Yo-Yo Ma
Yo-Yo Ma
Yo-Yo Mais a Chinese-American cellist. Born in Paris, he spent his schooling years in New York City and was a child prodigy, performing from the age of five. 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. His 90+ albums have received 18 Grammy Awards...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionCellist
Date of Birth7 October 1955
CityParis, France
CountryUnited States of America
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.
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.
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.
One of the things I love about music is live performance.
As a musician I'm kind of nomadic, Waldo-like. I show up in different places, and I'm witness to unbelievable things.
Jazz has been such a force in music, that any musician, including classical composers, have been influenced, and obviously performers, also.
When people ask me how they should approach performance, I always tell them the professional musician should aspire to the state of the beginner.
I think one of the great things about being a musician is that you never stop learning.
Bach takes you to a very quiet place within yourself, to the inner core, a place where you are calm and at peace.
I have yet to find something that beats the power of being in love, or the power of music at its most magical.
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.
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.
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.
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.