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Music has always been transnational people pick up whatever interests them, and certainly a lot of classical music has absorbed influences from all over the world.

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
Always
Pick
World
Interests
People
Picks
Certainly
Influence
Transnational
Interest
Absorbed
Whatever
Influences
Music
Classical

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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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Sharing is a much better way to communicate than proving.
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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 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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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.
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Our cultural strength has always been derived from our diversity of understanding and experience.
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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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After reaching 50, I began to wonder what the root of life is.
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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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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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Music is powered by ideas. If you don't have clarity of ideas, you're just communicating sheer sound.
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Perfection is not very communicative
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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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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 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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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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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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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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Nobody else can make the sound you make.
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