On this very special episode of I Know This Guy With Norm Farrar, we have world renowned concert pianist Marcelo Bratke. Based out of Sao Paulo and England, Marcelo not only tours the world performing his music but is also involved in several social initiatives that bring music lessons to impoverished areas of Brazil and performances into many of the prisons in the country. He’s even bought his students to the U.S. to perform at Carnegie Hall. We discuss all of this and the struggles of overcoming impaired vision and much, much more. You don’t want to miss this one!
Date: November 26, 2020
Episode: 30
Title: Norman Farrar Introduces Marcelo Bratke, a World Renowned Concert Pianist and Founder of Camerata Brasil.
Subtitle: Music Is Pure Imagination And Imagination Is, In My Opinion, The Shortest Way Between Us And Our Object Of Desire
Final Show Link: https://iknowthisguy.com/episodes/ep-30-how-can-music-change-the-world-w-marcelo-bratke/
In this episode of I Know this Guy…, Norman Farrar introduces Nate Eckman, co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Ultimate Media Ventures, which creates eSports content, experiences and products.
Marcelo was born with a visual problem, but that was not a hindrance for his love of music. He shared his journey as a young pianist until he was successful and founded an orchestra and toured into many of the prisons in Sao Paulo.
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Marcelo 0:00
This boy is going to be an international pianist, as I said, How silly.
Norman 0:15
Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of I Know This Guy, the podcast where we dive deep into the lives of some of the most interesting people I know. Before we get started, please like and subscribe to I Know This Guy wherever you get your podcasts. By the way, like kids want me to say something about ringing a bell. What the hell’s a bell?
Hayden 0:49
Alright. So dad, who do we have lineup for the podcast?
Norman 0:52
Well remember Philip Yang?
Hayden 0:53
Of course I do.
Norman 0:55
Yeah. So Philip, after the podcast, got in contact with us and said, Hey, I know somebody else that’s really cool. When we heard about him, we said, Yeah, we gotta get him on the show and that Marcelo Bratke? He’s a world famous pianist. Man, he’s so much more than that. Like, he’s, I don’t even want to get into it here. Because I want to kind of teach people to listen to the podcast, because it will be so interesting. This guy’s remarkable.
Hayden 1:27
Yeah, you don’t want to miss this one. So let’s dive right in.
Norman 1:32
Alright. Well, Marcelo, welcome to the podcast.
Marcelo 1:36
Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to be connected with you in Canada. I am two hours from San Paolo and today, I think the weather is a little bit similar to Canada, we have 16 degrees here.
Norman 1:52
Oh, my God. Take the knife out of my back. I wish it was 16 degrees. It’s cold and rainy and typical fall weather here, not 16.
Norman 2:09
So I’ve got to tell you, one of the most interesting people I’ve come across and had the pleasure of speaking to you was a guy that introduced us, Philip Yang. What an incredible guy.
Marcelo 2:27
Amazing, yes. He’s incredible.
Norman 2:29
In his story, I mean, what hasn’t he done and what hasn’t he done exceptionally and the thing that gets me about Philip, is that we only hit the tip of the iceberg. I mean, we really do have to get him back, Hayden.
Hayden 2:45
Yeah. Sure.
Norman 2:46
But anyways, this is interesting, because he said, there’s somebody that I know that is super interesting. You’ve got to talk to him and he brought up your name. So anyways, I can’t wait to talk more.
Marcelo 3:02
Let me tell you, Philip is a multi faceted person at the point of last week, for example, because I’m doing a series of programs about composers for TV in Brazil and I remembered Phillip mentioned that he had some Indian jackets that were very, very eccentric and beautiful and then I called him to ask to borrow one of the jackets for me to be able to do a special problem on Mozart. So he also became a kind of a fashion adviser.
Norman 3:42
Oh, good. So that’s just another one of his specialties, right?
Marcelo 3:49
Yes, I guess so. Yes.
Norman 3:53
Let’s dig into a bit of your past. I don’t want to just scrape the surface, we’ve had a chance to talk to you a bit and really get some information. I want you to go back to the early days and really what makes Marcelo Marcelo?
Marcelo 4:12
Well, I remembered music since I was really young, because I had the visual problem that I was born with which is a cataract, congenital cataracts and amblyopia. So I remember I made my first surgery in my eyes when I was around two years old and I remember coming back home with both eyes covered, and I was crazy to hear some music and they had this small discs with histories for children, and also some of the Beatles success like Help, for example, so I was hearing Help all the time, the way I imagined the world was very much attached to sound. I was addicted to countryside music from Brazil, because my grandfather had a countryside house and the housekeeper who is my best friend. He was a country man and he was a fan of great duets for countryside music in Brazil and I used to listen to those pieces of music very often when he went to this countryside house and I used to remember all the lyrics when I was four years old, five years old and I think this was the background, the music background that I had continuously and also, I was very attached to radio. On those times, I used to hear in the mountains, exactly the place I am now in. Where was my grandfather’s house, he had a smoke blow toolkit radio, through which I could hear some short waves stations, radio stations. Voice of America, Radio Moscow, Radio Japan, I was around six to seven years old and I used to spend hours and hours listening to those voices, difficult to catch, because the sound was with a lot of interferences like sshh and I was really fascinated to imagine those different countries and different cultures with strange language that I couldn’t understand. But somehow, I was exploiting this sound of the world that I imagined was a very big round world, and with different people, different thoughts and I was so much attached to that, that since today, one I’m practicing the piano, and I have cell phones and computers and things like that. But I still listen to radio stations around the world, sometimes with language that I don’t understand, like radio stations in India, in Stockholm, for example, in China, I like to hear those voices. In a way, it gives me the sensation of understanding the world through sound. So this was the background of sound that later on when I was 14 years old, 13 years old, it became a channel with music.
Norman 7:44
So I’m kind of curious, you grew up legally blind and you had an operation that turned around so you could see again. Having a visual when you’re listening to that music, was that a distraction?
Marcelo 8:04
No, no. This background sound was like a companion to me, like a friend. It was something that I always put into my day by day practice. I always studied the piano with this music in the background. I always thought that practicing the piano was a very solitary exercise. So I put the radio on, because when I stopped playing the music I’m playing, there is always someone talking to me. So this is something that makes me company and it was like that when I was young, because I had limitations in visual. I had 7% visual capability in my left eye and around 2% in my right eye. But because it was born like that, I didn’t know how it was to see properly. So it was not a difficult situation for me because I never had the perspective of normality in terms of vision. All the sounds mixing in my mind were always very welcome. I’m not someone who wants to have a pure channel into something in terms of sound. I want to have all this confusion, which is something that is in a way translated into music and into my rational thoughts.
Norman 9:33
So let’s go back a bit. Your parents treated you 100% there is no difference because you had some issues with your eyesight. Hayden was talking to me about this and I thought it was amazing how your family life was so encouraging, like everything about what your family was doing helped you get to where you are today. Can we talk a little bit about that?
