Perfection is not very communicative.
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.
Music is powered by ideas. If you don’t have clarity of ideas, you’re just communicating sheer sound.
Bach takes you to a very quiet place within yourself, to the inner core, a place where you are calm and at peace.
Our cultural strength has always been derived from our diversity of understanding and experience.
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.
I love grocery shopping when I’m home. That’s what makes me feel totally normal. I love both the idea of home as in being with my family and friends, and also the idea of exploration. I think those two are probably my great interests.
Jazz has been such a force in music, that any musician, including classical composers, have been influenced, and obviously performers, also.
I think one of the great things about being a musician is that you never stop learning.
The tango is really a combination of many cultures, though it eventually became the national music of Argentina.
Sharing is a much better way to communicate than proving.
I don’t always have a five-year plan. One thing you must do in life is keep your learning curve as high as possible.
I really would like to be involved in things and to understand things, and in some ways you’ve got to be careful what you wish for because I feel very, very blessed to have such an interesting life and to be able to have little snapshots of lives of people from many different parts of the world.
The worst thing you can do is say to yourself, “I want to be just like somebody else.” You have to absorb knowledge from someone else, but ultimately you have to find your own voice.
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.
Each day I move toward that which I do not understand. The result is a continuous accidental learning which constantly shapes my life.
Culture opens our hearts to one another. And the currency in culture is not money, but trust.
Children, in a way, are constant learners. Certainly sponge-like. Absorbing everything without careful analysis, even though, at the same time, they are certainly capable of incredible insights.
Things can fall apart, or threaten to, for many reasons, and then there’s got to be a leap of faith. Ultimately, when you’re at the edge, you have to go forward or backward; if you go forward, you have to jump together.
I think anybody who goes away finds you appreciate home more when you return.