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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.

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
Different
Waldo
Kind
Nomadic
Things
Unbelievable
Like
Witness
Musician
Places
Show
Shows

More quotes by Yo-Yo Ma

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My involvement in the political arena is to make sure there's a place for culture.
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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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Jazz has been such a force in music, that any musician, including classical composers, have been influenced, and obviously performers, also.
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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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Good things happen when you meet strangers.
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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 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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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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When you learn something from people, or from a culture, you accept it as a gift, and it is your lifelong commitment to preserve it and build on it.
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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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My teacher, my great cello teacher Leonard Rose, was such a great cellist, and nurturing man, very patient. But I grew up not only admiring him, but obviously Casals, Rostrotovich, Jacqueline du Pre, and many others, including many of my peers and contemporaries.
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Music is one of the ways we can achieve a kind of shorthand to understand each other.
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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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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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The worst thing you can do is say to yourself, I want to be just like somebody else. You have to absorb knowledge from someone else, but ultimately you have to find your own voice.
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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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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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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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Nobody else can make the sound you make.
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