Quote

As you begin to realize that every different type of music, everybody's individual music, has its own rhythm, life, language and heritage, you realize how life changes, and you learn how to be more open and adaptive to what is around us.

Yo-Yo Ma

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Yo-Yo Ma
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: October 7
Actor
Cellist
Composer
Music Pedagogue
Musician
Paris
France
Yo Yo Ma
YoYo Ma
Around
Realize
Music
Type
Different
Realizing
Every
Open
Adaptive
Life
Everybody
Heritage
Learn
Rhythm
Language
Changes
Individual
Begin

More quotes by Yo-Yo Ma

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I think of a piece of music as something that comes alive when it is being performed, and I feel that my role in the transmission of music is to be its best advocate at that moment.
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In performance, we have a greater purpose. The greater purpose is that we're communing together, and we want this moment to be really special for all of us. Because otherwise, why bother to have come at all? It's not about proving anything. It's about sharing something.
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When people ask me how they should approach performance, I always tell them the professional musician should aspire to the state of the beginner.
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The tradition of classical music and the opera is such that it used to be the place where social intercourse could take place between all parts of society: politicians, industrialists, artists, citizens, etc. That tradition, I think, still exists, but it's much, much more diluted.
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Nobody else can make the sound you make.
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I don't always have a five-year plan. One thing you must do in life is keep your learning curve as high as possible.
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When we have a good balance between thinking and feeling... our actions and lives are always the richer for it.
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There are limits to how much sound a cello can make. That's part of the framing of acoustical instruments. Finding what those limits might be, and then trying to suggest perhaps even the illusion of going beyond is part of that kind of effort.
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The thing that I've always been slightly frustrated with, was that the idea of a CD is kind of confined to a material possession that you can put on a shelf. And the idea of music, for me, is always about both the communication and the sharing of content. And so the interactive part is missing.
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With every year of playing, you want to relax one more muscle. Why? Because the more tense you are, the less you can hear.
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A Senegalese poet said 'In the end we will conserve only what we love. We love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.' We must learn about other cultures in order to understand, in order to love, and in order to preserve our common world heritage.
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When we enlarge our view of the world, we deepen our understanding of our own lives.
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As a musician I'm kind of nomadic, Waldo-like. I show up in different places, and I'm witness to unbelievable things.
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There's a part of me that's always charging ahead. I'm the curious kid, always going to the edge.
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Once something is memorable, it's living and you're using it. That to me is the foundation of a creative society.
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You go through phases. You have to reinvent reasons for playing, and one year's answer might not do for another.
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I think one of the great things about being a musician is that you never stop learning.
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I think anybody who goes away finds you appreciate home more when you return.
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One of the marks of a great teacher lies not only in an ability to impart knowledge but also in knowing when to encourage a student to go off on his own.
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One of the things I love about music is live performance.
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