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.
Passion is one great force that unleashes creativity, because if you're passionate about something, then you're more willing to take risks.
In performance, we have a greater purpose. The greater purpose is that we're communing together, and we want this moment to be really special for all of us. Because otherwise, why bother to have come at all? It's not about proving anything. It's about sharing something.
Bach takes you to a very quiet place within yourself, to the inner core, a place where you are calm and at peace.
Perfection is not very communicative
Good things happen when you meet strangers.
A Senegalese poet said 'In the end we will conserve only what we love. We love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.' We must learn about other cultures in order to understand, in order to love, and in order to preserve our common world heritage.
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.
When we enlarge our view of the world, we deepen our understanding of our own lives.
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.
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.
Our cultural strength has always been derived from our diversity of understanding and experience.
The tango is really a combination of many cultures, though it eventually became the national music of Argentina.
Jazz has been such a force in music, that any musician, including classical composers, have been influenced, and obviously performers, also.