Acadia: Yo-Yo Ma and the Wabanaki Play for the Dawn

Our Common Nature | Oct 8, 2025

The series opens with a window into the Yo-Yo universe, one where music and nature work together. Host Ana González guides us into Yo-Yo Ma’s mindset, connecting Bach to leaves, birds, and sunlight. That takes us to a sunrise in Acadia National Park in Maine, where Chris Newell leads Yo-Yo and Wabanaki musicians in a musical performance to welcome the dawn.

Featuring music by Yo-Yo Ma, Chris Newell, and Lauren Stevens.

Yo-Yo’s performance of In the Gale by Anna Clyne

Additional audio provided by the Upstander Project. Watch the Upstander Project film about this sunrise performance here: https://www.reciprocity.org/films/weckuwapok

Listen to the Our Common Nature EP here.

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Credits:
Our Common Nature is a production of WNYC and Sound Postings

Hosted by Ana González
Produced by Alan Goffinski
Editing from Pearl Marvell
Sound design and episode music by by Alan Goffinski
Mixed by Joe Plourde
Fact-checking by Ena Alvarado
Executive Producers are Emily Botein, Ben Mandelkern, Sophie Shackleton, and Jonathan Bays.

Our advisors are Mira Burt-Wintonick, Kamaka Dias, Kelley Libbey, and Chris Newell

Special thanks to Acadia National Park.

This podcast was inspired by a project of the same name, conceived by Yo-Yo Ma and Sound Postings, with creative direction by Sophie Shackleton, in collaboration with partners all over the world.

Our Common Nature is made possible with support from Emerson Collective and Tambourine Philanthropies.

Episode photo by Austin Mann; episode and show art by Tiffany Pai

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Our Common Nature

When the world stopped in 2020, cellist Yo-Yo Ma started thinking about how music can reconnect people to the natural world. In this limited podcast series, Yo-Yo travels around the country to make music and meet people who have deep connections to the earth. Host Ana González joins him to uncover the ways that culture binds us to nature, from Maine to Appalachia and Hawaii.

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