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
Our (nation's) cultural strength has always been derived from our diversity of understanding and experience.
Good things happen when you meet strangers.
This middle age thing is a little weird. Some friends and mentors are gone, and there's a very forward-looking new generation coming up behind me. So it's very much finding my own place.
I want to investigate different cultures, to see how their identities and values affect their music. It's one way I can get to know our world, at least to a certain depth.
Jazz has been such a force in music, that any musician, including classical composers, have been influenced, and obviously performers, also.
One of the things I love about music is live performance.
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.
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.