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Yo-Yo Ma Biography

Yo-Yo Ma (born October 7, 1955) is a French-born American cellist. Born in Paris, he spent his schooling years in New York City and was a child prodigy, performing from the age of four and a half. He graduated from the Juilliard School and Harvard University and has enjoyed a prolific career as both a soloist performing with orchestras around the world and a recording artist. He has recorded more than 90 albums and received 18 Grammy Awards.

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Yo-Yo Ma Quotes

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.

Curve, Curves, High, Keep, Planning, Years

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

Life, Life Is, Root, Roots, Wonder

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.

Becomes, Classical Music, Happened, Introduced, Life, Way

Music is one of the ways we can achieve a kind of shorthand to understand each other.

Achieve, Kind, Shorthand, Way, Ways

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.

Casals, Jacqueline, Men, Pre, Rose, Teacher

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.

Analysis, Careful, Children, Same, Time, Way

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

Answers, Phases, Reasons, Reinvent, Years

As a musician I'm kind of nomadic, Waldo-like. I show up in different places, and I'm witness to unbelievable things.

Different, Kind, Musician, Places, Unbelievable Things, Witness

Sharing is a much better way to communicate than proving.

Celebration, Communicate, Proving, Sharing, Way

Nobody else can make the sound you make.

Make, Nobody, Sound

Our cultural strength has always been derived from our diversity of understanding and experience.

Derived, Diversity, Experience, Strength, Understanding

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.

Greater, Purpose, Sharing, Special, Together

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.

Believe, Child, Children, Interested, Sustained, Teacher

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.

Children, Games, Hide, Respond, Seek, Sound

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.

Head, People, Studying, Talking, Years

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.

Artist, Citizens, Music, Society, Thinking, Tradition

Music is powered by ideas. If you don't have clarity of ideas, you're just communicating sheer sound.

Ideas, Sound, Clarity

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.

Advocate, Performed, Piece, Pieces, Roles, Thinking

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.

Age, Investigate, Music, People, Realized, Thinking

Once something is memorable, it's living and you're using it. That to me is the foundation of a creative society.

Creative, Foundation, Living, Memorable, Using

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