Bach takes you to a very quiet place within yourself, to the inner core, a place where you are calm and at… — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
The tango is really a combination of many cultures, though it eventually became the national music of Argentina. — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
Music is powered by ideas. If you don't have clarity of ideas, you're just communicating sheer sound. — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
I think one of the great things about being a musician is that you never stop learning. — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
I want to investigate different cultures, to see how their identities and values affect their music. It's one way I can get… — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
A composition is always more than the sum of its parts. In other words, a really good piece of music is more… — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
I think all musicians have at one time or another experienced one physical problem or another. I have had tendinitis a couple… — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
Classical music is one of the best things that ever happened to mankind. If you get introduced to it in the right… — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
I think of a piece of music as something that comes alive when it is being performed, and I feel that my… — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
Jazz has been such a force in music, that any musician, including classical composers, have been influenced, and obviously performers, also. — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
Music enhances the education of our children by helping them to make connections and broadening the depth with which they think and… — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
But an innovation, to grow organically from within, has to be based on an intact tradition, so our idea is to bring… — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
The tradition of classical music and the opera is such that it used to be the place where social intercourse could take… — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
When people ask me how they should approach performance, I always tell them the professional musician should aspire to the state of… — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
Mastering music is more than learning technical skills. Practicing is about quality, not quantity. Some days I practice for hours; other days… — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
Music is one of the ways we can achieve a kind of shorthand to understand each other. — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
I have yet to find something that beats the power of being in love, or the power of music at its most… — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
Music has always been transnational; people pick up whatever interests them, and certainly a lot of classical music has absorbed influences from… — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
I think the purpose of a piece of music is significant when it actually lives in somebody else. A composer puts down… — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
I think there are so many ways to become interested in music. I believe signs of sustained interest gives a sense of… — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
What came up at age 49 is I realized that of all the things I'm interested in, the thing I'm most interested… — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
The role of the musician is to go from concept to full execution. Put another way, it's to go from understanding the… — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
It's easy for me to care about Toronto, because Toronto is a community that cares about itself. It represents the world. It… — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
As you begin to realize that every different type of music, everybody's individual music, has its own rhythm, life, language and heritage,… — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
The thing that I've always been slightly frustrated with, was that the idea of a CD is kind of confined to a… — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
A composition is always more than the sum of its parts. In other words, a really good piece of music is more than itself.… — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
My involvement in the political arena is to make sure there's a place for culture. — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
When we enlarge our view of the world, we deepen our understanding of our own lives. — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
People will ask, 'Are you famous?' And I always answer, 'My mother thinks so.' — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
It took me way beyond what I knew, into places of which I was totally scared, but as I became less frightened, I welcomed… — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
One is that you have to take time, lots of time, to let an idea grow from within. The second is that when you… — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
You go through phases. You have to reinvent reasons for playing, and one year's answer might not do for another. — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
When people ask me how they should approach performance, I always tell them the professional musician should aspire to the state of the beginner. — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
Mastering music is more than learning technical skills. Practicing is about quality, not quantity. Some days I practice for hours; other days it will… — Yo-Yo Ma Copy Share Image
