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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.

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
Music
Calm
Core
Inner
Quiet
Takes
Within
Peace
Place
Bach

More quotes by Yo-Yo Ma

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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.
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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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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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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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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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Music is powered by ideas. If you don't have clarity of ideas, you're just communicating sheer sound.
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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.
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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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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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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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When we enlarge our view of the world, we deepen our understanding of our own lives.
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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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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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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.
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We may be coming to a new golden age of instrument making.
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Perfection is not very communicative
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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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I think one of the great things about being a musician is that you never stop learning.
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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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My teacher, my great cello teacher Leonard Rose, was such a great cellist, and nurturing man, very patient. But I grew up not only admiring him, but obviously Casals, Rostrotovich, Jacqueline du Pre, and many others, including many of my peers and contemporaries.
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