Ma also credits his Harvard years as the inspiration for many of his projects.

“What I’ve been doing is directly a reflection of a liberal arts education,” he says. “Every single thing that I take on has a direct link to something I’ve first been exposed to or thought about in college.”

One of Ma’s most famous projects is an extension of an anthropology course that he took his freshman year with Professor Irven DeVore. Fascinated by DeVore’s lectures about the Bushmen of Africa, in the late 1980s, Ma traveled to the Kalahari Desert in Southern Africa to study and perform music with them.

“It’s so far a field from what a normal cellist would do, but because I had that experience in college,” Ma says, “I’ve been encouraged to go a little further.”

Ma says that his teachers taught him to “break out of the ordinary into the extraordinary.”

“I always encouraged people who have a choice of going to a conservatory or going to college, try not to close the door to college for as long as they can,” Ma says. “The years of college are your emotional bank account—whatever you put in there, you have to withdraw from for the rest of our life.”

With his 25th reunion this week and his son Nicholas, 18, set to attend Harvard next year, Ma is reminded of the two greatest influences on his life.

Although Harvard has been responsible for much of his education, he credits his family—his wife Jill Horner, daughter Emily, 15, and Nicholas—for his real growth.

“For me, there’s nothing more precious or important than [family],” he says. “And in fact, I think that your children end up teaching you the most things.”

—Staff writer Sarah Dolgonos can be reached at dolgonos@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Amit Paley can be reached at paley@fas.harvard.edu.