Marcelo 10:00
Absolutely, yes. Well, because there was no solution to my problem. Amblyopia is an atrophy in the optical nerves, that you need to solve this problem until you are around four or five years old. I was as tragic as well, because of this problem and I only made one surgery of service when I was two years old. I should have done two operations. But my mother was a little bit traumatized by this surgery. So they decided without really knowing it, just to do one operation and that made me lose one of my eyes, my right eye. Today, I have one 100% vision in my left eye, and 10% vision in my right eye. But because there was no solution after this stage, my family, my parents, they treated me as normal as they could. I remember my mother, my father saying that they wanted me to have a normal life. Of course, I bumped into obstacles that were very difficult for me and sometimes I didn’t have the tools to surpass these obstacles. So I need to arrange myself in a way, creating the tools myself. But it was the way that they thought my parents that they should bring me up and I needed to do the rest, I think. I don’t know if this was completely correct from a parent’s point of view. But it made me strong in a way to try to fight and to try to arrange myself with the tools that I could create throughout my life. So in school, for example, just to let you know what was my situation. I remember when I was around six or seven years old, after the classes were over, there was a very big patio and the mothers that used to come to pick up the children, they were in a line after the patio end and we used to go from the corridor of the classrooms and all the children used to go very fast, and find their mothers to hug their mothers. I didn’t see my mother because it was so difficult for me to see. So I used to ask her to go with a very red, colorful, extravagant dress, so that I could spot in a way a little bit of a color very far away, to make me be able to act as normal as I could. So I used to see that red dot and I used to run towards that red dot. So this made me look a little bit normal in between my friends. So I was always using this kind of solution to try to behave as normal as I could, so that I could hide a little bit, my visual problem. There was a funny passage also, in a English class, that I used to sit in the middle of the first row of this classroom and there were maybe five friends in my right and three, or four in my left, and each of us, we should read one paragraph of a text in English. Okay, so I received the text, I couldn’t really see. I could only see if I would go very close with my left eye, close to the paper and read letter by letter. So I used to count four guys, four paragraphs and I was going to read the number five. So I used to read very, very careful this fifth paragraph and memorize immediately because I had a very good memory because of this problem and I would stand up, put the book in front of me as a normal guy and act as if I was reading the paragraph. But I remember something like this. It’s a fine day today. There are some clouds in the sky, but the sun is shining. One day, my left friend read two paragraphs. So I was without my paragraph. So I stood up, I put the book in front of me and I couldn’t say anything. I stay mute. I passed it to so many situations like that, that were funny to remember now, but on those times it was very dramatic.
Norman 15:19
So you ended up going to the eye doctor and memorizing the eye chart and that’s why they say you have 100% vision, right?
Marcelo 15:26
Well, the doctor was, they were so nice to me. My principal doctor used to say, Marcelo, could you see that A? Can you see that N? So he would say the name before that letter.
Norman 15:43
I wish to do that for me when I was writing exams. Okay, I heard this, I still don’t believe it. But you drove, you got a car at one point?
Marcelo 15:56
Yes, yes. These are one of the negative sides of my family solution. I think my father wanted to have a normal, older boy as his son, and everyone in Brazil, when we are 18 years old, in a way we go to a driver’s license, and we do the tests, and we pass with the tests and on those times in Brazil, of course, everything could be arranged in a way. So my father arranged that I could have a car, and I rented a sort of a test to be made, and I got the driving license and I was just allowed to drive this car, very close to our house very carefully in very empty streets, so that I could feel I was a normal guy. This was an absolutely wrong decision for my father to make. I had an accident later on on that and of course, I was 18 years old and in my perspective, I was very happy because of this. Because it was on my day by day process of feeling normal, in a way. But this was completely inadequate to happen in my life. Thinking over today, I think all the solutions could have been created to make me feel okay about that.
Norman 17:34
I just think that that is one of the most incredible stories I’ve ever heard that you were driving. That’s Oh my gosh. So I guess if you can do that in Brazil, and get your driver’s license, you can pretty much do anything, right?
Marcelo 17:53
Well, this was 1978. In those times, everything was very informal. It’s impossible to do that now, of course. It’s absolutely impossible to do that and the arrangement that was done was through my ophthalmologist, the one that used to follow my life since I was a kid. He signed a document, saying that I could drive because I had the maximum vision I was born with. So this was his decision, which of course, in my opinion, is completely wrong. But he thought that I could, in a way, because I used to see some percentage of the image I could see. So if I arrived to 18 years old, I was able to study, I was able to learn how to read and how to arrange myself. He thought I could, with a lot of care, very carefully. I could drive slowly and so he decided to do that.
Norman 19:06
I want to talk a little bit about your music. We haven’t really talked too much about that. But let’s talk about when you got in, took music and what you’ve accomplished. I mean, this is amazing by itself. So let’s talk a little bit about that. Can you give us some background?
Marcelo 19:24
When I first had a contract with the piano, it was through my father because my father and my mother got divorced. I was visiting my father on a Saturday and I was taken to his home. I was about to ring the bell of his house and I heard a sound of the piano coming from the living room. Someone opened the door and it was my father playing a prelude by Chopin but he never told me he played the piano when he was an adolescent. He just bought a piano that week, too. We practiced a little bit to revisit this piano capability he had, he was very talented and I asked him to play that music again. He played once more the prelude by Chopin and I said, How does it go? Because I noticed that the right hand was very simple, just two notes and then the left was more complex and I asked my father to put my hand on the keyboard, and showed me a little bit the beginning of it and then I asked him to play again and I spent that entire day trying to touch the keyboard in a way, and trying to reproduce that music and I was using the same system that I used to do with the radio. I used to imitate voices, speaking other languages and things like that. So at the end of this afternoon, I was playing the entire piece, this one page prelude by Chopin, prelude number four opus 28 and my father thought that it was not really normal, that always playing that piece of music. Because I never touched a keyboard before in my life. So next week, the following Saturday, when I arrived there, and it was crazy to pick the piano again. There was this teacher that my father asked to make some tests on me and she made some tests and she said she was very enthusiastic. Xillia daddy is her name and she said, This boy is going to be an international pianist and I said, How silly and then my father said, Why don’t you have some piano lessons with her? I thought she was very nice and I decided to have some lessons because I was crazy to play the Funeral March by Chopin. It was a piece of music that I used to hear to listen to, in some terrible movies by, for example, Bela Lugosi, Vincent Price, this films about about vampires and Draculas and I said, I’m going to have some lessons with this