Vigo, Jul 22 (EFE).- ‘Atlántida’ is the first album by pianist Sergio de Miguel -‘Prodigy’ award from the Latin Grammy Cultural Foundation in 2019-, a musical ocean that he navigates with the combination of styles from his native Galicia, the Celtic influence, flamenco, African currents, those of Brazil and Cuba and those he explored at the University of Berklee (Boston, USA), where he studied thanks to the scholarship awarded to him by Glo ria and Emilio Estefan.
The album with which he launches his career has been a master. He has taken care of everything. “As a musician, I literally thought that the most difficult thing is music, but then I realized that no, that it is the first step of many,” he explains in an interview with EFE at the Fortaleza del Castro de Vigo, from where you can see the city that saw him born and grow until the ‘Prodigy’ -with an estimated value of 200,000 euros- took him to the United States.
“It is not the economic value but the personal and professional value, being able to go to a university like Berklee. It is a unique opportunity, a gigantic privilege. There is one scholarship a year. Seven since 2016, ”she recalls.
He assures that “there is always a point of luck” to win something like this, but specifies: “The differentiating point is personality. At that time I was super young and they may have seen me with a lot of initiative, I had very launched projects, although homemade. There were about 600 candidates, at least 150 with the same or more talent than me. A tad of luck yes there is ”.
On the way to the age of 22 -he does it in December-, he trained from the age of three in modern music and later in classical music, first at an academy in Vigo and, later, at the conservatory, before the recently concluded university tour. Now he is on vacation in Vigo, but in August he plays his first tour.
It was during the pandemic when he began to compose the songs that he will take to various Spanish cities: from Torremolinos (Málaga) on August 5, passing through Munilla (La Rioja), Gijón, A Coruña, Vigo, Pontevedra, Barcelona, Sant Sadurní d’Anoia (Barcelona) and, again, his hometown, where he will play a total of three times and will close the tour on the 29th.
“They all give me the same illusion, although there are places with a point like the Clarence Jazz Club in Torremolinos or the Jamboree Jazz Club in Barcelona,” he confesses. He went one by one probing the possibility of playing. Along the way, “many complications and uncertainty”, some fell because they did not answer their emails; others due to availability of dates.
In his repertoire there are Galician roots, but also flamenco and jazz. “I thought: ‘this can’t stay on my computer’, and I decided to plan the recording of an album without a sponsor or investor; everything has been out of my pocket”.
He estimated a budget of 4,000 euros and launched a fundraising campaign with rewards for sponsors. He reached the figure -he ended up exceeding it- with 5 days to go until the end of the available period.
“You press ‘play’ and it will surely be better than I imagined. It exceeds expectations and motivates me to continue with these projects”, he says proudly, but without hiding that his goal is to find a record company that supports him because “being independent is very complicated”.
“With the tour I have not had anyone to get me a concert. Apart from being a composer and producer, I am the ‘booking’ agent and the manager”, she warns.
In September 2022, he brought together musicians who were university classmates, recorded the 9 songs and “the real process” began. An odyssey, a master.
“The graphic design, the names of the songs, recording them, the scores, the arrangements… later, everything that has to do with editing, mixing, mastering or the design of the physical discs, the tour… You learn a lot of things. A concert is not the same as leading a project, even if it is small. It comes with a lot of responsibility,” he says.
To those who start out like him, very young, he would recommend that they “do what they like”, and he confesses what motivated him, “curiosity”, because “obligations in music take you back and that’s why many people leave it. If you force, he will never go well, ”he reflects.
His ‘playlist’, like his style, has everything: mainly classical and jazz, but also commercial, Latin, rock and soundtracks. “For us, the encyclopedia is listening and that’s what I try to do,” he says.
A “dream and objective” that he sets is to play with an entire orchestra and himself on the piano, but he also has another: to play in Alejandro Sanz’s band, which will perform next week in Vigo. “If he tells me to go up, I go directly. It is commercial music, but very rich, very good, the best there is, has been and will be in Latin pop, ”he concedes.
Carlos Alberto Fernandez