In light that December is a time of celebration, listed below are artists who have been blessed with a tremendous talent and the gift of communicating artistry at its very best.

YOYO MA - a Sony Classic artist and a child prodigy, has earned a distinguished international reputation as an ambassador for classical music and its vital role in society.

Yo-Yo Ma is a ten-time Grammy award winner. Recent releases include clarinet trios by Beethoven, Brahms and Mozart with Emanuel Ax and Richard Stoltzman; Peter Lieberson¹s King Gesar; an album of original Nashville music, Appalachia Waltz, with country fiddle player Mark O¹Connor and bassist Edgar Meyer and his latest recording of the Mozart Piano Quartets.

Yo-Yo Ma devotes time to work with young musicians at Interlochen and Tanglewood. He seeks to include educational outreach activities in his regular touring schedule, through masterclasses and more informal interaction with students.

Born in Paris in 1955 of Chinese parents, Yo-Yo Ma began his cello studies with his father at age four. He later studied with Janos Scholz and in 1962 he began his studies with Leonard Rose at the Julliard School. Yo-Yo Ma is a graduate of Harvard University, from which he also received an honorary doctorate in 1991. He was also the recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize in 1978. Mr. Ma and his wife Jill have two children, Nicholas and Emily.

He currently plays a Montagna cello from Venice made in 1733 and a Davidoff Stradivarius made in 1712.

ANG LEE - He has made movies in his native Taipei (Eat Drink Man Woman); in New York City and its bedroom suburbs (Pushing Hands, the Wedding Banquet, the Ice Storm); in the U.S. Civil War border-state of Missouri (Ride With the Devil); in Cornwall, England (Sense and Sensibility) and his latest - Couching Tiger Hidden Tiger.

In each locale he was a kind of foreigner; even Taiwan must have seemed strange when he returned, after 16 years in America, for Eat Drink Man Woman. But Lee has had his fill of intimate family sagas for now. "I want to paint on a big canvas in a big country," he says. "And, why not, with big stars?"

M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN - He was born in Madras, India, in 1970, Shyamalan was raised in the Philadelphia suburb of Penn Valley. The son of two doctors, he developed a passion for filmmaking after receiving a Super-8 camera at age eight. By the time he was 17, Shyamalan had created 45 home movies.

He graduated New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 1992 and released his first major theatrical effort, Wide Awake, in 1998. The film starred Rosie O'Donnell and Denis Leary. The Sixth Sense was next and the rest is history. Shyamalan attributes his story-telling technique to his idol - Steven Spielberg. "He has a way of telling stories - there's a wonder element to his stories. I find that so inspiring and even though you may not know the man personally, you get an idea about who he is by the way he tells his stories.