We were lucky to catch up with Christian Bruni recently and have shared our conversation below.
Christian, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
Music has been fundamental to me since I was a child. There has always been music in the house: from classical to rock. This definitely fuelled and helped me in my musical growth.
I remember it very well, like if it was yesterday. At the age of 6, thanks to a friend of the family, I saw and played a drum set for the first time in my life. From there I realized that I was strongly attracted to that wonderful instrument. I couldn’t do without it.
But because of noise and space concerns we didn’t have the possibility to buy a drum kit for me. So at the age of 7 I started studying the piano. But I never gave up on the idea of being able to play the drums too, so in 2004 when we moved to a bigger house, I decided it was time to take some drum lessons.
From then I continued to study and practice, thanks to the drum masters Davide Ragazzoni and Sandro Fusati.
In 2010 I took my first steps into the world of music through several concerts with different bands from Venice (Italy), and started teaching drums to some students. From there I understood that this strong passion could become a concrete thing. From then on I never stopped, I continued to study and specialize more and more.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
About Me
My name is Christian Bruni. I’m a professional drummer and drum teacher from Venice (Italy).
I specialize in Pop Rock Music. I graduated with a B.A. degree in Music Performance – Drums at the Music Academy of Bologna in the 2016/17 academic year.
In July 2018, I became a certified first level professional “Drum Educator” at Franco Rossi’s Modern Music Academy.
I started teaching drums in 2010 and have taught in various schools both in Italy (Venice, Treviso, Padua) and Hungary (Budapest), thus accumulating many years of experience.
But why also Budapest? In August 2019 I moved to the Hungarian capital for love and to progress my career as a musician. So I had to recreate my own spin as both a drum teacher and a drummer.
From there, I started giving lessons online as well as in person.
With the help of the internet I was able to reach many more people from all over the world.
From 2020, I also began teaching online Drum lessons on Lessonface.com, and in 2021, I started working as a session musician on Fiverr.com. My latest works include the drum tracks recorded for the full-length album “Fly Away “of Swiss singer-songwriter Alex Wellkers.
In 2020 during Covid-19 I formed the “Virtual Band,” a Queen tribute band. Our Youtube videos were praised by Brian May himself, the legendary guitarist and founder of Queen. Being a huge Queen fan, receiving compliments from Brian May was one of the nicest things I have ever received in my musical career.
In 2022, I started teaching drums at the International Drum School in Budapest. To expand our community, we organized group lessons, recitals, jam sessions, masterclasses and drum camps for our students.
Currently, I am working as a studio drummer for the Italian alternative-rock band Rolling Carpets, who are in the process of releasing their first full-length album “Eterno”, and I am a member of the Hungarian country and rockabilly band A Nyughatatlan with a nice & rich calendar of concerts.
In July 2023, I participated like a percussionist at the 2023 World Athletics
Championships in Budapest. It was definitely one of the best musical experiences I’ve ever had, being able to play in front of the whole world.
I participated in four events of the Rockin’ 1000 that are candidates for the Guiness World Record, playing with the greatest Rock cover band ever, directed by Marco Sabiu e Giuseppe Vessicchio:
– the Rockin’ 1000 – Calling the Foo Fighters, 2015
– the Rockin’ 1000 – That’s live @ Cesena 2016
– the Rockin’ 1000 – Summer Camp” in 2017
– the Rockin’ 1000 – That’s Live @ Firenze 2018.
I also helped several of my students to take part in these amazing events.
Creative Works
Beyond drum lessons, concerts and recording sessions, I’m a big fan of drum transcriptions. I love transcribing anything I hear that I find interesting and then playing it. But I also enjoy helping those who don’t have the skills to do it, and want to learn to play a song or simply a drum part. So in the summer of 2023 I officially created the drum transcription service on both my website and the freelance platform Fiverr.com.
Another very interesting service that I recently created is the personalized drum lesson. This allows me to create specific lessons for anyone who wants to learn the drum part of any song or just a specific technique.
This service is incredibly valuable for those that live in a different country and/or a different time zone. Because they receive a recorded video lesson which they can study and rewatch whenever they want to.
Mission like drum educator
My mission is to transmit my passion & skill about drums and music to everyone who is interested. I would like to show how important is learning an instrument and improving skills while having fun. I’d like to help everyone who wants to play this wonderful instrument in getting better with the drums and broaden their horizons. I also help in preparing drummers for stage performance.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
Certainly the fact that I am lucky to have the opportunity to learn something new every day. To experiment with what I have studied or learned from experiences. Despite the various difficulties that can be found, I am always growing. All of this motivates me to improve myself both as a musician and as an educator, but most importantly: as a person. Without creativity I would feel like a fish out of water, in which case I certainly couldn’t do everything I love within music.
I think creativity is fundamentally important for anyone, regardless of how passionate they are about something. But clearly this must be fuelled by the experiences a person may have during his or her life.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
In 2020 during the lockdown, unfortunately my work situation was not going very well. I had just moved to Budapest, and I had just started building my business as a drum educator and as a musician. But unfortunately with the catastrophic situation of the pandemic, things were not going well.
I had to reinvent my job. But how?
Having had a lot of free time, I started working on my website, thus advertising online lessons/recording sessions and everything that could expand my business.
I admit that it wasn’t easy, and very often I lost motivation. But despite everything, I didn’t give up. On the contrary, I always tried to find the reason to continue my musical activity through various collaborations born almost by chance with the help of the internet. For example the experience with the legendary guitarist of Queen, Brian May. I had the opportunity to meet other formidable musicians and create something truly unique and wonderful.
I am on the opinion that we must always look at the positive side of things because otherwise we will always be stuck and lost. This certainly applies to any aspect of life.
I definitely have to thank my girlfriend a lot, soon my wife, my family, my friends. But first and foremost, Music, which has given me so many awesome experiences that I will carry with me for the rest of my life.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.christianbrunidrummer.com
- Instagram: @christianbruni_drummer
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/ChristianBruniDrummer
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/@ChristianBruniDrummer
Image Credits
Lajos Somogyi (Bands Through The Lens), Peter Hari Harsanyi