Marina Albero: A Nomad of Sound
An Italian naval officer Ferdinand Magellan sailed around the globe in the early 16th century, as a traveler of the seven seas. Florentine astronomer Galileo Galilei discovered the celestial bodies canvassing the Earth's solar system, the Milky Way, in the early 17th century, known to be a traveler of the stars. Swiss apothecary Albrecht Höpfner invented various shades of blue in the late 18th century, noted as a traveler of colors. Polish-French chemist Marie Curie discovered radium in the early 20th century, being a traveler of energy waves.
In the vane of such notable explorers, Barcelona-born pianist Marina Albero has made discoveries of her own in the early 21st century. Creating new melodic formations using string and keyboard instruments. The title of her 2024 release A Nomad of Sound reflects her explorative nature. For the recording, she traveled from her home in Seattle, Washington, which she resettled to in 2014, and found inspiration in the musical environment of New Orleans, Louisiana.
She recollects, "New Orleans was always in my bucket list of musical places that I wanted to visit or even more than that, that I actually wanted to live in. To me the best way of keeping my curiosity and my learning skills alive is through life experiences."
"The impact that New Orleans has made in my music and in my life," she asserts, "is mostly the social part of it. By that I mean that music, it’s important in their society, in their culture. It plays a role in their daily life. It’s not only a thing that happens from 5 to 7 but it’s something that unexpectedly people will start expressing themselves with music on the streets."
She elaborates, "They dance and they sing along and that is something that really moves me, that makes me smile and brings to my craft a lot of sense and that sometimes is harder to find in places where music happens in a more programmed fashion."
Regarding the recording, Albero claims, "When I booked the recording studios in New Orleans, I still didn’t know who was going to be in the record."
She recounts, "I met Yusa and Amina (Scott) hanging out in the scene, in different concerts where they were playing or they would see me play, and then come to me and just tell me how much they enjoyed my music and would ask me, 'where do you come from?', 'Are you living here'."
Bass player Amina Scott and Cuban multi-instrumentalist Yusa made a lasting impression on Marina Albero. She postulates, "Their curiosity and their engagement was very real. It was easy to connect with each other, thanks to the music."
"Yusa and I became really close friends," she discloses, "because of all the connections we have with Cuba and because we both speak Spanish. We have so many things in common that we just became best friends. I feel really honored to have her in my life, both as a musician and as a very close friend, I have such a big admiration for her and her work."
She cites, "When Amina Scott knew that I was going to record a few tracks, she promptly expressed how she wanted to be part of it and that was really flattering as I secretly was wishing to bring her in to the mix but didn’t know how to approach her."
Rounding out her band on the recording is drummer Pedro Segundo, which she provides, "Pedro Segundo was a connection that came from my brother Bori Albero, who is an amazing bass player in Spain. They met in Paris and together they sent me a voice message saying, 'hey Marina my friend Pedro is coming to New Orleans, and you should meet guys. You will hit it off,' and that’s what we did."
She remembers, "We met in New Orleans a few weeks later and when I saw him playing, I really wanted to make music with him so I asked him to be in my album. He is so loving, it felt like we were Family instantly."
Speaking of family, Albero also recruited her daughter Serena to contribute vocals in English, Spanish, and Catalan on the recording. She sums up about her experience in New Orleans, "There is an openness in New Orleans about the new comers and towards the musicians passing by. There, they let you seat in almost on any stage when you just tell them 'I’m a musician,' even when they don’t know you."
One of the most stirring tracks on the recording "The Old Song," will elicit emotive sensations in the listener with its smoldering atmosphere. She explains, "Old song is a composition that came to me in a very streamed way. Sometimes it happens to me, a melody would just start sounding in my head and it plays out from top to finish effortlessly. That’s why I say about 'Old Song' that it feels like I’m borrowing it from some old place."
"The arrangement," she surmises, "it’s something I’ve been working on for the last couple years with my Seattle band. I do enjoy a lot the rhythmic modulations in it. It also has a reminiscence of some blues and at the same time I feel that the melody seems to evoke a very old chant that I can’t even place."
Relocating to Seattle, Washington in 2014 has affected Albero profoundly. She muses, "Seattle was a perfect place for me when I moved to the US because I was looking for a perfect balance between family living, nature and culture."
