sound down low. I've read that he uses each one for different kinds of music. I would like to have that problem.

Mine. A German workshop cello, about eighty years old, which my parents bought from my teacher's former student two years ago and are still paying off. It has a little crack near the end pin that's been fixed twice, and a slightly fuzzy C string that I've learned to love. It doesn't have a fancy name. I call it Bruno. Don't ask me why, I was fifteen.

The sarabande is the slow, serious one, so this is where the serious part goes.

Tanglewood is where the Boston Symphony spends the summer, out in the Berkshires, and this July my mother drove my stand partner Lindsey and me out to hear Yo-Yo Ma play there. We had lawn tickets, which means a blanket on the grass outside the Shed with a picnic and a thousand other people, and the music floats out to you over the lawn. From where we sat he was a small figure in the middle of the stage, very far away. It didn't matter at all.

What I noticed most, even from the lawn, was how much he listens. He was turned toward the orchestra half the time, watching the other players, smiling at them, like they were all in it together and he was just the one sitting in front. I've been told my whole life to listen to the orchestra when I play. I never really understood what that looked like until I watched him do it.

I'm not going to write down everything about the concert. I wrote four pages in my diary that night in the car with a flashlight, and some things you keep. But I will say that afterward Lindsey and I lay on the blanket looking at the stars and didn't say anything for a long time, and then she said she was going to practice two hours every day for the rest of the summer, and she did, and so did I.

If I could only take six of his recordings with me to a desert island (with a CD player that runs on coconuts), these would be the six.

No music plays on this page, on principle. If you want to know why, read Pachelbel's Canon Should Not Play Itself, by Carol Hatcher, a cellist who has played the bass line of Pachelbel at over four hundred weddings and has earned the right to an opinion. I agree with every word.

And if you think it's too late to start, read The Amateur Cellist, by a woman who took up the cello at forty-eight. She is braver than I am.

My practice notebook for the prelude and for my auditions is here. It's honest, which means it's not always pretty.