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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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Yo-Yo Ma
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: October 7
Actor
Cellist
Composer
Music Pedagogue
Musician
Paris
France
Yo Yo Ma
YoYo Ma
Places
Care
Reason
Must
Really
Things

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I have yet to find something that beats the power of being in love, or the power of music at its most magical.
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Passion is one great force that unleashes creativity, because if you're passionate about something, then you're more willing to take risks.
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Perfection is not very communicative
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There's a part of me that's always charging ahead. I'm the curious kid, always going to the edge.
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Good things happen when you meet strangers.
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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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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.
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I play an instrument that has four strings, and I'm still trying to get it right. What I've tried to do in the process of playing these four strings is to try and understand the people I meet, the stories they have to tell. And then become an advocate for them and their stories through music.
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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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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.
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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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When your heart and your mind are engaged, you cannot go wrong.
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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.
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We may be coming to a new golden age of instrument making.
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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.
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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.
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I think there are so many ways to become interested in music. I believe signs of sustained interest gives a sense of the right time. Music, if thought of as a language, would perhaps indicate that as early as possible is not so bad. I do believe that a really nurturing first teacher that makes the child love something is crucial.
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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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Things can fall apart, or threaten to, for many reasons, and then there's got to be a leap of faith. Ultimately, when you're at the edge, you have to go forward or backward if you go forward, you have to jump together.
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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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