teacher and I will learn the Funeral March and then I will leave the piano just want to play that piece of music. But after one month, a very important pianist called Ron Carlos Martins, who is a friend of my father came to my father’s house. It was another Saturday because I was visiting my father every Saturday and he sat on the piano, and he played the beginning of Bach concerto and I thought that was amazing. I thought that was really, really, really so energetic and so beautiful, and so seductive that I bought a record with Glenn Gould, playing with Leona Bernstein, I think it was the New York Philharmonic of that concerto. I spent a month taking note by note by ear with the piano that I was given a piano after a month, a piano called Brazil, a small upright piano, which was very bad piano and I began copying note by note of this concerto after I think three months, I was in reception with a lot of people. There was a piano there and I have a friend of mine called Neto and Neto said to me, Marcelo, there is a Greek conductor, here in the room, go to the piano and play the beginning of that concerto and they went to the piano at para pub ba, ba, ba and then the conductor, who was El Azhar de Carvalho, the most important conductor of Brazil at that time, he was an amazing conductor. He was a pupil of Koussevitzky. He was a colleague of Leona Bernstein, and Cs yuzawa. He was the principal conductor of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and he came close to the piano, listened to me, and he said, I want to invite you to make a debut with Sao Paulo States Symphony Orchestra. Would you do that? I said, sure. But I just learned on that point, the first movement of the concerto. I didn’t know the second and the third movement. So Maestro El Azhar de Carvalho, he was very serious about that. He gave me his telephone number and then I asked my father to call him and he set up a rehearsal to test me on that concerto. So I went to the concert hall and sat on the piano, never played before with an orchestra and we made the first movement of the Bach, the minor concerto. I remember in the middle of the movement, he said, let’s begin now from bar number 48 and I said, because I bought this card with me, I bought this card with me to act as if I was reading it and I said, Master, bars 48, what does it mean? I just know how to play this movement from beginning to end. Can you sing a little bit to the party you want me to repeat, and that he sang and we played together again and then he said, Now the second movement, and I didn’t know the second movement and neither the third, I was so inexperienced about all of this. So he said, I give you six months and we are going to rehearse again and if you are prepared, you can play and open the spring season of Sao Paulo State Symphony Orchestra. So I prepare myself with my teacher, taking out the every note, year by year and then I went and I rehearsed and I played and it was my first concert in Theatro San Pedro, in São Paulo, which was packed and the television was filming, and I never played in public in my life. So I didn’t know what was going to feel. So I was sitting in a chair on that stage, the orchestra was already playing an overture before my concerto was supposed to take place and I remember I felt my heart in my feet. So my feet were like this, dung dung and I said, I need to have some water with sugar to make me calm and I asked the wife of the conductor who’s next to me, can I have some water with sugar? She arranged this glass of water with sugar, I was drinking and that conductor came from the stage and said, Now, let’s go on stage. I said, excuse me, but let me drink the whole glass and he said, If you don’t come, I go on stage and he went into the stage. So I was supposed to follow him and I was just pushed by his wife into the stage and I went to this, it was very light with all the TV things and light for me because of the cutter that was very, very bad. Because when you have a congenital cataract, the light goes into your eyes, and goes like this, splash, it divides itself. So it’s like, the worst thing for a cataract is to have a beautiful day. So, that was why I always enjoyed very cloudy, very foggy London weather sort of days and I sat on the piano and I said, I’m going to collapse. I cannot play the first note of this concerto. I was really scared, but then the orchestra began and this background check, you can choose either you do the beginning of the duty with the orchestra or you don’t. So I left the orchestra to do the introduction and when I was supposed to enter, I just entered and played the concerto from beginning to end and a miracle happened and they played the whole thing and on that week, I had three reviews in the most important newspapers, in São Paulo. Then after a month, I got an award from the Sao Paulo Critics Association, it’s a Revelation Award and all of a sudden, I was the less popular guy in school of course, because I was the guy that nobody would choose to make part of the football team, soccer team and all of a sudden I became very famous because of this concerto. So all the girls used to come to me and say, Oh, Marcelo. I heard you changed a lot. I heard you play the piano. I said Yes, yes. I play the piano.
Marcelo 29:29
So I thought, this is good to be amazing, an international pianist. So this was a very glamorous beginning. But my second concerto was in an old age house near Sao Paulo, in this upright piano with some keyboard, some keys not working well. I played for over 30 old aged, very nice, sweet people and I thought, well, this concert is going to be easy. Because not too many people are in the audience, they are not young, so maybe they are not really listening much to work I’m going to do. So I thought there’s going to be very calm. But again, I sat on that chair before going on stage. That right piano is a very informal concept for old ladies and old gentlemen and I was very nervous again. My feet were following my heartbeat. So I think this was something like a trauma that I got. But that, somehow, I like to have even today because it gives me a little bit of adrenaline that I think is necessary to make music work in a way. But, I have in my entire career, moments like that have very glamorous concerts and concerts devoted to people that are minorities, for example, which I think are the special is the very glamorous ones.
Hayden 31:17
Marcelo, you were in high school when you did that first concerto. Is that correct?
Marcelo 31:23
Yes, yes.
Hayden 31:24
Wow. It’s funny. I think adrenaline and stage fright comes up a lot on this podcast. We have a lot of public speakers on here.
Norman 31:32
A podcast Host.
Hayden 31:33
Yeah, my dad. Even though he spends a lot of time on stage, he definitely gets nervous. So have there been any times where that adrenaline’s become too much for you for certain concerts? Or have you managed that other than sugar water over the years?
Marcelo 31:52
Yes, well, yes, yes. There were some times that this was a little bit too much to me. For example, a live TV program with an interview with this very famous interviewer called Joe Suarez in Brazil. He’s the sort of David Letterman, if you compare the United States with Brazil, and I used to go on television, but this is a live performance with the public. The whole of Brazil talking informally and all of the sudden jumping into the piano and being able to play. That was the first time I did that, it was very, really, really frightening, really, really frightening and I thought I was going to collapse really, because I thought maybe, millions and millions of people are watching me and I am shy, as a person. So this responsibility of performing live, it’s something that sometimes is like a competition, I would need to have with myself, which is something that sometimes I think it loses a little bit, the most important thing, which is diving into music. When sometimes you are too much aware of public attention, I think this gets into a way. So my mentality about that, is trying to take that sensation out. I learned how to do that. But I remember, I think I was 25 when I did this first experience with TV live in a very important show and I think I learned how to put that away and I think I know how to do that now.
Norman 33:58
I wish I knew.
Norman 34:02
I’m curious out of all the concert halls that you’ve played, what was your favorite?
