Playing at the border by Joanna Ho and Teresa Martinez

'Feet planted on the soil of one nation, eyes gazing at the shores of another, Yo-Yo Ma played a solo accompanied by an orchestra of wind and water.'

On April 13, 2019, on the US banks of the Rio Grande he played a piece of music hundreds of years old to an audience on the opposite banks in Mexico to show that building bridges is so much better than building walls.

But this is more than just a story of one man playing a cello alone to be heard by a few - this is the story of a renowned cellist, himself a blend of cultures as he was born to Chinese parents in France and raised in the US. Because his fingers were too small for a double bass, as a little child he chose the cello - and its particular blend of international origins is woven into both the story and the music. And from its strings comes the music dancing 'over rocks and rivers and walls into the sky', born in Germany 300 years before, lost, then found in Spain, and renewed in the US to unite those who had once been one but who were now separated...

Connecting cultures and countries through music was Yo-Yo Ma's ambition when he began the Bach Project in 2018, reviving the rare cello solos which 'create the sound of harmonising melodies on one instrument' there was a much symbolism as there was entertainment on that day in 2019 when the people of two nations momentarily joined together again, in defiance of the rhetoric and actions of the then POTUS. And in Johanna Ho's text, which is as lyrical as the music itself, we discover that there were many more than just two nations involved in making it happen.

Barbara Braxton