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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

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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
Away
Performing
Come
Instruments
Years
Musical
Always
Questions
World
Study
Answered
People
Head
Studying
Talking
Traveling
Culture
Cultures

More quotes by Yo-Yo Ma

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Each day I move toward that which I do not understand. The result is a continuous accidental learning which constantly shapes my life.
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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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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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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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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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We may be coming to a new golden age of instrument making.
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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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I think that peace is, in many ways, a precondition of joy.
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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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People will ask, 'Are you famous?' And I always answer, 'My mother thinks so.'
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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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Good things happen when you meet strangers.
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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.
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When we enlarge our view of the world, we deepen our understanding of our own lives.
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My involvement in the political arena is to make sure there's a place for culture.
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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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Music is one of the ways we can achieve a kind of shorthand to understand each other.
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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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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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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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