DISCOVER YOUR REAL POTENTIAL
What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?
This is for aspiring creators: I’m going to repeat what I said inspires me: Be brave or what is the point? Cultivate trust in yourself. Seek feedback, response, critique, yes yes yes! But learn who you want to get feedback from rather than soliciting feedback from everyone who comes across your work.
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World-renown Italian pianist and composer Ludovico Einaudi has signed with Creative Artists Agency.
Einaudi is the first classical composer in more than 20 years to rank in the Top 15 of album sales, blending jazz, rock, folk, pop, and electronic.
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What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?
Practice is key – I’ll forever be grateful to my mum for sitting me down on the piano stool and getting me to do those scales, because now I can look at a piece of music and interpret it at the piano, and these millions of connections lead to compositional ideas when the fingers find the right spot on the keys.
It’s also important to remember that failure or rejection can allow even better opportunities to present themselves. Having worked with the choristers at Wells Cathedral, I felt I was really suited to the organ scholarship at St John’s College Cambridge, but I ended up at Trinity. At the time I saw this as some kind of failure – I wasn’t quite good enough to get my first choice – but now I couldn’t be more grateful for the time I had and the people I met at Trinity: years which have been instrumental in my career.
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How do you work?
Composing is such an intuitive process. Sometimes I hear a melody and then play it on my harp and most of the times it immediately becomes a basis for a free improvisation. Sometimes a composition arises through improvisation, some brain work and choices. I listen and re-listen until the composition sounds right, either I need to delete some notes or maybe I need to make a stronger melody … or the pulse – heartbeat of the music is not there yet … again I trust my gut feeling in this refining and creative process.
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That’s a tough question to answer! I would say success means an ability to play the kind of music you like most of all as often as possible! If you can get paid on top of that you’re getting even closer. In my experience, it’s not always the best players or composers that achieve the most success. There’s so much more involved, so many other qualities. It’s so much more than just being able to play all of the right notes in the right order! Success is as subjective just as life itself. I’ve been on both sides of the fence in my career as a musician and it’s one of the most demanding, exhausting and sometimes frustrating industries to work in. Passion and patience are the two big qualities you need, plus a very thick skin. But truthfully I could never do anything other than compose and play the piano. Either one is amazing but both at the same time? Now that’s what I call success!
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