Quote

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

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
Best
Music
Ever
Introduced
Right
Classical
Way
Mankind
Things
Friend
Life
Becomes
Happened

More quotes by 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
Passion is one great force that unleashes creativity, because if you're passionate about something, then you're more willing to take risks.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
Perfection is not very communicative
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
One is that you have to take time, lots of time, to let an idea grow from within. The second is that when you sign on to something, there will be issues of trust, deep trust, the way the members of a string quartet have to trust one another.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
Music has always been transnational.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
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
Image
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
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
We may be coming to a new golden age of instrument making.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
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
Image
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.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
I remember when I was growing up. My great wish was to understand who I was and how I fit in the world.
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
Sharing is a much better way to communicate than proving.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
I have yet to find something that beats the power of being in love, or the power of music at its most magical.
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
This middle age thing is a little weird. Some friends and mentors are gone, and there's a very forward-looking new generation coming up behind me. So it's very much finding my own place.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
One of the things I love about music is live performance.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
It's easy for me to care about Toronto, because Toronto is a community that cares about itself. It represents the world. It talks to itself, and because it does, it figures out that there must be a music garden as part of its existence.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
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