A lit­tle more than a month after the ter­ror­ist attacks on 9/11, with the nation and world still reel­ing from that day, Madi­son Square Gar­den host­ed The Con­cert for New York City. A ben­e­fit con­cert of the first order, it was also a thank you to the sac­ri­fice of NYC’s fire and police depart­ments, which had lost many mem­bers dur­ing that day. (The for­mer had lost 343 fire­fight­ers.) But like a lot of things about that day twen­ty years lat­er, it has sort of van­ished down the cul­tur­al mem­o­ry hole.

How­ev­er, if you need remind­ing, the Who came out of retire­ment and deliv­ered what some con­sid­ered the set of the night. Tom Wat­son, writ­ing in Forbes mag­a­zine, called it “The Night The Who Saved New York.”

The con­cert was free to any fire­fight­er or police­man who came in uni­form. Wat­son describes the vibe thus:

“To say that occu­pan­cy laws were stretched that night is to under­sell the size of the place. Pic­ture a Knicks game, then dou­ble the crowd. From the start, the build­ing ran on a riv­er of emo­tion and beer, which, if you wore a uni­form — or your late loved one’s cap — was free. The thou­sands of cops in atten­dance stu­dious­ly ignored thou­sands of oth­er cops and fire­fight­ers light­ing up a lit­tle reefer. Large bot­tles of high proof spir­its were pro­duced. The Gar­den was the biggest Irish wake in his­to­ry.”

In a moment like this, a lot of the artists head­ed towards jin­go­ism. It was under­stand­able. Songs about Amer­i­ca (David Bowie), songs about New York City (Bil­ly Joel), songs about free­dom (Paul McCart­ney), songs about heroes (also Bowie). But, what the crowd want­ed that night was cathar­sis, and that’s what the Who brought.

The set is the Who at their most anthemic, but also the most rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the clas­sic rock radio these uni­formed men and women and their fam­i­lies grew up with: “Who Are You,” “Baba O’Reilly,” “Behind Blue Eyes,” and end­ing with “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” How­ev­er the line “meet the new boss, same as the old boss” is qui­et­ly delet­ed. Not this time, cyn­i­cism.

The con­cert was exact­ly what was need­ed for the grief of the com­mu­ni­ty. And death hangs over the whole event, as cam­era cut to fam­i­ly mem­bers hold­ing up pho­tos of lost loved ones, while the World Trade Cen­ter rub­ble still smol­dered.

And then there’s what nobody knew at the time: this would be bassist John Entwistle’s last gig before his fatal heart attack eight months lat­er. So many of the remain­ing first respon­ders would die from the tox­ic chem­i­cals breathed in on 9/11, and still they fight for some rec­om­pense from the gov­ern­ment that hon­ored them at first. May­or Giuliani…well, we know what hap­pened to him. And that ass whoopin’ we promised the Mid­dle East wound up kick­ing America’s econ­o­my in the butt instead.

Twen­ty years lat­er the per­for­mance still holds up, a moment in time just before we all got fooled again.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kei­th Moon, Drum­mer of The Who, Pass­es Out at 1973 Con­cert; 19-Year-Old Fan Takes Over

Kei­th Moon’s Final Per­for­mance with The Who (1978)

What Made John Entwistle One of the Great Rock Bassists? Hear Iso­lat­ed Tracks from “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” “Baba O’Riley” & “Pin­ball Wiz­ard”

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

“Believe it or not, this was the very first piece of music I start­ed on the cel­lo when I was four years old,” said Yo Yo Ma before play­ing the “Pre­lude” from J.S. Bach’s Unac­com­pa­nied Cel­lo Suite No. 1 for NPR’s Tiny Desk con­cert series in 2018. That same year, the world-famous cel­lo prodi­gy released his third record­ing of all six suites in an album titled Six Evo­lu­tions — Bach: Cel­lo Suites. The “two-and-a-half hours of sounds that map human­i­ty in all its tri­umphs, joys and sor­rows,” write NPR’s Mary Louise Kel­ly and Tom Huizen­ga, “has become a lodestar for the cel­e­brat­ed cel­list.”

