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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.

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
Lying
Torture
Also
Mark
Great
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Impart
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More quotes by Yo-Yo Ma

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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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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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I realized late in life that my twin passions are music and people.
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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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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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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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Classical music is one of the best things that ever happened to mankind. If you get introduced to it in the right way, it becomes your friend for life.
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Sharing is a much better way to communicate than proving.
Yo-Yo Ma
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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.
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.
Yo-Yo Ma
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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.
Yo-Yo Ma
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Children, in a way, are constant learners. Certainly sponge-like. Absorbing everything without careful analysis, even though, at the same time, they are certainly capable of incredible insights.
Yo-Yo Ma
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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
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We may be coming to a new golden age of instrument making.
Yo-Yo Ma
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Perfection is not very communicative
Yo-Yo Ma
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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
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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.
Yo-Yo Ma
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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.
Yo-Yo Ma
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Music is one of the ways we can achieve a kind of shorthand to understand each other.
Yo-Yo Ma
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When we enlarge our view of the world, we deepen our understanding of our own lives.
Yo-Yo Ma