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I don't always have a five-year plan. One thing you must do in life is keep your learning curve as high as possible.
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
Must
Plan
Thing
Plans
Years
Learning
Always
Possible
Life
High
Year
Curve
Five
Curves
Keep
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More quotes by Yo-Yo Ma
After reaching 50, I began to wonder what the root of life is.
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The worst thing you can do is say to yourself, I want to be just like somebody else. You have to absorb knowledge from someone else, but ultimately you have to find your own voice.
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Many of the Central Asians know Russian, and Ted Levin speaks it fluently. I speak Chinese, but Mongolian is completely different, so we had to have translators.
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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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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
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 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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People will ask, 'Are you famous?' And I always answer, 'My mother thinks so.'
Yo-Yo Ma
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.
Yo-Yo Ma
I think one of the great things about being a musician is that you never stop learning.
Yo-Yo Ma
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
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
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
Nobody else can make the sound you make.
Yo-Yo Ma
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
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.
Yo-Yo Ma
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
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.
Yo-Yo Ma
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.
Yo-Yo Ma
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.
Yo-Yo Ma
