Gabriela Montero crazy interview with improvisations! (Amuse News)
Jan 29, 2021 18:37 · 3260 words · 16 minute read
Gabriela Montero is definitely strange albeit in a most brilliantly fantastical way. She is a virtuoso pianist who tours the world as a soloist giving recitals and playing with the best orchestras but She has another not so hidden talent Gabi is able to compose in real time. Now some people may call it improvising but it gets much stranger than that. She does not actually know how to improvise. She never learned improvising skills or techniques she never studied complicated harmony books she often takes a random theme from the public while talking to them during the performance like a weirdo would she then transforms these themes into mind-bending spontaneous compositions gabi you look absolutely ravishing what have you been doing what is your secret i mean it you look you always looked gorgeous but i think is it the extra sleep that you’re getting or how do you do it thank you sweetheart um i i i don’t know i mean i turned 50 this year so it’s quite a big number and uh i’m just trying to really enjoy time with the girls and with sam and and you know to take walks in the forest i’m composing a lot so maybe this creative energy that i have that is relentless is is connecting me to some kind of vitality that that i really needed and i really wanted basically it’s family sex and creativity is that what you’re saying well uh i wouldn’t say that publicly but uh let’s say that i’m enjoying like the little things in life and the things in life that you know are pleasurable amazing well creativity of course is incredibly pleasurable but first of all let’s start this interview with your childhood that this is what’s really fascinating for me because when did you start noticing you’re a bit weird and different because you’re not like a regular musician even from an early age you could do incredible things on the piano without even knowing it but improvising so how did that happen well you know i don’t come from a musical family so it wasn’t a tradition at home to have any of the great recordings or any piano music or even an instrument so what happened was that my mom incredibly for my first christmas she went out in caracas to buy christmas gifts for the kids uh you know the family kids caracas that’s in venezuela just for those people who have no idea about geography that’s where i was born and um and uh so she saw this little piano this little toy piano and decided to buy it from my cousin who’s older than i am she bought me a doll it turns out that i never liked dolls so when when she brought this little piano to the house my grandmother who was a very strong personality she she saw the piano and insisted that she give it to me for christmas instead but i was only seven months old so my parents at first thought well what is a baby going to do with a little piano but they you know they they uh let’s say wanted to please my grandmother put the piano in my crib and they noticed that from the very beginning i would start to play by ear all the melodies that my mom would sing me to put me to sleep so you started when you were seven months old is that that was my first contact with the instrument and then i was playing all of these songs by ear including the national anthem of venezuela which later became a tool for protest against what’s happening in venezuela in my adult life and and i was playing all of these songs you know just just very naturally so my relationship with the piano was always something that came from from a very deep source of of intuitiveness and uh i don’t know just something that connected me to it amazing well for those of you who don’t know what incredible things gabi can do she is a beautiful pianist beautiful human being um but at the same time she doesn’t actually improvise i mean she in a way she she creates compositions on the spot and it’s not like you’ve studied harmony and and theory for a long time right because you you claim to be famously dumb concerning actual harmonic knowledge i mean that’s what it’s your words you say that i don’t is that i don’t think anyone has quite put it like that but well that’s basically what i i read between the lines so but is that just a marketing ploy have you been reading how many books secretly during the nights or are you just in genius look i think music is just a language that i always understood and that always came very i had access to in a very particular way i never studied theory or harmony i wouldn’t really be able to use the terminology to analyze my own improvisation so it’s a language that for me goes beyond how you classify a style or how you analyze the score it’s it’s it’s really like talking so when i compose it’s it’s very much along those lines it’s something that i i feel very viscerally whether it makes sense or it doesn’t whether i enjoy playing it or i don’t or i think others will well it’s it’s incredible because as well you even though you don’t have the knowledge you have the natural feeling for form and shape while you’re playing which is incredible i actually had the privilege of playing with you um well on several occasions but but one time we did a crazy improvised uh performance in in in geneve i believe for a wonderful charity of a common friend of us um and and that was such a wild ride because you just never know what is happening you’re like a wild horse i would say yes yes and actually that my piano teacher uh at the royal academy of music when i studied there in london hey mishmillen who was a brilliant man and an incredible inspiration and brilliant pianist that’s exactly what he used to say of me he used to say i was like a wild horse and i had to learn to tame that spirit and i think it’s that kind of um very profound and animalistic somehow relationship with music which gives this whole emotional let’s say connection to it is really what drives my creativity and when i’m improvising with other people and it’s very very few times that i’ve done it uh with you was one of the few times i don’t have a map so that i always say i don’t have a musical gps so i can’t follow a map i have to go wherever my mind takes me and there is no formula there is no architecture that’s pre-established the fact is though that you have some type of brain abnormality well i don’t think your brain is uh i think all of us musicians brains is a little bit we’re all weird but the interesting thing is you you actually went to a doctor specialist well i’m married to someone who is uh very very um he’s a very creative personality he’s also a wonderful singer he’s a wonderful musician and after years of of knowing that i really don’t have the theoretical background but improvisation has always been something that just is and happens he he and his very scientific you know curiosity wanted to know how it is that i improvise and it’s always different and there are no templates so he called dr charles slim who is the leading neurologist and he himself is a musician as well at the john hopkins hospital in the u.
