Odd couple finds global harmony

Yo-Yo Ma and Angélique Kidjo bring Bowl crowd and Bach into African music.

- MARK SWED MUSIC CRITIC

CELLIST Yo-Yo Ma and Afropop singer-songwriter Angélique Kidjo have compatible musical languages.

The heart and soul of suites by Bach and Handel are often found in the slow, central sarabande, said to be a dance of Spanish origin. In Bach's cello suites, the sarabande stops time.

Watch Yo-Yo Ma play a sarabande. His eyes seem to recede under his eyelids, as though entering a profound state of hypnosis.

He can make a Bach sarabande work anywhere, including on a river rafting trip with a background of gurgling water on his latest Bach recording.

The sarabande from Handel's D-Minor Keyboard Suite is well known as the theme from “Barry Lyndon,” which is thrilling Stanley Kubrick fans all over again with a new 50th anniversary 4K restoration.

That Handel sarabande was one of the catchy opening numbers of “Sarabande Africaine,” Ma’s joint appearance with Afropop singer-songwriter Angélique Kidjo at the Hollywood Bowl on Thursday night.

Ma and Kidjo met seven years ago at an event in Paris commemorating the end of the World War I. That led him to look a little deeper into music he had been playing since he was a young boy and was by now ingrained in his DNA.

And it led him to loudly exclaim, before playing the sarabande from Bach’s Second Solo Cello Suite in his short solo set, “Who knew?”