Marcelo 34:07
I think the Wigmore Hall in London is my favorite acoustic concert hall. Because the acoustic is so good. Talking about nervousness, when you go to rehearse in the morning of the concert at the Wigmore Hall, the acoustics help the performer so much that you go there, you touch the piano, you play the first notes and you are sure the concept is going to be wonderful. Because the acoustic is like your best friend, is like a lover really that, it’s like a lullaby acoustic. So I think this is magical. It is very rare to have that. My favorite, other favorite Concert Hall, which is a very important concert hall in my career is the Carnegie Hall. Because I passed some times, I spent some time at the Juilliard School in New York, when I was 22. It was difficult for me to adapt because of my visual problem. Of course, I remember I was a very good student in the performing area, but in theory, and counterpoint harmonica, this teacher writing the notes in the blackboard that I couldn’t see. So it was difficult for me to adapt to the point that I left the Juilliard School and went to Europe to study with a great pianist. But it was difficult for me to follow these collective classrooms and approaches. I remember that it was the first time I left Brazil, I was in New York, I was young, I didn’t have any experience and I used to pass in front of the Carnegie Hall with my friends and they used to say, Oh, this is the Carnegie Hall, very famous concert hall, it’s difficult to, if you need to go to Carnegie Hall, you need to practice and practice and practice. There is also something funny that they say about that. I said to myself, I’m never going to play here in my life and coincidentally, when I made my surgery in Boston, I was 44 years old. By chance, the first concert I performed after that surgery that gave me normal vision in my left eye was at Carnegie Hall. It was my debut at the Isaac Stern Hall at Carnegie Hall, the big hall and I remember, I entered the stage. I was very nervous, of course. But I remember that, all those courses in my blind, almost blind life, were something like that. The public was something very dark, with noise of people and then the applause and then I sat in the piano then I played, and then applause again, and then the concert was over. Then I used to ask my mother or my father or my wife. How was the public reaction? How was the hall? Was it empty? Was it half empty? Was it full and they would say no, it was full and I didn’t know if it was true or not, because it didn’t see the public and right into the stage, I’d look too, it was sold out. My my agent was a very, very strategic agent and it was full house 2800 people, I was going to play a recital of piano and then I would receive on stage, five percussionists from a shanty town in Brazil and the whole concept was about the relationship between percussion, and Brazilian music, and this popular music, leading classical music and when I looked at the public, I saw the faces of the people and I saw each one of them, I really saw those faces, and I saw people like this, waiting for a pianist to appear on stage, smiling to me, applauding and smiling. Then I thought, what a warm reception, and the fact that this was like that, and I remember saying to myself, Oh, the public is at my side. They’re not analyzing, they just want to have a great evening of music and it maked me feel so welcomed and I played that Concerto in a very relaxed way and this happened since my surgery, very often, that I am much more relaxed now playing the piano in public.
Norman 39:21
So that surgery has changed the way that you feel when you go on stage when you perform.
Marcelo 39:28
Absolutely. It changed a lot. My confidence changed a lot and my approach to music changed as well. But it’s funny because my approach to music in an intimate way, didn’t change at all. I can see the notes on the paper, but I don’t have a fast eye. The eye is still very slow. So my reading, now I see all the notes I can read, I read, I memorize everything at once or twice and then I close the score and put aside and I never look at the score again. Because music for me, doesn’t mean what is written. Music for me is a sort of a sculpture, my brain, my dark imagination, which is exactly like the sounds of the radio, of the shortwave radio I used to listen to when I was young. So is this kind of culture of this format that I build up in my brain, in my imagination, is something very easy to follow. So when I learned a new piece of music, somehow I create this body of sound that to revisit is just a process of going there, into my mind, concentrate, take the beginning of this way of this path and path by path, state by state, follow this body of sound, which for me is music. So the written music means very little to me. I don’t really, if sometimes I lose a score, for example, the album back. So Sonata was one, I lost that score many times because sometimes I forgot to put it in my bag, I travel and I say, Well, my God, well, then when I see again, this one out, I don’t recognize the notes. Then I say, Oh, this is the album Bach Sonata. But other pianists are able to read that without the piano and listening to the music as they are reading. But these signals are not something familiar to me even today. So what changed it for me as a whole was, I used to use music as a bridge of communication between me and people. Because it was easier for me to express myself through music than through other forms of expression but the capability of seeing now made me see many aspects of the world and of life that I didn’t see at that time. So I was able to bring music to this new world that I saw when I was 44 years old and this made me feel that the capability of music has become much broader, much richer than it used to be before.
Norman 42:48
I always wanted to get involved with music. I guess my kids live that through me. So they’ve gone on, Hayden, went over to Berklee School of Music and has gone on with his music. But for me, Marcelo, let me tell you my music story and you’ll probably figure out why I never got into music. So I decided one year when I was in my 20s, I think, late 20s. I was going to play the tenor sax. So I go and I get the tenor sax and I go to my parents house in the middle of Maine. Maine is a very mountainous country. They have lots of cottages and lakes. I’m sitting on a beautiful summer day. I bring out my sax, I bring up the book and I’m like I’m trying to read some music. I start playing and from a cottage across the lake I hear, “Shut up. Shut up!” and that was about it for my music career.
Marcelo 43:48
Oh my God.
Marcelo 43:54
But you should try more. You should insist on it.
Norman 43:58
You know what? I have some hunters coming after me.
Marcelo 44:04
Let me tell you something. I had this with neighbors many times playing Bach, playing Mozart, Beethoven. I had very aggressive neighbors trying to almost kill me because of this.
Norman 44:18
I think these guys were ready to kill me. So anyways, it was a very short lived career and music. I settled into just listening to all types of music. So
Marcelo 44:31
Do you still have the saxophone?
Norman 44:34
No, and I let somebody borrow it and I never got it back. But anyways, I went on to other things and Hayden went on to do everything I wanted to do. So there we go. So Hayden, did you have any questions?
Hayden 44:51
Yeah, yeah, I have a few. I was actually curious. I just thought of another one. So like I’m trained more as a jazz musician and I think even within my training here in Canada and at Berklee, there’s a lot of weight on reading music and I imagine the same in classical music as well. Do you think there’s too much of a weight on reading? Because I feel like even the older I get, and the more I play, I think there seems to be gaps in music education here, where people kind of force reading on early and don’t really focus on the ear, and being able to create that sculpture in your head of sound. Yeah, I don’t know if you have any thoughts about that.
Marcelo 45:44
But how do you read? Do you read well?
Hayden 45:48
I read enough to be able to sight read a piece like someone gives me a baseline to read, I could read through it and play it. But I know people who can have a full score in front of them, and digest that and play that perfectly. I couldn’t do that.
Marcelo 46:05
I read much worse than you do. Let’s say I’m reading it. Let’s say I’m reading Mozart. Okay, this very famous tune. Yeah, I would go on the piano, if I wouldn’t know this piece before, of course, I would go like this. Okay, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. Memorize, note by note, like capturing something on the floor, like a chicken if you want and then being able to play that in tempo, without looking at anything. But then to go note by note, pause by pause, putting that in my mind. So, for me, someone like you that is able to see a page for the first time in life and reproduce the music immediately. It’s like a miracle to me, I never understood how this can be possible. So I think in terms of musical education, the secret would be the balance between what I have, which is completely based on ear, a memory, developed capability and to have wonderful reading. What to do first is the question, because I know people also, great pianists, who read so well that they can record a new CD, reading at first sight. But if they close this course, they cannot remember the first single note. So is the balance that is important. Also, because I think when you are free of the score, then the music comes to you and becomes yours. At the same time, there is something that I always do think, I listen to myself. The public, listen to me. But am I listening to the composer in classical music, which is something in the universe in which this structure is much more important than jams, for example. In jazz, you are much more free than classical music much less close to the text. I think in classical music you always need to come back to the score to remember to listen to the composer. So I still have, in my opinion, in my universal learning capability, an unbalanced and balanced, too. So I think the secret is a way in between those two things. How to do that, how to develop the ear training and memory training, apart from the signals of the music of the written music, and how to read music, not abandoning one another. This is the secret of music education for me. Oh, of course, on top of it, I think the cultural side of it is very important. How would you locate a piece of music in the universe that we live in for example? I was thinking about a Mozart Sonata for example, A Major that is very famous bom, bom, bom bom.
