Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Alicia Cerrada . We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Alicia, thanks for joining us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?
I started playing piano at the age of six, and from that moment, music was always around my life. My first teacher taught me how to love music, expression, music by telling a “story” with my playing, making different characters to create special atmospheres, and feeling the music from a very early age. Afterwards, I had teachers during my teenage years who focused more on the technical aspects of playing piano and interpretation. Apart from that, I was lucky to study in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, at Codarts University of Arts, which was full of people from all around the world and playing a wide variety of instruments and genres from all continents.
My curiosity pulled me to listen to a lot of music styles, even though, until I was twenty two, I was mostly focused in classical music playing and performing, and that gave me a lot of artistic experiences during my university years.
As the years passed, I had a more consistent idea of the kind of pianist I wanted to be. In the last few years, I felt if I would have used my study years in learning also skills about composition and music production, my steps afterwards would have been a little bit easier. Also, the fact of being a woman: me and more women, we still feel everything is three times harder in the professional field, as in many other fields.
I love playing classical music, I breathe with this music, but it’s not the only love I have; with time, I realized composing, arranging and producing were incredible skills to learn. I would love to have had the possibility of being more creative from an earlier age.
In music and creation, the most essential skills you need is having a lot of discipline and motivation. Somehow, I feel my instrument as a long relationship where I had different periods and I grew with it. Also, learning music theory, piano technique, how to perform in your unique and original way and learning different ways to live working as a creative/musician. Being open minded is also an important skill for creation.
Alicia, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I am a curious, live loving and usually positive person, who loves working and has motivation to work in herself and in music/art related things. I also love helping people improve their life quality and I know that music can be therapeutic, so I enjoy teaching in a healing way when I teach.
I don’t like competitions where people are judging you from the mistakes you make more than from the fact of expressing and making music to share. I love experimenting and learning new things, and if I would have to describe myself and my work, I would think that first of all, I became and am a professional pianist with twenty years of performing as a soloist and with different ensembles and musicians.
My areas of specialization are classical music, tango music, pop music and free improvisation. Another part of myself is me as a composer and arranger; that became later than playing piano. I work with producers creating songs, composing acoustic songs to be performed live, accompanying singers or instrumentalists, playing as a soloist, with bands and ensembles in projects or productions, and finally I do teaching and mentoring for artists.
I don’t have a big knowledge about jazz improvisation and the language of jazz, and that fact sets me apart from developing some projects that I would be interested in doing. But it is a matter of time that I develop solutions and do these projects!
My brand and my style of being is being honest to myself and following the artistic path I feel and not what other people think would be the “best” for me. It is always good to listen to opinions, but it is yourself who decides which path they want to follow.
People who inspire me nowadays are: Jacob Collier, Hania Rani, Ludovico Einaudi, Martha Argerich, Ara Malikian, Silvia Pérez Cruz, among others.
My mission is to connect music with many countries of the world, to forget through music about nationalities and be all equal, and my dream would be that people stop fighting and creating wars and take care of the world to look for solutions to have a healthy, sustainable world. It can be an utopian approach, but my dream will remain this one!
With social media nowadays people can share ideas and projects with a lot of human beings, that makes being connected to different countries a bit easier.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
First of all, I think every country has their own approach and mentality about artists and music. There are countries who give more importance to the music industry and support DIY artists more than other countries. One of the reasons are the political decisions in the cultural aspects, the importance they give in innovation and creation of art.
I found it very important to instill a vision in young children about art and culture from an early age, knowing the power, the benefits and the importance of having artists and creators that represent how society and the world are. In some countries being a musician/artist is a very honorable profession and career and in others is almost the opposite, it is not recognized as a “decent” profession. Everything is in the education that the society receives.
I think there should be a global society of musicians/artists fighting for the improvement of their rights as artists or musicians. Being more connected as a global creative world would give us more strength and connection to share ideas, collaborations and increase the importance of art and music by independent artists in society.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
When I finished my Bachelor’s in The Netherlands, I was tired of having some mentors and music instructors in my study years who, for years, were not very much encouraging in improving myself as an artist and performer, and they were looking for perfection and competition. I was feeling as a product. That was not the life I wanted; I felt guilty for some time because I felt I had to leave that world, and I loved classical music so much that was a hard decision. Inside me, I knew that I didn’t want to have a life where there is so much criticism, and the expression and freedom of creating was not there.
It was very hard for me to leave the classical world (although nowadays I am again playing some classical music), I had to really listen to my heart about what I really wanted and needed, and also healing from so many years of emotional abuse while learning classical piano.
It was like doing a sport at a very high level, having to be always mentally and physically ready, competing with other people, listening to comments about your playing that made me be more in a box of rules than outside the box of creation.
When I was twenty two I took another path of learning tango music with amazing teachers and human beings, the vibe in that world was very different, I started to create and to be more honest to myself in what music and the way of playing or composing I wanted to do.
Music and art is a beautiful but hard profession, we work everyday thinking about our artistic ideas, vision, dreams, projects, building a career, and so on, plus maintaining a good mental and physical shape and balance between our familiar and personal life.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.aliciacerrada.com
- Instagram: aliciacerrada_pianist
- Facebook: Alicia Cerrada – Pianist
- Linkedin: Alicia Cerrada
- Youtube: Alicia Cerrada
Image Credits
Photo 1: solo pianist event in a wedding (Spain). Photo 2: studio recording with Cheiron Themistocles (Los Ángeles). Photo3: NAMM show 2023 (Anaheim). Photo 4: tango performance “Galleguita quintet” (Rotterdam, The Netherlands). Clarinet: Jean Baptiste Wallez (France), Bandoneon: Anna Choi (South Korea), Guitar: Miguel Navarro Reyes (Chile) and viola: Óscar Quiñones (Mexico). Photo 5: Grachtenfestival 2022 (Amsterdam, The Netherlands). Singer: Isabel Pronk (The Netherlands), Cello: Laurance Gaudreau (Canada), Violin: Valentine Blange (The Netherlands). Photo 6: Humberto Gática – producer. (Beverly Hills, Los Angeles). Photo 7: Alicia Cerrada (Rotterdam, The Netherlands). Photo 8: Alicia Cerrada (Rotterdam, The Netherlands).