Yo-Yo Ma Quotes

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Yo-Yo Ma

Profession : Musician

Birth : October 7, 1955

I realized late in life that my twin passions are music and people.

Yo-Yo Ma

People will ask, 'Are you famous?' And I always answer, 'My mother thinks so.'

Yo-Yo Ma

A composition is always more than the sum of its parts. In other words, a really good piece of music is more than itself. It's sort of like a prism, which you can see from each facet a single totality.

Yo-Yo Ma

There's a part of me that's always charging ahead. I'm the curious kid, always going to the edge.

Yo-Yo Ma

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.

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.

Yo-Yo Ma

What came up at age 49 is I realized that of all the things I'm interested in, the thing I'm most interested in is figuring out what makes people tick, why people think the way they do, why they act the way they do. And I realized that music is such a great way to investigate why people do what they do.

Yo-Yo Ma

My job as a performer is to make sure that whatever happens in a performance lives in somebody else, that it's memorable... If you forget tomorrow what you heard yesterday, there's really not much point in you having been there - or me, for that matter.

Yo-Yo Ma

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.

Yo-Yo Ma

I think all musicians have at one time or another experienced one physical problem or another. I have had tendinitis a couple of times, so I try to be really careful. It takes patience and persistence to overcome injury.

Yo-Yo Ma

You go through phases. You have to reinvent reasons for playing, and one year's answer might not do for another.

Yo-Yo Ma

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

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

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

I think anybody who goes away finds you appreciate home more when you return.

Yo-Yo Ma

After reaching 50, I began to wonder what the root of life is.

Yo-Yo Ma

I think of a piece of music as something that comes alive when it is being performed, and I feel that my role in the transmission of music is to be its best advocate at that moment.

Yo-Yo Ma

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.

Yo-Yo Ma

Mastering music is more than learning technical skills. Practicing is about quality, not quantity. Some days I practice for hours; other days it will be just a few minutes.

Yo-Yo Ma

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