s and said look my wife is someone who does this check her out and i’d like i’d love for you to look into her brain and to see how she does what she does because i want the scientific explanation so not the mystical religious explanation but he wanted to know the science so um dr lim checked out you know my improvisations and my performances and immediately called him back and said you have to bring her straight away as soon as you can so to look into your brain yes so we flew over to baltimore and the deal was that he was going to have a team and they were going to give me um they were going to investigate my brain by creating an experiment basically a study where they would see how my brain reacted when i played a written piece and memorized always the same one and i chose a bachmann way a scale and also an improvisation so they wanted to say to see how my my brain behaved in these different uh moments so originally i was going to be in the mri machine for 30 minutes it turned out to be almost two hours they asked me to be in there so dr lim said to me basically gabby when you play a written piece the the usual parts of the brain that we see in a musician of course they go crazy and they light up etc but what we’ve never seen is when you improvise um a different part of your brain co-ops and and takes over because it’s a much more powerful part which is the visual cortex so what i call getting out of the way when i improvise means that all of those functions in my brain that are active when i play the repertoire basically almost become dormant but that means you are basically playing music on the spot while using the part of the brain that is in charge of sight with my eyes and in fact he asked me gabby do you see something when you improvise and i’m not kinesthetic i don’t that’s i’m very emotional yes but not kinesthetic and and he said because you’re you’re creating with your eyes and this this is quite beautiful actually your works when you play them they are like incredible little gems but of course you can really develop them as a composer as well and you did you there’s several works uh that you did for example you’ve written a few concerns exactly expatriate then there’s the latin concerto but now you’ve actually managed to find a really good way to compose all the time because you you were having the difficulty of not really finding the right program or tool in order to compose and i think you’ve discovered something now that works for you um thanks to to someone that is actually kind of doing a little uh some of my copies to work in the u.
