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The role of the musician is to go from concept to full execution. Put another way, it's to go from understanding the content of something to really learning how to communicate it and make sure it's well-received and lives in somebody else.

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
Wells
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Received
Well
Somebody
Concept
Something
Full
Content
Really
Sure
Communicate
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Make
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Roles
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Music is powered by ideas. If you don't have clarity of ideas, you're just communicating sheer sound.
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You must have a reason to be in the places to which you go, and you must do only things that you really care about.
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Practicing is not only playing your instrument, either by yourself or rehearsing with others - it also includes imagining yourself practicing. Your brain forms the same neural connections and muscle memory whether you are imagining the task or actually doing it.
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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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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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Passion is one great force that unleashes creativity, because if you're passionate about something, then you're more willing to take risks.
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When we enlarge our view of the world, we deepen our understanding of our own lives.
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I love grocery shopping when I'm home. That's what makes me feel totally normal. I love both the idea of home as in being with my family and friends, and also the idea of exploration. I think those two are probably my great interests.
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The tango is really a combination of many cultures, though it eventually became the national music of Argentina.
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Bach takes you to a very quiet place within yourself, to the inner core, a place where you are calm and at peace.
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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.
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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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I think anybody who goes away finds you appreciate home more when you return.
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I learn something not because I have to, but because I really want to. That's the same view I have for performing. I'm performing because I really want to, not because I have to bring bread back home.
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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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But an innovation, to grow organically from within, has to be based on an intact tradition, so our idea is to bring together musicians who represent all these traditions, in workshops, festivals, and concerts, to see how we can connect with each other in music.
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Good things happen when you meet strangers.
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Our cultural strength has always been derived from our diversity of understanding and experience.
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As a child, you respond physically, tactically. You're delighted by sound, you're delighted by recognizing something. It's like hide and seek. Is it there? Is it not there? Is it this note? Is it not this note? It's one fantastic game.
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Music has always been transnational.
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