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" We may be coming to a new golden age of instrument making. "
Yo-Yo Ma
Age
Coming
Golden
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" People will ask, 'Are you famous?' And I always answer, 'My mother thinks so.' "
Yo-Yo Ma
Mother
You
People
" 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. "
Yo-Yo Ma
You
Like
Sound
" Good things happen when you meet strangers. "
Yo-Yo Ma
Good Things
Good
You
" It took me way beyond what I knew, into places of which I was totally scared, but as I became less frightened, I welcomed new ways of thinking and approaching something. It made me an infinitely richer person, and I think a better musician. "
Yo-Yo Ma
Thinking
Person
Think
" I'm not likely to forget where I've been and what I've done and learned. I think it's just as important to play new instruments as to play new pieces. The old ones are getting scarcer and the new ones more and more wonderful. "
Yo-Yo Ma
Forget
Done
Important
" 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
Performance
Job
Me
" I think anybody who goes away finds you appreciate home more when you return. "
Yo-Yo Ma
Appreciate
You
Think
" 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
Time
Teacher
Music
" 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
Head
World
Studying
" You go through phases. You have to reinvent reasons for playing, and one year's answer might not do for another. "
Yo-Yo Ma
Answer
You
Year
" The tango is really a combination of many cultures, though it eventually became the national music of Argentina. "
Yo-Yo Ma
Though
Music
Argentina
" I think that peace is, in many ways, a precondition of joy. "
Yo-Yo Ma
Think
Ways
Peace
" When you learn something from people, or from a culture, you accept it as a gift, and it is your lifelong commitment to preserve it and build on it. "
Yo-Yo Ma
People
Gift
Culture
" 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. "
Yo-Yo Ma
Language
Music
Life Changes
" 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. "
Yo-Yo Ma
Grow
Deep
Time
" 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
Quality
Practice
Music
" Music is powered by ideas. If you don't have clarity of ideas, you're just communicating sheer sound. "
Yo-Yo Ma
Just
Sound
You
" I think the purpose of a piece of music is significant when it actually lives in somebody else. A composer puts down a code, and a performer can activate the code in somebody else. Once it lives in somebody else, it can live in others as well. "
Yo-Yo Ma
Live
Music
Down
" When we have a good balance between thinking and feeling... our actions and lives are always the richer for it. "
Yo-Yo Ma
Good
Feeling
Balance
" The thing that I've always been slightly frustrated with, was that the idea of a CD is kind of confined to a material possession that you can put on a shelf. And the idea of music, for me, is always about both the communication and the sharing of content. And so the interactive part is missing. "
Yo-Yo Ma
You
Music
Communication
" 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
Project
Interesting
Film
" 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
Time
Try
Patience
" 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. "
Yo-Yo Ma
Think
Me
Family
" But an innovation, to grow organically from within, has to be based on an intact tradition, so our idea is to bring together musicians who represent all these traditions, in workshops, festivals, and concerts, to see how we can connect with each other in music. "
Yo-Yo Ma
Innovation
Musicians
Together
" One of the things I love about music is live performance. "
Yo-Yo Ma
Music
Live
Things
" 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. "
Yo-Yo Ma
Easy
World
Me
" 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
People
Music
Great
" 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
You
Creativity
Great
" 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
World
Great
Growing Up
" I really would like to be involved in things and to understand things, and in some ways you've got to be careful what you wish for because I feel very, very blessed to have such an interesting life and to be able to have little snapshots of lives of people from many different parts of the world. "
Yo-Yo Ma
You
Blessed
Life