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I think one of the great things about being a musician is that you never stop learning.

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
Stop
Great
Things
Never
Think
Thinking
Musician
Learning

More quotes by Yo-Yo Ma

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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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I think that peace is, in many ways, a precondition of joy.
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This middle age thing is a little weird. Some friends and mentors are gone, and there's a very forward-looking new generation coming up behind me. So it's very much finding my own place.
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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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One of the things I love about music is live performance.
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When we enlarge our view of the world, we deepen our understanding of our own lives.
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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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Music enhances the education of our children by helping them to make connections and broadening the depth with which they think and feel. If we are to hope for a society of culturally literate people, music must be a vital part of our children's education.
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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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Perfection is not very communicative
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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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I want to investigate different cultures, to see how their identities and values affect their music. It's one way I can get to know our world, at least to a certain depth.
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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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Culture opens our hearts to one another. And the currency in culture is not money, but trust.
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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 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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Good things happen when you meet strangers.
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What came up at age 49 is I realized that of all the things I'm interested in, the thing I'm most interested in is figuring out what makes people tick, why people think the way they do, why they act the way they do. And I realized that music is such a great way to investigate why people do what they do.
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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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I play an instrument that has four strings, and I'm still trying to get it right. What I've tried to do in the process of playing these four strings is to try and understand the people I meet, the stories they have to tell. And then become an advocate for them and their stories through music.
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