"The music scene," she observes, "it’s very rich and very talented so that I found lots of inspiration in my musicians peers. It also provided me with a scene that is not so competitive, but much more based on community. I also felt very welcomed by the audience, the media and the educators, who showed a big interest on my approach as a mentor and my musical background."
"Since I was a little girl," she recalls, "I had the opportunity of meeting and playing with musicians from all over the world, and it felt really good realizing that music it’s truly a universal language, that there are no borders and no differences of age, gender or background when you play music with others and that’s why I feel like I need to keep going different places where the music is strong and really rooted in rhythm and tradition. That makes me keep growing as a musician and as a composer."
It is a journey of self-exploration that Marina Albero embarked on as a little girl. She shares about her upbringing, "I started performing as a little girl in my family band with my mom and my dad, and the first thing I remember it’s feeling very attracted to the keyboards percussion instruments such as xylophone and then I transitioned to piano because we had one at home and my mom was taking lessons and I was waiting in the classroom with her and at some point, she decided that I was learning more than her seated, listening, and that I should take the lessons instead of her."
"My very first influences," she prides, "are for sure my mom and my dad. My father was a singer-songwriter and a really creative person creating different shows all the time while my mom was more into wind instruments. She came from a classical training on clarinet and she was my first teacher of solfège and music in general."
"From there," she stipulates, "I felt inspired by all the music that they were listening at home and in the van while we were touring or traveling."
She describes, "There was a mix between Flamenco and jazz mostly and also a lot of different world music. At that point, I just remember that everything felt natural to me. I could listen and I could’ve played along with anything or at least that’s how I felt."
"Definitely, Flamenco and jazz," she affirms, "felt very interesting and attractive to me. Also, the classical piano, works by Chopin and Debussy that my mom and my dad would play on the turntable."
"Classical piano also felt very inspiring," she maintains, "although I had the certainty that it wasn’t made for me but still, I was able to enjoy the complexity and the beautiful knowledge of the instrument that this kind of composers display."
"I like to say that on hammered Dulcimer," she broaches about the trapezoidal shaped string instrument, "I make no mistakes because nobody told me what was right and what was wrong. It's tuning is not chromatic so the way I approach the composition and even the transcriptions that I’ve done over the years are based on modal music."
She proposes, "I also feel that my piano instruction and my percussion and drums studies are brought together when I play hammered Dulcimer and I get to express the rhythmic complexity with the simpler harmonies as its layout has a much more limited set of notes than the piano, which also provides me with a very creative standpoint because I thrive on this kind of limitations and makes me find other ways of expressing in music."
Her explorative nature to learn various keyboard instruments inspired her to write her own music, as she retraces her steps into composing. "I remember composing some songs for my brother and then my little sister when I was around 7 years old. I would do it on guitar more like a song, very simple things but then I also remember improvising a lot."
She ascertains, "Just sitting down on the piano and letting it flow so in a way, to me composing and improvising were pretty much the same process, and I experienced a very freeing feeling on creating my own music since the very beginning."
"I would like to think that at this point in my life and career," she considers, "I’m truly able to express myself in music. I like to tell to my students that they just need to find their own voice and tell their own story. That’s how you can connect with other people’s feelings, when your story is real, sincere and not pretentious. Don’t try, just be."
Perhaps living in the moment is Marina Albero's favorite way to spend her days whether it's making music or being away from her music. "I am quite a hedonist," she admits when discussing some of her favorite pastime activities, "so, anything that has to do with good food, good conversation, laughter and in general, sharing experiences with others makes me feel very fulfilled."
"I love dancing so much," she confesses, "that sometimes I think I like it more than playing music. I also love just walking in nature observing the animals, the plants and the harmony they live in. I also love being around children and young adults because they remind me how important it is keeping ourselves curious and humble in order to learn and evolve as humans."
An explorer of musical environments, a traveler of melodic formations, a nomad of sound, Marina Albero is in the company of notable discoverers marked throughout the centuries. Like those before her, she has made lasting friendships along her journey, many immortalized in her compositions.
Find more information about Marina Albero by visiting:
https://www.marinaalbero.net/
Thank you to Mr. Zachary Swanson from Cross Over Media for permission to use the photos in the article
www.crossovermedia.net
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