Mi experiencia al momento de recibir la beca de BMI fue algo completamente inesperado. Ya había perdido un poco las esperanzas en seguir estudiando en Berklee. De pronto aplique a una beca de BMI por medio del maestro Oscar Stagnaro (quien es la persona que me ha ayudado desde que inicie Berklee en Spring 2013) obteniendo buenos resultados. Obtuve una beca de $5000 dólares gracias a mi trabajo musical en la categoría Composición Jazz.
Author: Pablo Yescas (Page 1 of 5)
“Bring the sky beneath your feet and listen to celestial music everywhere,” Rumi once said. In his discourse on genetics and the holistic lifestyle at the Berklee Performance Center on December 6th, Deepak Chopra quoted Rumi many a time when brilliantly relaying the intertwined nature of music and meditation with the very DNA make-up of our bodies. As a genetic neuroscience student outside of Berklee and a part of the beautiful Berklee Indian Ensemble led by Annette Philip, I felt Dr. Chopra painted a precise picture of who we really are as individuals: luminous stardust beings constantly emanating energy. Now imagine if we all embodied this very fact of our truest nature; how would we treat one another differently? How would we treat ourselves differently? But more importantly, what type of things would we surround ourselves with? These are questions that the Indian Ensemble family ponders, as well, and I think it’s this introspective approach that allows us to infuse music with love.
In February of 2015, I set out with one of my jazz composition classmates Connor Steck, to schedule a tour of Japan. The idea came to me after I was hosting a “crowded” jam session at my place, where we had maybe six horn players, four guitarists, a bassist, three drummers, and two pianists. I had just finished touring from San Diego, CA to Seattle, WA, and was looking for my next big trip, confident in my managing abilities. After a short agreement, we set the dates for July 15th – August 1st, and decided to start putting the final band together.
In the following blog I will describe my experience touring this summer with the JM Jazz Orchestra in Europe. The JM band is an international big band featuring 18 selected musicians from 14 countries.
We first met for a week of rehearsals at Groznjan-Croatia (a beautiful small village on the top of a mountain). The rehearsals were great, everyone sight reading and playing was inspiring, it was a real pleasure to get to know so many wonderful musicians from different parts of the world and to meet and work with the great trombone player and an inspiring person – Luis Bonilla – as our conductor.
Image by Carlos Ballester 2014
Rhythm, our hearts – the first sound we hear in the womb. This pulsation is the life force that has been with us since the beginning. The drum was the first instrument created outside of our bodies, (other than the singing voice). Banging on a hyde-skinned drum seems like a natural, primitive act of necessity.
I’ve always wanted to sing and write, strum chords on a guitar and give poetry a voice. Performing and singing on a stage was something that came naturally to me, but after putting my heart deep into my first album, Bare Bones, in 2012, I still felt like there was a driving force that was missing.
