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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. "
Yo-Yo Ma
Muscle
You
Year
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" As a musician I'm kind of nomadic, Waldo-like. I show up in different places, and I'm witness to unbelievable things. "
Yo-Yo Ma
Show
Different
Things
" 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
Music
Think
Alive
" 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. "
Yo-Yo Ma
Chinese
Different
Asians
" 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
Everything
Children
Time
" 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
" 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
" I learn something not because I have to, but because I really want to. That's the same view I have for performing. I'm performing because I really want to, not because I have to bring bread back home. "
Yo-Yo Ma
Want
View
Back
" 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
" I realized late in life that my twin passions are music and people. "
Yo-Yo Ma
Twin
People
Music
" 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
" 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
Always
Music
See
" Good things happen when you meet strangers. "
Yo-Yo Ma
Good Things
Good
You
" 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
Always
Music
Over
" Jazz has been such a force in music, that any musician, including classical composers, have been influenced, and obviously performers, also. "
Yo-Yo Ma
Been
Jazz
Including
" 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
" After reaching 50, I began to wonder what the root of life is. "
Yo-Yo Ma
Root
Wonder
After
" 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
Kind
Illusion
Finding
" 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
Society
Think
Music
" 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
" 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
" 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
" You know, you can have someone who's the very best at something, but if there's not that kind of chemistry, collaborating is not going to amount to anything. "
Yo-Yo Ma
Chemistry
Know
Someone
" 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
Way
Content
Learning
" I think that peace is, in many ways, a precondition of joy. "
Yo-Yo Ma
Think
Ways
Peace
" 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
Thought
Always
Time
" 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
" 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
Connections
Memory
Brain
" 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
" 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
" 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