s he suggested that i try note flight in note flight i’d never heard of it it’s a little bit more um manageable to someone like me than at sac values or logic or any of the other programs i love sibelius i always try to encourage you to use rebellious but you always i know i know it was difficult for you to get into it i think that’s that’s the next step you know but you have to start you know in a more simple format and that’s really what no flight has opened up the possibility of me to you know sit down at 11 o’clock at night and i and i develop an idea and it’s it’s wonderful are you endorsed by note flight yet no no i don’t i oh wow i think i don’t think about those things oh well maybe you should i think no not flight would be very very lucky um to to have you endorsing well let’s see maybe we can reach out to them so in case uh in case they they agree to do it then you can find the link below of not note flight okay but i think it’s it’s interesting actually i would love to check that program out myself as well even though i do love using sibelius it’s very user-friendly well since we’re in the middle of a pandemic you are just as smart as the rest of us so um i thought it could be a good idea to plug some of the concerts that you are not going to be doing so you know what what what are you not going to be playing soon because you know everybody always shows off oh i’m playing this and this i think at the moment nobody’s doing anything so where are you not touring i’m so excited well i was supposed to be playing a recital at carnegie hall just in a few days so why don’t we just just just do it this way so please in a few days time please do not go to gabi’s carnegie hall recital because it won’t happen it’s going to be one of the greatest recitals that is not going to happen in the near near future you’re so humble you even use your grammy to prop up your books in the background right is that your grammy in the background that is just my latin grammy for expatriate and why not why not yeah prop up the books uh with the latin grammy with my uh platform music traveler where you are an ambassador i’m very very thankful for that um basically the platform where you can book rooms in order to rehearse or practice or even perform in um basically we’ve started a new streaming possibility a new streaming platform which is very exciting i’m also very excited to tell you here uh we’re just launching it now we’re doing the final tests but basically one can already start trying it out and it’s very very simple i think it’s the simplest i would claim it’s the simplest streaming platform out there because you simply add your url from a youtube which you upload you just upload something on youtube make it unlisted add the url to your profile add a little description post it say whatever five euros one euro 20 euros whatever one wants for the stream depending of course what it is if it’s a five minute half an hour a one hour thing and musicians can start getting some revenue from performances now from digital performances now also in music traveler we have um over 500 000 uh followers on facebook so we will also promote those streams especially those streams of wonderful musicians like like yours uh but everybody streams uh there and we hope to facilitate and help musicians uh with this also we’re not going to take any money from the musicians uh at this at this point that means all the revenue goes directly to the musicians we’re all feeling you know if if we live from performing and if we live from from from music and and sharing music with our audiences of course there are a lot of people who are suffering a lot and and these months of of silence and and i i think it’s wonderful to create these opportunities to um you know to to help them of course absolutely it’s a perfect segue to actually now twist your arm and make you play something and improvise something so i’m going to get my violin right now and you get ready we’ll use a different camera angle um for that and then you will be improvising i will give you one minute and one minute only to improvise on a theme given by me and me alone either film music or game music now how is your knowledge of game music nil excellent well that’s why i will use my violin to play you those things it’s going to be very very exciting are you ready well first of all you why don’t you guess what which movie they’re from oh god no i’m really bad at that really better okay of course of course very well what is it well of course it’s star wars i mean but then i’m not gonna get any of the other ones this one is so iconic okay so that’s a pretty kind of excellent okay so are you ready for this i’m gonna give you one minute i’m gonna show you on the counter ready steady and go wow perfect perfect timing wow amazing i don’t know what that was something totally different even our team is uh yeah they’re very impressed everybody is clapping here you can’t see them they’re invisible people but uh they’re very very impressed okay so let’s see how you’re doing with the next one i think the time in one minute is perfect for the moment let’s let’s carry on doing one minute so let’s see if you know this one so yes do you remember which movie that’s from no it’s uh from inception actually oh fantastic movie which i was very very lucky to see um actually myself at a very early stage with with hans at the director’s own home actually christopher nolan’s home very cool so well i think that said no yeah harmonies are slightly different but who’s counting anyway ready steady and go beautiful beautiful um so we’re going to do another movie of of of hanzas actually one more and that’s actually a movie um he did uh you you may not know it because it may be not in your age range uh it’s called boss baby oh when is that from um that’s actually just a few years ago but what’s interesting is he’s working on boss baby to right now boss baby part two at the moment so i know that because i cannot i can neither deny or confirm that i’m i’m recording some stuff on that movie so it’s too early to say but it’s coming out very soon in a couple of months uh so that’s quite exciting and i love the theme to it it’s really gorgeous it’s lovely have a listen ah very cute am i making it up or no yeah that’s good and then wait and then i always change things that’s the problem yeah change it hans won’t mind he won’t give trust me yeah okay he loves people something like that okay okay you got one minute okay and go do ah lovely yeah perfect you made it under the time which gives you another bonus thank you do i get a prize do i win a prize you get 23 points okay the points are pointless gabi this was absolutely incredible it’s extraordinary it’s i love love love seeing you it’s been so such a pleasure to to to see your face it’s been okay to talk to you too it’s been um of course to hear your music take that as a compliment your music is extraordinary no i love hearing you speaking to you everything um and the as a last thing are there any words of wisdom anything really special and important to you that you would like to tell the people out there um well actually if you subscribe to my channel i will give you 100 000 kisses.