We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Anna Elizabeth Anita Mayorga Voitsekhovskaia. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Anna Elizabeth Anita below.

Anna Elizabeth Anita, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

I am half Colombian, and half Russian. However, most of my life I´ve spent in Europe studying and improving myself as a pianist and as a musician. My professional musical education is based on an academic European system (mostly Russian) that could be described as one of the best educational systems in the arts. I am blessed to had this possibility of an enrichment through several different cultures, taking lessons from great maestros, and passing through the best universities in the world. However, my heart was always in the other part of the world, in Colombia where I was born in 1991. Throughout my life, I´ve visited my motherland almost every year, giving each time a recital in my hometown, Villavicencio.
However, for some years I had to stop those inspiring visits since my life sent me to South Korea to purchase my master’s degree. Following that came the pandemic, which found me in Moscow. There I was blocked for some other years.
Regardless of where I was, and what was I doing, I always felt a necessity to return to My Colombia. I felt that I had so many things to share, and it was there that my experiences and skills should be transferred.
Like many people all over the world, the pandemic gave me a new way of communication and sharing tools. I have started my YouTube Channel. Its purpose is to create a new platform of cultural sharing for the Spanish-speaking audience. Besides my piano interpretations, I started the conversation about music and art inviting people to see its beauty and magic. I find that many of the musical teachers and even professors lack inspiration when they are referring to the arts. Today is very difficult to attract people’s attention to such ephemeral and almost spiritual topics as music and art. Therefore, I started the search for the necessary tools to engage as many people as I could with those topics. My YouTube channel started to teach me about leadership in arts, and what a cultural manager could be and mean. It was created with a great great support of a friend of mine, Camila Alvarez, who was the first editor of the audio-visual material of the videos.
Together with the start of my YouTube channel, I started growing the idea of creating an organization capable of being a stable support of cultural development all around Colombia. Finally, in October 2022 together with Camila Alvarez was founded the Cultural Foundation Anita May.
Our targets are:
– To Bring the general public closer to art and music, enhance their general knowledge of the subject, and ignite their interest in the cultural world.
– To Identify potential talents within the country and strengthen their knowledge and professional musical interests.

For me, the idea of the foundation and its development became my life journey. It’s inspiring, sometimes frustrating but the result is worth each heavy step.

Anna Elizabeth Anita, 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 started studying the art of piano playing when I was 3 years old. Of course, it was not a conscious decision. My mother was a musician, she played the piano and the violin, and my grandmother also had some musical training so far. I was a happy little girl growing up in a little city called Villavicencio, the capital of the META department in Colombia. The piano technique was something quite natural for me. My professional training as a pianist and musician started later when I was 6 years old in Moscow. And it continued for around 20 years more. The system of professional musical education in Russia is very much developed and could be considered one of the best in the world. From an early age, you can begin a really serious journey into the musical world. Actually, after the. professional school people really can play almost any piece, even the most difficult ones. Of course, in some ways, you are not still ready for that, since your emotional maturity is something you may forget about. This world for professional musicians isn’t easy at all. From the very beginning, you are living in constant competition with yourself and others. No time for doubts, no time for plays. In summary, I was in some way all alone with my piano during most of my years. I had the blessing of being exposed to many different gratifying experiences and could study the best academic practices. And after years of traveling and gathering information, I felt the necessity to share my knowledge with others and try to improve the place I love with all my heart, my Colombia.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

I think that arts have magnificent powers to change our emotional state. Today one of the biggest problems in society is the absence of knowledge on how to control our emotions, how to get through traumas, and how to find ourselves in this intense, cruel, and difficult world. Music and arts are the meditations that humanity forgot about. And when I see how my interpretations affect the public, creating an intimate catharsis, I feel very much secure about what I am doing.

But another power is that I can change lives when giving opportunities to study music for real. One of the goals my Foundation has is to give scholarships and support to young artists, who are not able to do it themselves.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Give more opportunities to talented people. Attract more people to the world of the arts. Explain and engage them. Bring culture to the most farther parts of Colombia.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.anitamay.art/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/anitamaymusic
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/anitamay