Carolyn Nishon, executive director of the Portland Symphony Orchestra, stands outside Merrill Auditorium. On Oct. 10, acclaimed cellist Yo-Yo Ma will perform with the PSO for the first time. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

In June, the Portland Symphony Orchestra opened ticket sales to the public for its gala concert with celebrated cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Thirty minutes before sales opened, more than 3,000 people were in the online waiting room on the PortTix website.

“The capacity of Merrill Auditorium is 1,900 people,” said Carolyn Nishon, executive director at the Portland Symphony Orchestra. “I was blown away.”

The concert is years in the making and the marquee event in a milestone season. The orchestra decided to celebrate 100 years by hosting a special guest – and Yo-Yo Ma was the dream. He has achieved a level of celebrity that is hard to come by for a classical musician in the modern world. The news that he would perform in Portland set the orchestra and the broader community abuzz.

“Yo-Yo Ma is one of the only household names in classical music,” said Emily Isaacson, founder and artistic director of Classical Uprising, a performing arts nonprofit that creates immersive events and educational programs.

But the orchestra wants to do more than borrow his star power for one night; its leaders hope his presence helps set the tone for their next 100 years.

“He is somehow able with his personality and the way he communicates with the orchestra and the audience to say that they are all invited in,” said Eckart Preu, music director of the Portland Symphony Orchestra.

HOW TO BOOK YO-YO MA

Plans for the 100th season – which launched in September with a free block party, community sing-along and two concerts – began years ago. The orchestra decided to celebrate a special anniversary with a special guest, and Ma quickly came to mind. (He has performed in Maine before, including a number of concerts through Portland Ovations.) The Portland Symphony Orchestra first inquired to his team in fall 2022.

“We said, ‘Let’s give it a try,’ ” Nishon said.

Ma has a packed schedule around the world. In order to discuss dates, the orchestra had to first commit to pay his fee, an amount Nishon would not disclose. She said donors made the commitment possible.

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma is performing with the Portland Symphony Orchestra on Oct. 10. Photo by Austin Mann

“We were making the pitch to bring Yo-Yo, but it was also the pitch to bring Yo-Yo Ma in celebration of the 100th anniversary of an organization that these individuals deeply care about and an organization whose musicians people deeply care about,” Nishon said. “They saw an opportunity to bring in somebody who would also really galvanize the community to get excited about supporting the orchestra in a way that maybe they didn’t envision themselves coming to the Portland Symphony, but because Yo-Yo Ma is coming and they’ve heard of Yo-Yo Ma, they might want to come.”

The orchestra could not pick the date but requested either fall or spring to minimize risk of a snowstorm cancellation. Ma’s team offered Oct. 10. The orchestra didn’t actually get to decide the piece Ma would perform, but it requested Antonín Dvořák’s last cello concerto, Op. 104 – and got it.

Music director Eckart Preu said he chose the entire program to showcase both Ma and the orchestra. The evening will begin with “Lavil Okap,” written by Haitian-American composer Sydney Guillaume and performed for the first time in Haiti in 2023. The second piece will be “The Pines of Rome,” composed by the Italian Ottorino Respighi in 1924. Then, Ma will join the orchestra for the final piece.

“I wanted something that makes the orchestra really shine,” Preu said. “I wanted to make sure that, under all the fame and brilliance that Yo-Yo Ma brings, that people don’t forget that this is the symphony, that the symphony has something to play that shows substance and virtuosity and splendor.”

‘A SPECIAL SOUL’

Ma was born to Chinese parents living in Paris in 1955. He started studying the cello at age 4. Three years later, his family moved to New York City, where he continued his cello studies at the Juilliard School. He had played for the president and at Carnegie Hall before he turned 10 years old. Over his career, he has recorded more than 120 albums and won 19 Grammy Awards.

But he earned his place in popular culture in part because of his work outside concert halls. Nishon distinctly remembers seeing Ma represented on an episode of the cartoon “Arthur” when she was a child. He has performed on movie soundtracks and on “Sesame Street” and at the Olympics and with singer-songwriter Bobby McFerrin. His most recent visits to Maine have been outdoor performances with Wabanaki musicians.

“One of the things I really appreciate about Yo-Yo Ma is that he had a lot of success early on, and he saw that as a responsibility,” Isaacson said. “He wasn’t just going to take his success and continue doing what brought him to the moment of success. He said, ‘I’m going to reach more people and get more people excited about what I’m excited about.’ He’s a special soul in that way.”