Marcelo 50:12
If you play ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta ta ta ta, which is a way of phrasing, this would be a romantic way of phrasing that is not adequate for Mozart. You should go into another kind of slang and accent trying to bring up, this length that Mozart used to have in his time, which is the bom, bom, bom but then the phrasing, because if you want to have the accent of those cells, dude in people, and trying to get the real thing. It’s like, compared with jazz to have the right swing of the music.
Hayden 51:04
Yeah, for sure.
Marcelo 51:05
I was talking with Julian Joseph, wonderful jazz musician, and great pianist, one of the best British jazz pianist about that in an interview that I did for a radio program that I do and he was talking about that the importance of the swing, and how to get the right accent and to put that in the right, historical atmosphere, without losing, also the capabilities are bringing that to our time, which is bringing music alive to the time that we live in today.
Hayden 51:39
Yeah, for sure. I mean, it’s interesting you say that too. Because my impression is that to be able to really perfect that swing, or perfect those tiny details that make up a beautiful piece of music or a beautiful way of playing. Like, to me it’s easier to much easier to grasp that from listening intensely to whatever you’re trying to learn and I think with like written music, that it doesn’t necessarily convey those smaller details as well, in my experience, like, I’ve seen written on music safe if I’m reading Bebop jazz melody, sometimes you’ll see written above it, like play this behind the beat, because they can’t actually put that in an unquantifiable way in the music and really, you just have to listen to Charlie Parker or listen to the greats and really try and copy them and where they place it. Yeah.
Marcelo 52:39
Exactly. When I was doing a CD with Julian Joseph, that was called Imaginary Line. That was a CD with four composers of the 20th century, classical composers interested by jazz and for jazz composers the classic of jazz, everything in two pianos. It was very difficult, I thought it was going to be so easy for me to learn how to play jazz with Julian, and Julian, how to incorporate classical music and his playing that I thought it was going to take three months and that we are going to end up with a wonderful, easy work to do. But it took us two years, and we have a lot of fights to the process of that. There was a fight that was so dangerous. Julian is a very big guy and we were at Steinways in London, in the basement, practicing and he was furious with me. I was furious with him, because we’re not really getting into the point we wanted, almost to the point that we were almost having a physical fight and we were like this, like this when another and then the director of Steinways heard this screaming into the room, open the doors and what’s happening guys? Were like, we were striking, and we said nothing, just rehearsing, but we’re standing up, with hands like this and then he closed the door. I looked at Julian and Julian looked at me and I said, What should we do now? He said, What time is it? I said, we still have half an hour to practice. Okay, let’s practice and we played our Armando’s Rhumba by Chick Corea and in the end, we hug each other how do we make peace through to this piece of jazz which is very, very fun but it’s a very different world, the world of jazz and the world of classical music and it’s always a wonderful thing to jump into this antagonistic world to learn how to, expand the universe of music that we have.
Hayden 54:55
Hey guys and gals. That concludes our episode with Marcel Bratke. Make sure to tune in next time to hear the rest of the interview. As always, make sure to like and share the podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks, and I’ll see you next time.
Hayden 0:00
Welcome to part two of our episode with Marcelo Bratke. If you haven’t heard part one yet, make sure to go back and give that a listen. Now for the rest of the scene.
Norman 0:13
I know nothing when it comes to writing music. But I’m kind of curious, when you have any piece of classical music. You started to mention and it never hit me until you started talking about Mozart, with the way that you were describing the accent.
Norman 0:29
Would somebody in Canada or somebody in Newfoundland, even in Canada, or somebody in the States, Southern States are over in Italy, would they interpret the music differently and would they have their own cultural spin on music?
Marcelo 0:46
Exactly. That’s a very interesting point and I was talking about that in a program I was filming yesterday about Mozart. You need to get the accent of a local, but you can bring music to your own accent, which makes the music completely different. But it can still be the real thing. Take Glenn Gould, for example, he was very far away in Canada, one of my favorite pianists, and his back is absolutely free of those theoretical elements that would be brought in Leipzig, for example, in Germany, but still translates the mathematical mind of bath and this philosophical way that bath put together occidental music in shape. So I think it’s very interesting, but absolutely right. If we play Beethoven for an Eskimo, he would not probably have the same emotions that someone in Germany would have and if a German guy would hear Eskimo music, he would feel completely different than an Eskimo hearing, listening to his own music. So I think those accents, local accents are still very present in music today. I think human beings, mankind, want to create a sort of universal language through music and with communication now, things are getting closer and closer. But we are still very attached to the local communities way of thinking, way of proceeding in terms of life, philosophy, and music, of course. But one day, I think we are going to be more able to create something more related to this whole thing, which is the world that we live in, getting closer and closer together, people in general.
Norman 3:04
One thing we haven’t touched on are some of your social initiatives. Could you tell us a little bit about Camerata Brazil?
Marcelo 3:11
Yes, Camerata Brazil was born in that Carnegie Hall concert in which I brought those five kids from a shanty town. They used to play percussion very, very well. The youngest was 14 years old, the oldest was 19 years old and when I came back to Brazil, I decided to try to form an orchestra that would be a social project, to bring people into music that live in a sort of risky situation, socially speaking. But this orchestra would not be a traditional orchestra. This orchestra would translate the mentality of Villalobos, the most important composer from Brazil, who didn’t see a very clear line of division between classical and popular music. So this orchestra would have a mix bench of musicians, young dollar sense coming from shanty towns in Vitoria, which is a city in between Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. So I went there, I used to select these young people in our in our association that used to have the music for beginners and the idea was to create through a very deep plunge into the music of one Brazilian composer for example, through a whole year or two years, and then being able to prepare a big concert about that composer. So, we began to do that I think it was 12 years ago. Camerata Brazil now, I think we made over 250 concerts in Brazil, 12 concerts, we even play at Carnegie Hall, for example, we play a Queen Elizabeth Hall, in Suntory Hall in Tokyo, in Germany, in both near, Sarajevo, in France, and in Argentina, and most of Brazil, from important concert halls, to small villages, where music are never performed with that kind of approach. So through those years, I had many different groups of young musicians that came into this orchestra, this orchestra, put these musicians into the University of Victoria, this orchestra became a sort of practical project, that is a parallel project to the university. So when we are not touring, they are in the university following their courses, to be able to get a diploma in the end and the projects we do our tours, in which we develop a whole concert, in which people are never going to feel the difference between me the pianist and the conductor, and the musicians that are there, because they prepare that repertoire up to perfection, the highest level that they can do. So I believe that after they go out of Camerata Brazil, to integrate other orchestras, if they want to follow the music profession, I believe that because they have this experience of bringing a single concert of one hour to a very high level, they’re going to repeat that experience all over again to the rest of their lives and this has proved to be true. These people that come from shanty towns, they learn music in the churches, in the streets of their communities and they have a lot of gaps. They are sometimes going to the orchestra when they are 16 years old and of course, if you got those children with a German boy, or girl, or in Canada, for example, that has good music education, they didn’t have that. So they need to recover very fast the time that they already lost to be able to integrate the music market in the future. So the idea of Camerata Brazi is to bring those talented musicians to a professional level and to make them become musicians if they want.
