Quote

When people ask me how they should approach performance, I always tell them the professional musician should aspire to the state of the beginner.

Yo-Yo Ma

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Yo-Yo Ma
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: October 7
Actor
Cellist
Composer
Music Pedagogue
Musician
Paris
France
Yo Yo Ma
YoYo Ma
State
Beginners
Tell
Aspire
Professional
States
Performance
Always
Performances
People
Musician
Approach
Asks
Beginner

More quotes by Yo-Yo Ma

Image
A Senegalese poet said 'In the end we will conserve only what we love. We love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.' We must learn about other cultures in order to understand, in order to love, and in order to preserve our common world heritage.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
As a musician I'm kind of nomadic, Waldo-like. I show up in different places, and I'm witness to unbelievable things.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
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.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
I really would like to be involved in things and to understand things, and in some ways you've got to be careful what you wish for because I feel very, very blessed to have such an interesting life and to be able to have little snapshots of lives of people from many different parts of the world.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
Perfection is not very communicative
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
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.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
Good things happen when you meet strangers.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
People will ask, 'Are you famous?' And I always answer, 'My mother thinks so.'
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
When we have a good balance between thinking and feeling... our actions and lives are always the richer for it.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
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
Image
Sharing is a much better way to communicate than proving.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
Jazz has been such a force in music, that any musician, including classical composers, have been influenced, and obviously performers, also.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
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
Image
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.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
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
Image
The tango is really a combination of many cultures, though it eventually became the national music of Argentina.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
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
Image
Once something is memorable, it's living and you're using it. That to me is the foundation of a creative society.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
Culture opens our hearts to one another. And the currency in culture is not money, but trust.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
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.
Yo-Yo Ma