Chinese American cellist Yo-Yo Ma is perhaps this country’s preeminent instrumentalist, and certainly the most versatile and most honored and admired. He has assumed the role of a national resource, playing at state occasions such as President Obama’s 2009 inauguration. In 1998 he founded the Silk Road Project, a program of intercultural musical exchange along the Silk Road, the ancient trading route between China and the Mediterranean. His complete recordings to date fill over a hundred CDs!Jim Wright/Star Ledger/CORBIS.