Norman 7:43
Do you have any plans to expand the program?
Marcelo 7:46
Well, the program now is not only in Vitoria, he’s also in Sao Paulo. So I have another group in Sao Paulo now. Of course, with the pandemia, this year has been very difficult to follow this project up because of this social incapability to stay with people. But I would love to do that in more cities in Brazil, not only fix it in Vitoria, or Sao Paulo but to do that, in the north of Brazil for example, in communities that don’t have any base of education. I’m not only talking about musical education, but education as a whole. For example, when we tour with these musicians is a small group, sometimes 13 people, 10 people, and I conduct them from the piano, but we stay in our hotel with all of them with me and it becomes like a family. So I teach them not only to perform to go on stage, but also how to behave, how to even sit and have dinner in a hotel because they don’t know that. So become more of a social musical project, to become an educational project as well, that goes beyond music.
Hayden 9:05
Have these musicians returned to their communities and have you seen any change maybe in their lives or the people around them?
Marcelo 9:13
Yes, of course. Many of my students from the groups that left Camerata Brazil, they are now integrating the symphonic orchestra in Vitoria. I remember a percussionist that was very talented now. He’s in Brasilia at the Brazilian National Symphony Orchestra. I had two cellists that decided to become firemen. They didn’t want to follow the music, but the music are still in their hearts, I think and their families follow their concerts and development and for the families, it’s a very educational thing for the families as well because they get involved in the life of the musicians, and we bumped into many, many different aspects of life that you cannot imagine. Things that happened into this project, this is really, really crazy to see how different very different social levels can help each other through music and to make the group work as one unit in the end. This is a very interesting thing and of course, many of this, for example, I have another percussionist who is called Weasley, who lives with his mother and his brother and his other brother was killed by the drug dealing of the shanty town and it was a very dramatic passage in his life. Now, he moved to another part of the community, he built a house for his mother and his other brother, house in bricks, not wood and he’s living almost a life of musician who can bring money to his family now, because apart from the fact that he makes these tours with Camerata Brazil, he’s able to place to play music in marriages, that sometimes with the orchestra, sometimes in parties, so he’s doing a lot of gigs, and he’s able to live his life through music.
Hayden 11:26
Marcelo, are you familiar with Danilo Perez? He’s my mentor at Berkeley, he’s from Panama and he plays with Wayne Shorter in his band now. But interesting reading about Camerata Brazil, he has a very similar initiative in Panama City, where I think at one point, they were actually giving away free music lessons to children of gang members in the downtown of Panama City, and have since then, have built a pretty large school with a program that integrates into I think, there’s other education centers. So the kids, once they start the music program can branch out and just start taking, like more math classes and general education and it’s incredible, what he’s done down there.
Marcelo 12:12
It’s incredible how in the last, let’s see, 15, 20 years, many of these musical groups became social programs that are helping so many people through music and it’s amazing to see how fast people can develop in many ways through music. It’s a faster way, one of the fastest way, I think, to build an individual into society,
Hayden 12:38
I think, I mean, here is, it still seems like most people maybe don’t fully see that when they’re thinking about enrolling their children into music lessons. Where they see, they might be able to like play in a band or something, but they don’t fully understand that once a child starts playing with people, that’s also working on the connection with a group of people and managing their time practicing is like a form of like organizing their lives and then that, it just kind of all builds into this much larger, more rounded education, or at least from what I’ve seen in some of my students have taken it seriously,
Marcelo 13:20
I completely agree with you and I think that music is an existential exercise. For example, first thing to make music, the first thing you need to do if you want to make music with someone else, or into a group is to listen to the person who is playing at your site. If you don’t listen to him or to her, music doesn’t happen. This exercise of listening to each other is one of the most important things in society as well, into the day by day life of people and it’s so rare, so many cases you don’t see people listening to each other. So in music, you are obliged to do that otherwise, there’s a confusion. Nothing’s going to happen and the same society if you don’t listen to your similar, your society is not going to work. So this for me is the first basic example that music can bring to society.
Hayden 14:37
I remember, Danilo Perez used to say, there should be a law where politicians have to be able to improvise music together to be able to be in office.
Marcelo 14:49
That’s a very good idea to make an orchestra of opponent politicians. Can you imagine a big toot on President Trump, President Bolsonaro, Johnson, for example, the role of the finance. Going into the percussion you know. That’d be amazing, the blockbuster. But, after a tour like that with politicians, they maybe can come back to their countries and do a better job.
Hayden 15:29
Yeah, exactly.
Norman 15:33
Okay, so I do have another question about some of the projects that you’re involved in Sena musica. Can we talk about that for a bit?
Marcelo 15:43
Sure. This was an original idea that came from my wife, Mariannita Luzzati. She’s a contemporary artist, a painter,she worked with cinema as well. The idea was to bring music and art into Brazilian prisons. So Villalobos, the foremost composer of Brazil, was very attached by nature, very inspired by nature and most of his music is touching and focusing on elements of nature. So Mariannita created a film about nature, an art film about nature and we made a big tool into Brazilian prisons, at the state of Sao Paulo, women and men prisons bringing the music of Villalobos in contact with nature. So it was a very big screen, and the piano, we took a big Yamaha concert piano to those concerts so that the production of the concert was like to make a concert in a current, important concert hall. With the top instruments you can imagine, with a wonderful projector, wonderful screen, wonderful piano and we would go to these prisons, and organize the space of the concert with the prisoners in the morning of the concert. So the concept would go in the evening. So we met a lot of prisoners who helped us to put together this stage and it was an amazing experience, because we were able to bring music and art and nature into those prisons and of course, we met many people that were there. For 20 years, for example, we met murderers that are going to stay there for many more years and it was amazing to see the impact of music and art through that project, and very touching I never had in my entire life, the sensation of music and art being so strong, in terms of liberating people that are suffering that don’t have liberty in their lives, the impact and importance of music in that level. That was shocking to me. For example, the first concert I performed was in a women’s prison in the suburbs of Sao Paulo, I was playing a lullaby by Mozart that has a theme that every mother sings for the children. That goes, ta da de da. I was playing the piano there and then all of a sudden, one woman began to sing together with me, then three, and then the whole audience of 600 prisoners singing in a chorus that tune with me. This never happened, there was no hope. So, of course, I was very emotional about that and many other things happened in that tour that made me think about those people that are, there is a border of normality. That is a very, very soft line that people can trespass and become people that are not able to live into society. For example, at the end of those recitals, I used to invite anyone that knew how to play the piano to play an encore and I was in a prison at Tabata and they said, I’m not going to give an encore. Please. Is there anyone in the audience who knows how to play the piano and can come play an encore, to perform an encore for all of us and a guy said, Oh yes, I used to practice the piano and then he said, Do you play Chopin? I said, Yes, I play Chopin. So can you play Chopin? I promise I’m going to play Tchaikovsky after you perform Chopin, so I play Chopin. Then I went out to the piano, he came up on the stage and he played Tchaikovsky, a small piece from the seasons of Tchaikovsky and he was so well educated. He had a wonderful cultural background and then we spoke and we talked a lot and I thought to myself, amazing. What did this guy deserve to be here? He seems to be so balanced and normal and educated and a nice guy and things and then when I left the prison, I was talking to the director of this prison. I asked, what about that guy that played the encore in this concert? What was the reason for him to be in this prison and he said, Oh, you didn’t recognize him? I said, No, no, no. He’s Christian Trevino. This Christian Trevino was involved in a crime in which he and his brother killed the mother and the father of the girlfriend of his brother with a baseball, how to say that? This baseball bat while they were sleeping. Because the sister planned this whole crime to kill her parents and it was dramatic, even that happened in Brazil many, many years ago and I was shocked to see, if I would see him on the street, I would never imagine that he was able to do something horrible like that.
