We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Juan Andrés Ospina a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Juan Andrés, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?

I have become so used to uncertainty that, although sometimes I have wondered what it would feel like to have a regular job, the thought of it never really lasts long enough for me to take it seriously. The adrenaline of the unknown, and the space that I have created in my life for random things to come up, would probably be very different in a context where I had to follow a strict schedule, expect a fixed payment, and perform specific regular tasks. I won’t say that at times I haven’t thought about the stability that a regular salary would bring, but deep down, I know that it would probably create more discomfort than comfort. So yes, I feel happy as an artist and love having space for unpredictable projects and random exciting things to come up!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I was raised in a very creative environment: my father sings and plays different instruments at a proficient level, and my mom is a practical genius able to fix all sorts of things with her hands, who also gave art lessons at home to kids. I started experimenting with music and creativity in all sorts of ways at a very young age – playing, singing, illustrating, making movies with my brother, composing funny songs. It was all curiosity and playfulness. Then I got into college and started studying music, and although it opened the doors to the beauty of practicing, music theory, meeting peers in the music field, etc., it also came with the straitjacket of the major I had to choose: all of a sudden, I was perceived as a classical composer (which then became jazz pianist, and then jazz composer).

Three semesters in Bogotá, a few years in Barcelona, and a couple more in Boston attending universities and local music schools, and then I was thrown back into the non-academic world. Since then, I have been reconnecting to that playful starting point (only that today I have tons of music tools I didn’t have back then), and now I am less worried about proving myself to be a specific thing (composer, arranger, pianist, vocalist, etc.) than finding creative and encouraging challenges and opportunities to experiment and play.

I have produced several albums where I also wrote all the arrangements and recorded the piano. In 2018 I released an album featuring several big band pieces I wrote throughout the years, and which I funded through a very fun and creative Kickstarter campaign. Last year I had the opportunity to produce, arrange and record at home a fully vocal accompaniment for a song by Karol G where I recorded 32 tracks of me singing. I have a music and humour duo with my brother Nicolás for which we sing and play different instruments, and some of our songs have become viral on the web. I love creating short creative and musical videos to share on my social media; I teach vocal improvisation workshops and am a faculty current member at the vocal retreat “Circlesongs” led by Bobby McFerrin and Linda Goldstein.

I am proud of everything I have done, as it has all been an opportunity to explore myself within different contexts. It took a while for me to forgive myself for not being a true expert in any specific music field; today, I am at peace with that nature of mine, and I feel that those who know me and my work nowadays recognize me as someone who likes to dive into different creative worlds and explore that personal conductive thread within me… that is what they expect from me, and thus the opportunities that come up are usually aligned to that nature.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

For me, social media has given me the opportunity to experiment and share creative small projects that I do just for the sake of doing them and sharing them. And although I might be the opposite of what experts tend to recommend—staying hyper-focused on a specific style—at the end, it is my personal exploration that became the conductive thread of my online content. Instead of uploading only piano videos, or only vocal videos, or tutorials on specific things, I have allowed myself to enjoy the process of trying many different things. What is mandatory for me is to be true to myself: I must have fun, and I should always enjoy the process and learn from it. And although it might have been a longer path, nowadays those who follow my social media probably expect that from me: to surprise them, and to show them different angles of my creative journey.

When we are true to ourselves, before thinking about what the outside expects from us, we give others the opportunity to discover something new; on the other hand, many times we become obsessed with trying to become what we think the outside expects from us, and then we deprive others of finding our true creative spirit, and thus the possibility to be truly inspired by us.

I would suggest, let people discover your very personal creative journey through your social media, instead of worrying too much about covering what you read the social media’s needs are. It might take some time, but if it is fun for you from the beginning, it won’t be a painful process!

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

Nowadays, I feel very confident and bold saying this: my goal, and the driving force behind my creative journey, is to play and to have fun. I have come to realize that when I am truly enjoying the creative process, that is when I get to learn more, to inspire more people around me, and to create an impact on my surrounding environment. And although deep inside I have always aimed for that feeling, for many years I felt a lot of pressure in trying to prove myself to be a specific concept: a “good jazz pianist,” “an established composer,” “a versatile arranger.” If I let those concepts go, I free myself from the need of proving things to others, and that takes me back to the pure joy of exploring, creating, playing, and having fun. No one can take that away from me, and thus it becomes a solid column that goes beyond outside expectations. If I enjoy and have space to play, the outside wants to join and play too, and then fun things and projects happen.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.jaospina.com/en
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/juanospinamusic
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/juanospinamusic
• Twitter: https://www.x.com/juanospinamusic
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/juanospinamusic
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@juanospinamusic

Image Credits
@Lili Bonmatí, Stella K, Adrien H Tillmann, AHT, Josep Tomás, and Catalejo Producciones