Yo-Yo Ma Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“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.”

“There's a part of me that's always charging ahead. I'm the curious kid, always going to the edge.”

“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.”

“With every year of playing, you want to relax one more muscle. Why? Because the more tense you are, the less you can hear.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The tango is really a combination of many cultures, though it eventually became the national music of Argentina.”

“When we have a good balance between thinking and feeling... our actions and lives are always the richer for it.”

“I think that peace is, in many ways, a precondition of joy.”

“Jazz has been such a force in music, that any musician, including classical composers, have been influenced, and obviously performers, also.”