Hayden 21:56
There was a similar program that the Global Jazz Department at Berklee was running and so around Christmas time, we went in and played a few sets of as a mix of jazz and Christmas songs that are distinctly at one point, we had almost everyone in the audience dancing and this was a Shattuck Prison, which is a high security. The audience is made up of dangerous criminals, or dangerous prisoners. But at one point, I think they were just so enthusiastic to have the music there, that they’re all dancing together and even like the prison guards were smiling and at one point, I looked up at the very back of the room, there was a guy in handcuffs had shackles on his feet, and two guards on either side of them, I guess he needed the extra attention and he was dancing harder than anyone else in the room. Yeah, is pretty special.
Norman 22:55
It’s amazing what music can do.
Hayden 22:57
Yeah, and actually, another situation like that, we ended up playing at a mental hospital as well, again, playing more like pop music. But we had this experience where we started the concert with everyone sitting still and there’s some people who weren’t able to sit still. So they just kind of like they’re walking circles and stuff. People were moving and even, like, interacting together and with some of the the doctors that were on staff there, were telling us after the show that there’s no amount of medication, there’s no medication out there that could have made them move like that, yeah, it just triggers something else in the in the brain and I love them, no to have an hour of being outside of their diseases, which really, really moved me.
Marcelo 23:52
That’s exactly how I felt with this very special project of the prisons, it’s amazing to see that. I always think about those people, even today, and we made a film about that a small documentary, in which the end of it is the footage of us going out of this prison and you see the road, the side of the road and the village passing by and things like that and I had the impression of being locked also out of the prison, and somehow, we can even feel locked, even if we are not prisoners in the into the sense being able to visit those people gave me the impression of some aspects of freedom in society being also somehow, all the ways of imprisoning people.
Norman 24:53
Are you still doing the program at all or was that just a one time program?
Marcelo 24:57
This was that one time problem that we did through the secretary of culture of the state of Sao Paulo and the Secretary of the prisoner statement in Sao Paulo. But through the process, it was quite difficult because we were filming, some prisons wouldn’t allow this to make some kind of footage, because they didn’t want us to film some aspects of the gilding of the prison, for example. So this was quite difficult not to the secretary of culture, but to the secretary of the prison administration. So it was not an easy project to put together and we did 10 prisons in the State of Sao Paulo.
Norman 25:48
Oh, really? It wasn’t just the one time it was 10. Wow.
Marcelo 25:51
10 prisons. It was a whole tour. But it was funny, because the second concert I gave was a women prison and the last one was a women prison as well and in the second concert, a girl came to me and she said, Oh, you’re going to perform also at the ballroom prison? I said, Yes. Why? Because I will be there. I’m going to be transferred there in six months time and if you’re going to play there in December, I will be there. She was our press attache. When we arrived in that prison, the people were so crazy because she talked about this concert into this new prison that we’re going to visit. So it was like a PR for me.
Norman 26:37
Oh, that’s great. I guess being as talented as you are, you’re a gifted performer. How do you continue to develop your artistry?
Marcelo 26:50
Well, it’s always a challenge to do the next step for me. Every day, I come back to the same piece that I’m playing for over many years. For example, I just finished yesterday, a series of documentaries about music that will be broadcasted by Art one TV in Brazil and each of the episodes is devoted to one composer. So for example, I did Bach, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin and I played pieces that I used to play since I was 20 years old and to come back to those pieces is incredible, because I woke up next morning, say, I got another idea for that Mozart sonata, I will change these, these, these and that. It’s like a no-ending process of music understanding and interpretation, that somehow makes each piece of music that is the same, seem completely different to me. When I revisit that every day is not liking going through the same thing all over again, because the music change, it changes in your mind when they re recorded some pieces that are recorded many years ago, the pieces, it’s like a human being you change it, it gets older, it goes into a maturity and sometimes it goes for worse, sometimes much better. So you never know what’s going to happen next. Like Julian Joseph said to me some time ago, he said, we need to improvise, because life is an improvisation.
Norman 28:44
Interesting. One of the things that I love about music is if you’re getting into a genre, and usually if I’m kind of liking a new genre, it’ll be very broad. It’ll be jazz. There’ll be classical, opera, or reggae anything. I’m very broad with my musical tastes. But when you open up that door, and then you start going deeper into it, and then you, like with jazz, all these different genres and then, let’s say you start listening to another form of music for a while, when you come back and revisit that genre, maybe it’s ska music or something. It’s like meeting an old friend again. It’s really cool. I love it. I guess I’m lucky because I love all sorts of music. I listened to all sorts of music and it might be one month I’ll be listening to one type. I might not get back to another type for a year. But when I do it’s just like finding more and more friends.
Marcelo 29:49
Yeah, music is like people. When you abandon general music, and then after a year, you come back again, you come back with the knowledge that you learned in another genre of music. So it’s a whole social project between you and the pieces of music that follow you through your entire life. It’s like, for example, I was thinking about those composers that I was talking about into this TV series, they became friends of mine, like my family and I visit and revisit again, those pieces, and everything changes when it comes back to them and it’s a collection of experiences to music that, make life much more interesting than to just cope with a dry kind of look at life.
Norman 30:46
I’ve got an interesting question for you. We usually ask our guests when they come onto the podcast if they have a quote, or if they have something they live by. Do you have a quote?
Marcelo 30:59
Yes, yes. My quote is, well, science says that the shortest way between two dots is a straight line. I don’t agree with that. I have another theory. I think music is imagination, pure imagination and I think imagination is the shortest way between this and our object of desire. That’s my quote.
Norman 31:37
I love it.
Norman 31:40
Hayden, I bet you’re just rolling back on your chair.
Hayden 31:45
No, definitely when you said that over, I was like, alright.
Norman 31:49
Wow.
Hayden 31:50
That’s a good one. I’m curious, like, how do you live that Marcelo?
