American - Musician | October 7, 1955 -
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.
Yo-Yo Ma
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Music is powered by ideas. If you don't have clarity of ideas, you're just communicating sheer sound.
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With every year of playing, you want to relax one more muscle. Why? Because the more tense you are, the less you can hear.
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Once something is memorable, it's living and you're using it. That to me is the foundation of a creative society.
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There are limits to how much sound a cello can make. That's part of the framing of acoustical instruments. Finding what those limits might be, and then trying to suggest perhaps even the illusion of going beyond is part of that kind of effort.
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My involvement in the political arena is to make sure there's a place for culture.
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I remember when I was growing up. My great wish was to understand who I was and how I fit in the world.
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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.
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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.
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After reaching 50, I began to wonder what the root of life is.
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Jazz has been such a force in music, that any musician, including classical composers, have been influenced, and obviously performers, also.
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My teacher, my great cello teacher Leonard Rose, was such a great cellist, and nurturing man, very patient. But I grew up not only admiring him, but obviously Casals, Rostrotovich, Jacqueline du Pre, and many others, including many of my peers and contemporaries.
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