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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.
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
Hear
Year
Less
Every
Muscle
Years
Tense
Muscles
Relax
Playing
More quotes by Yo-Yo Ma
You go through phases. You have to reinvent reasons for playing, and one year's answer might not do for another.
Yo-Yo Ma
Sound is ephemeral, fleeting, but some sort of a physical manifestation can help you hold on to it longer in time. I'm sure of this I've always thought the sound that you make is just the tip of the iceberg, like the person that you see physically is just the tip of the iceberg as well.
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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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Sharing is a much better way to communicate than proving.
Yo-Yo Ma
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.
Yo-Yo Ma
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.
Yo-Yo Ma
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.
Yo-Yo Ma
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.
Yo-Yo Ma
Bach takes you to a very quiet place within yourself, to the inner core, a place where you are calm and at peace.
Yo-Yo Ma
I think that peace is, in many ways, a precondition of joy.
Yo-Yo Ma
When we enlarge our view of the world, we deepen our understanding of our own lives.
Yo-Yo Ma
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.
Yo-Yo Ma
I've been traveling all over the world for 25 years, performing, talking to people, studying their cultures and musical instruments, and I always come away with more questions in my head than can be answered.
Yo-Yo Ma
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.
Yo-Yo Ma
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.
Yo-Yo Ma
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.
Yo-Yo Ma
Each day I move toward that which I do not understand. The result is a continuous accidental learning which constantly shapes my life.
Yo-Yo Ma
Our cultural strength has always been derived from our diversity of understanding and experience.
Yo-Yo Ma
I think the purpose of a piece of music is significant when it actually lives in somebody else. A composer puts down a code, and a performer can activate the code in somebody else. Once it lives in somebody else, it can live in others as well.
Yo-Yo Ma
