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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

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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
States
Professional
Always
Performance
People
Performances
Musician
Approach
Asks
Beginner
State
Beginners
Tell
Aspire

More quotes by Yo-Yo Ma

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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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As a musician I'm kind of nomadic, Waldo-like. I show up in different places, and I'm witness to unbelievable things.
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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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You go through phases. You have to reinvent reasons for playing, and one year's answer might not do for another.
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When we have a good balance between thinking and feeling... our actions and lives are always the richer for it.
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Culture opens our hearts to one another. And the currency in culture is not money, but trust.
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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 think that peace is, in many ways, a precondition of joy.
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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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Sharing is a much better way to communicate than proving.
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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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One of the most interesting aspects of the film project was collaborating with so many people - directors, filmmakers, and writers - over a five-year period. I learned that there are two components to this.
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I remember when I was growing up. My great wish was to understand who I was and how I fit in the world.
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Nobody else can make the sound you make.
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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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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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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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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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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.
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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.
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