Preu noted that Ma could have spent his career playing only the biggest and most prestigious venues in the world – but he hasn’t.

“He consciously chooses not only big orchestras to play with,” Preu said. “He could be happy to play with the world’s best 10, 20 orchestras. I think it will be part of his legacy that he inspired smaller communities, regional orchestras around the states. He isn’t just in New York and Boston and Seattle and L.A. He really consciously chooses to come to Maine and to Washington state and Tennessee. That is part of his attraction and his humanism.”

The concert was not part of a typical subscription package, but subscribers got first dibs on tickets. As a result, the Portland Symphony Orchestra saw a 24 percent increase in subscriptions for this season, compared to a 6 percent increase the previous year.

“That in and of itself is extremely meaningful,” Nishon said. “That growth, that investment, in the future of the organization is so incredibly important.”

The orchestra opened tickets to subscribers in May and to the general public in June. Nishon estimated that 85 percent of seats went to subscribers, but the orchestra capped those sales to make sure some tickets remained for the public. PortTix is their box office; prices ranged from $75.50 to $185.50 with fees included. (Some are now reselling on Ticketmaster for $400 or more.) Nishon said PortTix has a lengthy waitlist but is unlikely to have tickets for every interested person.

THE LUCKY ONES

In August, Audrey Cabral got a call from the staff at the Portland Symphony Orchestra.

The orchestra was allowed to invite 50 local high school and college musicians to dress rehearsal with Ma. Cabral is the music coordinator at Portland Public Schools, and she was invited to bring her students.

“I’m super excited because as much as I would love to see Yo-Yo Ma in concert, tickets sold out,” Cabral said. “For me, as a director of music, I’ll be like, ‘Wow, this is how rehearsal is run with one of the world’s great musicians.’ ”

Twenty-five high school students and three teachers from the orchestra program at Portland Public Schools will attend. Cabral said the students immediately got wide-eyed when they heard about the opportunity.

“You could just tell, they were like, ‘No way, no way,’ ” she said.

“The high school orchestra here, they’re so serious about their craft as musicians and as a team,” Cabral added. “I hope they can see that it’s a lifelong skill.”

Anya Heiden is a senior at Deering High School and one of two concert masters for the Portland Public Schools high school orchestra. When she heard about the opportunity to attend rehearsal with Yo-Yo Ma, her jaw dropped. Most of her classmates knew the name and felt the same.

“He’s a figure in my household,” she said.

Heiden grew up in a musical family and started playing violin at age 4. She studies with Clorinda Noyes, who is a violinist in the Portland Symphony Orchestra and knew about the upcoming concert. Her younger brother is a particular fan, and her family tried to get tickets but could not before they sold out.

“I can’t say that I’ve ever been to a professional orchestra rehearsal,” Heiden, 17, said. “It’s really motivating for me to see live music in general. I think it’s just amazing, and I have a lot of stage fright myself, and it’s inspiring. To get to watch the process will be all the more illuminating, and I’m really excited to see from the balcony how he works.”

Ma also embodies something that the orchestra and its observers hope for its next 100 years.

Its leaders noted that this year’s program casts a wider net than ever before. Musicians will play free concerts at breweries. The orchestra will perform with Opera Maine, the ChoralArt Masterworks chorus, Portland Ballet and Portland Stage. They will perform free concerts in all nine Portland elementary schools this year.

“We are figuring out ways to reach people that we haven’t reached, and we take the responsibility of saying, ‘OK, you don’t have to come to the palace of music,’ ” Preu said. “The music will come to you.”

Breda White, 67, first attended the Portland Symphony Orchestra as a singer with ChoralArt and loved the opportunity to sing with the instrumentalists. A retired teacher, she is now on the orchestra’s board and involved in its educational programs.

“We want to take the joy of orchestral music to people,” White said. “Yo-Yo Ma is such a perfect person – he embodies that joy and that generosity.”

Isaacson said she hopes the Portland Symphony Orchestra will be “a convener” in the next century in the way that Ma is today.

“They have this massive institution, this massive reputation, these incredible artists, this administrative infrastructure,” she said. “I would love to see them say, ‘How can we use this platform to benefit the artistic ecosystem around us and to elevate everyone?’ I think that would be an incredible goal for the next 100 years.”