Marcelo 31:55
Well, I think coming back to the radio stations, when I was a kid, being able to listen to a voice Moscow or in Tokyo, talking through those shortwave radio stations was like magic to me, like if, if a straight line between me and Tokyo would cross the entire earth and goes directly there. So it’s good to listen to what they’re saying. So music is exactly that. Think about for example, Stravinsky. He left Europe running from the Second World War, ended up in Los Angeles and he was with economical difficulties and he decided to write the Tango. But he has never been to Buenos Aires. But he wrote this amazing Tango, very Stravinsky, Tango, of course and he was able to capture so many aspects of the Tango never been able to visit Buenos Aires before. For example, if you take Claire de Lune by Debussy, the very famous tunes. It has a lot of Japanese elements in that piece and he was very much attached by Japanese culture. Also, because in his studio, he had a sort of painting a Japanese dramatic painting in his studio. He also wrote Pagodes, which is a very Japanese piece by the Debussy. But he has never been in Japan in his life. But he was able to imagine that. When you listen to Pagodes by the Debussy, there are some elements of that piece that if you close your eyes, you see those lights in Nagoya, or Hamamatsucho for example, with the geishas walking around. It is amazing how that music can transport you to a Japanese atmosphere universe. So that’s what I think about music. I think it is the fastest way we can draw these direct lines wherever we want if we transform that thought we have a doubt about that place into music.
Norman 34:38
Oh, that was gonna go on my wall. No, I really like it. I didn’t see the quote, I wasn’t anticipating anything like that. So yeah, nice refreshing and like I said, you got a place on my wall for that one. Love it. So now I want to target something different and I don’t know if we say hurdle, obstacle or failure. But what has been the biggest hurdle that you’ve had to overcome to become successful?
Marcelo 35:12
Something that was very traditional to perform in life, which is something that I don’t like at all, are international piano competitions. That became something so common in our lives, when a musician was 18 years old, they go into this international competitions trying to win an international competition, if you win, you receive the prize and begin to play and it puts you in a platform of visibility the to begin an international career, which is the ideal world of a performer in classical music. So I had that in mind that I was going to be forced to do that to be able to make my way into music in other countries outside of Brazil. But I never liked that, because I don’t think music should be put in that place. I think music is not, I was also a jury in international competitions. So I was on the other side as well and I didn’t enjoy that very much. Because to put 20 people playing the same piece of music in an entire day of auditioning. The jury gets completely fed up with the music that is repeating itself all the time and different people of course, have different ways of expressing themselves. So I think an ideal Piano Competition would need to be completely different than what it is and I say that because I made my first international competition in Italy. It was called Concorso Internazionale Musica Traducteur, in the north of Italy, I went there, and I won the first prize and I was so happy of course, because I said, now I’m going to be free of it. I’m never going to a competition anymore. I won one and I don’t need anything extra from that. So I got some concerts. The price I got a piano. Part of the award was a piano as well, that I was supposed to sell in Italy, it was a nightmare and then I decided to go and do other competitions in other countries as well and that was horrible, because I’d never want to do the competition anymore. I won the first one I did, and then never got a prize in the order competitions I did. I was very nervous trying to compete with myself and got into that competition zone of psychological insecurity that was not practical to my musical life. So that was something that I learned through those years. I think maybe during three years when I was 25 years old, until I was 28 years old. I was doing those international piano competitions. I made something like five international piano competitions. I won the first. I lost the other four and I was very down because I was not able to win anymore like an athlete and I went to London and I met the granddaughter of Gustav Mahler and she introduced me to the daughter of Gustav Mahler and the mother, who used to live in Los Angeles and London and she had a house in London and I was there to meet people to play to make our audition with orchestras and those two ladies, the daughter of Gustav Mahler and the granddaughter, they liked me and they like it. They enjoyed my music and they said Marcelo, Marina, the granddaughter said, My mother is going to be in Los Angeles for the next four months and you can stay in her house alone with a piano practice for your concerts. You don’t need to rent a house. So they offered me Gustav Mahler daughter’s house, which is very special and I was very honored to be able to practicing that piano for some time and after that after some months, Anna, the daughter of Mahler, died and I was invited by Marina, Gustav Mahler’s granddaughter to play a concert in memory of her mother.
Marcelo 40:10
Gustav Mahler’s daughter at the Salzburg festival and the opening of the Salzburg Festival, which was the opening concert at that very, very important Classical Music Festival, which shocked me. There was no Brazilian pianist never played that in that festival, because it’s a festival that the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra is the host orchestra of the festival, the director of the the Salzburg Festival that year it was the year before the last I think before he died, that he was the director, the artistic director of the festival. So when I played that concert, in memory of Anna Mahler, I played in front of the most important musicians of the world, Alfred Brendel, and all the managers, and music lovers and things, when I prepare myself to death concert, I prepare myself with a completely different mentality than the mentality of making the preparation of those competitions. So what I learned through those failures of those competitions that I didn’t win, of course, you’re not obliged to win every competition in winter. But the preparation was something that I never did that anymore in my life. I learned through that failure, how to prepare myself in a musical way, not following the paths of other musicians, not comparing myself with other people, then following my DNA in music, which is something that I believe, is the best way of following a career devoted to music. I think, if you want to make a career in music, if you go for the competition or for the fame, you are in trouble. You need to be really in love with music and your day by day in music needs to be what drives your career to the future, not a strategic career success and things like that, it needs to be the interest and the love of music that needs to drive you into that.
Norman 42:41
They say that in business too. That if you’re going into business, for the money, if that’s the driving force, then a lot of the time that’s an issue. The people that go into it with a passion, and for the love of what they’re doing, the money will come.
Marcelo 43:00
Yeah, I believe that so, too.
Norman 43:03
Yeah. Okay, well, I think we’re winding down here, we’re hitting almost two hours. Marcelo, at the end of every podcast, we always ask our guests if they know a guy.
Marcelo 43:17
Well, I know many guys, but I have a very special suggestion to you. I know a guy called Julian Joseph, who is this wonderful jazz pianist that taught me how to play jazz and this was a very important thing in my life, and he’s a very, very nice guy. He has a BBC radio program every week Jazz with Julian Joseph and he is the founder of the Julian Joseph Jazz Academy in London, which is an academy that is amazing that I visit every Saturday when I am in London, to train with the young students a little bit of jazz. So I think Julian Joseph is the right guy for you.
Norman 44:06
I would love that. I can’t wait to interview him and get his take on the fight.
Marcelo 44:15
It’s going to be wonderful. Yeah, it’s going to be his take here.
Norman 44:20
I was talking about your fight with him. I was gonna get his story. It sounds fantastic talking to musicians, we talk to a lot of interesting people, but I just love it when I get to talk to musicians because my passion, believe it or not, Hayden is gonna fall off his chair, but I love music and it’s just something I know, I’ve never been a musician. But I love music. So being able to talk to people and to hear what got them going into it. Some of their struggles or their passions, yeah, I love interviewing people like yourself, just accomplished musicians and how they got where they are.
Marcelo 45:07
Yeah, but it was wonderful to talk with you both about that because you make me feel completely at home and like, I think I exposed things that are very intimate to me that would just be possible because I felt among friends talking with you. Thank you very, very much.
Norman 45:27
Well, you are among friends and I hope we can meet you one day.
Hayden 45:34
Thanks for listening guys and gals. In our next episode, we have an interview with Guy Constantini. Guy is the Vice President of Global Interactive Marketing for Skydance Media. He’s worked on some of the largest games that have been put out today and is heavily involved in gaming technology. During the interview, we touch on a ton of facts on the gaming industry that both my dad and I had never even conceived of before. So I’m certain you’ll learn something new from that one. That’s enough for me and I’ll see you next time.
