after performing a duet at the presentation of the 2001 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal Awards On July 5, 1986, Ma performed in the
New York Philharmonic's tribute to the 100th anniversary of the
Statue of Liberty, which aired live on
ABC Television. The orchestra, with conductor
Zubin Mehta, performed in
Central Park. Ma performed a duet with
Condoleezza Rice at the presentation of the 2001 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal Awards. He was the first performer on September 11, 2002, at the
site of the World Trade Center, while the first of the
names of the dead were read on the first anniversary of the
attack on the WTC; he played the
Sarabande from Bach's
Cello Suite No. 5 in C minor. He performed a special arrangement of
Sting's "
Fragile" with Sting and the
Mormon Tabernacle Choir in the opening ceremonies of the
2002 Winter Olympics in
Salt Lake City, Utah. He also appeared as a
Pennington Great Performers series artist with the
Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra in 2005. At the
first inauguration of Barack Obama on January 20, 2009, Ma performed
John Williams's
Air and Simple Gifts with
Itzhak Perlman (violin),
Gabriela Montero (piano), and
Anthony McGill (clarinet). The quartet played live, but a recording made two days earlier played simultaneously over speakers and on television out of concern that the cold weather could damage the instruments. Ma said, "A broken string was not an option. It was wicked cold." On May 3, 2009, Ma performed the world premiere of
Bruce Adolphe's "Self Comes to Mind" for cello and two percussionists with John Ferrari and Ayano Kataoka at the
American Museum of Natural History. The work is based on a poetic description neuroscientist
Antonio Damasio wrote for Adolphe on the evolution of brain into mind. A film of brain scans provided by
Hanna Damasio and other images were coordinated with the performance. 's annual meeting in 2008 On August 29, 2009, Ma performed at the funeral mass for
Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Pieces he performed included the sarabande from
Bach's
Cello Suite No. 6 in D major and
Franck's "
Panis angelicus" with
Plácido Domingo. On October 3, 2009, Ma appeared with Canadian prime minister
Stephen Harper at the National Arts Centre gala in Ottawa. A fan of
The Beatles, Harper played the piano and sang a rendition of "
With a Little Help from My Friends" as Ma accompanied him on cello. On October 16, 2011, Ma performed at the memorial for
Steve Jobs at Stanford University's
Memorial Church. In 2011, Ma performed with American dancer
Charles "Lil Buck" Riley in the United States and in China at the U.S.-China Forum on the Arts and Culture. On April 18, 2013, he performed at an interfaith service to honor the victims of the
Boston Marathon bombing at the
Cathedral of the Holy Cross, playing the sarabande from Bach's Cello Suite No. 5. He and other musicians also accompanied members of the
Boston Children's Chorus in a hymn. On September 9, 2015, Ma performed all six of Bach's cello suites at the
Royal Albert Hall as part of the
BBC Proms season. On September 12, 2017, Ma performed all six of Bach's cello suites at the
Hollywood Bowl. After the first three suites, there was a "ten-minute pause" (as the Bowl video screen described it). The audience of around 17,000 also heard him play an encore, a tribute to "cellist Pablo Casals, who as a 13-year-old in 1890 discovered an old copy of the Bach suites in a secondhand music store, bringing them to modern attention. Ma's memorable last words were, 'If there are any 13-year-olds here—don't throw anything away.'" On November 11, 2018, Ma performed at the
Arc de Triomphe with violinist
Renaud Capuçon in front of a crowd of world leaders during a ceremony marking the
centenary of the armistice that ended World War I. , home of the
Very Large Telescope On May 1, 2019, he performed at
Paranal Observatory in the
Atacama Desert. He said his interest in
astronomy motivated him to visit and perform there. On June 20, 2019, Ma performed Bach's cello suites at
Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago. The free performance attracted what might have been his largest audience, with a pavilion capacity of 11,000 and many thousands more listening from surrounding
Millennium Park. On January 20, 2021, Ma's performance of "
Amazing Grace"—pre-recorded due to the
COVID-19 pandemic—was played during the
inauguration of Joe Biden. In March 2021, Ma played "
Ave Maria" in an impromptu waiting room concert after receiving his second dose of a
COVID-19 vaccine at
Berkshire Community College in Massachusetts. On September 14, 2021, Ma again performed Bach's six cello suites at the
Hollywood Bowl, this time without intermission, pausing only briefly for applause between suites, and to announce his dedications for two of them. On December 7, 2024, at the
reopening of Notre-Dame in Paris, Ma performed the prelude from Bach's first cello suite. ==Media appearances==