Ma made his first record­ing of the Unac­com­pa­nied Cel­lo Suites in 1983, and won a Gram­my the fol­low­ing year. “He released anoth­er set in 1997,” a record­ing that shows the musician’s own evo­lu­tion in col­lab­o­ra­tion with “archi­tects, ice skaters and Kabu­ki artists.” But his per­for­mance of the suites has always been evo­lu­tion­ary, as a New York Times review­er not­ed of a live per­for­mance in 1991: “Cer­tain­ly soli­tary study or at most the pres­ence of a few col­leagues was the intend­ed milieu, not the vast­ness of Carnegie Hall, the pres­ence of 2,800 lis­ten­ers and the marathon for­mat of two com­plete recitals with an hour’s break between them.”

No mat­ter Bach’s inten­tions for the pieces, they have served as Ma’s musi­cal home, and he’s car­ried them with him wher­ev­er he goes, as in the full 2015 per­for­mance above at the Roy­al Albert Hall. See time stamps of the per­for­mance just below:

0:00 Intro­duc­tion
3:49 Suite I in G Major
22:25 Suite II in D Minor
42:51 Suite III in C Major — with inter­view and short break
1:13:09 Suite IV in E‑Flat Major
1:40:50 Suite V in C Minor
2:08:46 Suite VI in D Major

Here, as he had done near­ly a quar­ter of a cen­tu­ry ear­li­er at Carnegie Hall, Ma not only proves that Bach’s music “trav­els well,” but he also reaf­firms his com­mit­ment to the Unac­com­pa­nied Cel­lo Suites. As he writes in the notes to Six Evo­lu­tions:

Bach’s Cel­lo Suites have been my con­stant musi­cal com­pan­ions. For almost six decades, they have giv­en me sus­te­nance, com­fort, and joy dur­ing times of stress, cel­e­bra­tion, and loss. What pow­er does this music pos­sess that even today, after three hun­dred years, it con­tin­ues to help us nav­i­gate through trou­bled times? Now that I’m in my six­ties, I real­ize that my sense of time has changed, both in life and in music, at once expand­ed and com­pressed. Music, like all of cul­ture, helps us to under­stand our envi­ron­ment, each oth­er, and our­selves. Cul­ture helps us to imag­ine a bet­ter future. Cul­ture helps turn ‘them’ into ‘us.’ And these things have nev­er been more impor­tant.

These are the prin­ci­ples upon which Ma has staked his musi­cal claim, as he now trav­els the world to deliv­er Bach to audi­ences every­where. The Bach Project aims for “36 con­certs. 36 days of action. 6 con­ti­nents,” and “1 exper­i­ment: how cul­ture con­nects us.”

Unable to trav­el in May of 2020, Ma instead played all six cel­lo suites live on tele­vi­sion at Boston’s WGBH stu­dios, live-stream­ing the broad­cast on YouTube. Now, he’s back on his trek, play­ing every­where “the same mas­ter­piece,” notes Radio Open Source, “the rarest solo per­for­mance piece that can show you infin­i­ty… an old artis­tic mas­ter­piece that’s also a mod­ern show­piece for a solo per­former who fills giant venues, East and West, indoors and out, in Chile and Chi­na, in Africa and the Andes, with audi­ences that seem to sit breath­less for most of two and a half hours.” Does Ma’s belief that Bach can “save the world” seem a lit­tle Pollyan­ish? Per­haps. But what oth­er piece of music, and what oth­er per­former, has attained such uni­ver­sal good­will? Learn more about Ma’s Bach Project here and see him play the Pre­lude for the whole world in the video above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonard Bern­stein Intro­duces 7‑Year-Old Yo-Yo Ma: Watch the Young­ster Per­form for John F. Kennedy (1962)

Yo-Yo Ma Plays an Impromp­tu Per­for­mance in Vac­cine Clin­ic After Receiv­ing 2nd Dose

Yo-Yo Ma Per­forms the First Clas­si­cal Piece He Ever Learned: Take a 12-Minute Men­tal Health Break and Watch His Mov­ing “Tiny Desk” Con­cert

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness