We were lucky to catch up with Hanbo Ma recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Hanbo thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
I am a concert pianist, so I am always on the performance side of the industry – however, I decided to start a concert series and be on the organizing side of the realm. I started my nonprofit organization Cadence Collective Foundation solely to break the boundary between audience and performers and make classical music concerts approachable. That’s why I wanted to create this type of “themed concerts”, where each concert has a theme, and each piece of music is connected around this theme. For example, the first concert is “music around the world”, where I will play music from Italy, Norway, China, Spain and the United States. By doing this, I hope to attract more people to want to listen to classical music and be interested in this genre. It is hard for me because I have always been a performer, not an organizer. I am quite unorganized in life, to be honest.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I am a pianist and a content creator that creates music educational videos. I grew up playing piano, got into a music boarding school when I was 11 and have been a pianist ever since. I did my master’s degree at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY in Piano Performance and my Doctor of Musical Arts degree in piano performance with conducting, composition and music theory minors at the University of Southern California, Thornton School of Music. My life includes performing concerts, practicing new repertoires, teaching at music festivals, judging competitions, and now, organizing events for the “Themed Concerts” by the Cadence Collective Foundation. I’m most proud of how I progress to identify myself differently over time. In today’s society, it seems like that people tend to prefer to go to pop concerts rather than classical concerts. I used to think that it’s none of my business – I’m just a performer after all, it is only my business to perfect my piano playing. I gradually started to realize that it’s every performer’s responsibility to help to break the barrier between the general audience and performers. Therefore, I started from scratch and am still trying to learn how to achieve this goal.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
The most rewarding aspect is how what I do can inspire others. For example, years ago a person who has never heard the music by Spanish composer Enrique Granados came to my concert and heard his Spanish Dances for the first time, and was amazed by how beautiful Spanish music can be. When he went home, he started to search for different music by this composer or other Spanish composers and listen to them when commute to work everyday. It became a fun ritual that helped him to make the commute time more fun and he started to look forward to the time that he gets to listen to this beautiful music. Later on, when he planned for his annual trip, he and his family decided to go to Spain to immerse themselves in the colorful and special culture. They ended up loving it and never thought they’d come here and like it so much. Music is to inspire and aspire, to create something that one can’t touch or see, yet it is so powerful that it could make such an impact on a person’s life. I am proud and fulfilled to be able to make even the smallest impact on anyone’s life.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
I used to think that performers are performers, it’s none of my business whether the general audience can understand what we are doing and learning. However, when I was finishing my doctoral study at the University of Southern California, Thornton School of Music, I started to realize that it is every musician’s responsibility to communicate with the general audience and spread classical music. If we don’t even care who listens, who would come to our concerts? I realized that performers need to learn how to engage with everyone else and it is just as important as learning a new song. That’s why I started an educational YouTube channel, featuring free tutorials on different subjects, such as “How to play repeated notes”, “How to play arpeggios with ease”, “How to play scales fast and clear”, etc. That’s also the reason why I started Cadence Collective Foundation and to start a new concert series called “themed concert”, where each performer pick a theme (love and death, dances around the world…etc), put a program together around the theme and explain to the audience why they pick the theme and songs and the backstory of each song.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.hanboma.com https://www.cadencecollectivefoundation.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pianisthanboma/ https://www.instagram.com/cadencecollectivefoundation/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hanbo.ma https://www.facebook.com/people/Cadence-Collective-Foundation/61557042264030/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Hanboma