LEARN

GABRIELA

MONTERO :

FROM

A DVOCACY
TO

ART ISTRY
photo by Shelly Mosman

A n Int er view wit h L u is S an ch ez

This interview was conducted in Spanish and translated and condensed by the author for clarity.

8 / PIANO MAGAZINE
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Born in Venezuela, Gabriela Montero has performed with many

of the world’s leading orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic,
Los Angeles Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Dresden
Philharmonic, Oslo Philharmonic, Gewanhausorchester Leipzig,
Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Atlanta Symphony, and
Vienna Philharmonic. As a recitalist, she has appeared at Carnegie Hall,
Wigmore Hall, the Kennedy Center, and many other important venues.
Her many awards include prizes at the Chopin Competition and
the International Beethoven Award. However, her work and impact are not
limited to the big stages of the world or the recording studio. A committed
human rights advocate, Ms. Montero was named an Honorary Consul
by Amnesty International in 2015, and the Human Rights Foundation
honored her with the Outstanding Work in the Field of Human Rights award
for her ongoing commitment to human rights advocacy in Venezuela.
I had the pleasure of speaking with Gabriela about her career path,
her advocacy, and her advice for aspiring musicians.

Spring Issue 2022 Vol 14 No 1 / 9

 LEARN
By the time I was eighteen
months old, I was already
playing all these melodies…
It was evidence that playing
the piano was my favorite
thing in the world and
that there was this natural
connection with it.
10 / PIANO MAGAZINE
LS: What were your earliest experiences with the piano?
GM: Well, I was so little that I don’t have any recollections,
but I’ve been told that I was just eight months old when my
mom went out to buy Christmas gifts for all the kids in the
family. She saw this little piano, and she said she would
give it to an older cousin. So, she shows up at home with
this little piano, shows it to my grandmother and said she
would give it to Morela. My grandmother, for some bizarre
reason, just fixated on the idea that I should have this little
piano. But I was just eight months old, and I was just a baby
in a crib! So, they argued a little bit about it. My mom said,
“She’s just a baby, what is she going to do with the piano?”
But my grandmother was a very stubborn woman, so the
piano ended up in my crib and it was my Christmas present.
My parents noticed from the very beginning that the first
thing I did was not to pound on the piano like babies do
because they don’t really have fine motor skills. I started
playing note by note with my second finger, which they
found peculiar. After that, they noticed that I would spend
hours at the piano trying to reproduce the songs that my
mom was singing to me at night to put me to sleep. By
the time I was eighteen months old, I was already playing
all these melodies, including the National Anthem of
Venezuela and lullabies. It was evidence that playing the
piano was my favorite thing in the world and that there
was this natural connection with it. So that’s how it started;
I was really, really little.
LS: What a fascinating story! When did you realize
performance was your calling?
GM: I think it’s kind of a given when you’re born with a very
natural ability. I felt very supported by my parents. I started
lessons when I was four with a wonderful pedagogue in
Caracas. However, the decision to perform is something
that is an ongoing question. Even if it’s so obvious that you
are born to do this, I think it’s a philosophical question about
life and about what it means to you at a given point in your
life and maybe it stops meaning the same thing later in life.
So, it’s not something fixed. I was performing since I was
five years old, gave my first concert with orchestra when I
was eight, did all the competitions and had a lot of success
with that. So, I always performed, but for me it’s been an
ongoing ambivalent kind of question, because it’s not just
who you are and what you were born to do, but what you
choose to dedicate your life to and the sacrifices that come
with that.
 LEARN

LS: So, as a young student, did you like to practice?
GM: No, I have always been very bad at it, because
to me, music is an extension of life, and I don’t like to
use the word practicing—but rather discovery. There’s
something very mechanical in the idea of practicing,
and for me, sitting at the piano should be a journey of
discovering yourself, the pieces, and who you are in
that moment as a performer—which may be different
from who you were the day before. To me the interesting
thing about music and being a musician has become so
much more about finding ways for the music to reveal
itself to me. Sometimes, people ask me, “Why do you
practice if you are already so good?” And I say, “That’s
not the point!” It’s like when you’re going on a trip; you’ve
gone down the same road over and over again (that is
you playing the piece), and then, all of a sudden, you
discover that there is a mailbox you never saw before or
there is a Japanese maple tree that you never saw before.
You start to notice things along the way. That’s kind
of what practicing, or discovering, gives you: it’s
discovering the piece and its layers, in a deeper and
more meaningful way. You never know what you’re
going to find.
LS: How did you discover the gift of improvisation
you were born with?
GM: It was always there! When something is natural
for you, you just do it and you’re not aware that this is
something special. I have always improvised since I was
little. In fact, my mom would follow me around with a
tape recorder. She recorded more than 150 tapes of me
improvising and playing from the age of four until I was
about eight or nine. When I listen to the improvisations
from when I was six, seven, or eight, the language is so
incredibly modern and has much coherence. Sometimes,
it reminds me of the language of Prokofiev, Ginastera,
or Stravinsky, and sometimes it would be very romantic.
I wonder, “Where did this come from? I had never heard
these composers before!” My house was not a musical
house, so there wasn’t a tradition of classical music

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Spring Issue 2022 Vol 14 No 1 / 11

 LEARN
…when Martha Argerich
heard me play. She told
me, “Why don’t you share
this with the world, this
is unique, you have to
show this to the world!”
photo by
Anders Brogaard
12 / PIANO MAGAZINE
or anything like that; it was all new to my parents!
Maybe because of my neurology I have been in contact
with improvisation since I was a child. It is who I am, and
it has become more and more a tool of storytelling, and
reporting what’s going on in the world, and issues that I
want to speak about. It has always been there. It’s the first
thing I do when I sit down at the piano to say hello.
LS: Did you have guidance or encouragement from
teachers to nurture this gift of improvisation?
GM: Yes and no. The first teacher I had, Lyl Tiempo,
immediately recognized this talent. Our lessons were very
casual, once a week, fifteen to twenty minutes. She was
wonderful and did not disturb that side of me. She rec-
ognized that this was something special. But the second
teacher in the United States was the opposite. She would
say to me: “Don’t improvise! It’s worth nothing!” So, for
many years it was something that I kind of kept to myself,
and very few people knew that I had this ability. I saw it as
something that didn’t belong in the classical world. That
is why you don’t see a lot of improvisations of mine until
I was in my thirties. That’s when Martha Argerich heard
me play. She told me, “Why don’t you share this with the
world, this is unique, you have to show this to the world!”
That was the stamp of approval that I needed, and the
wakeup call to say, “I think I deserve to show myself,
exactly as I am, and whether the music world will accept
it or not, that’s kind of their problem, but I have to be
honest and just be all of myself on stage, not half.”
LS: You mentioned Martha Argerich. Did you have other
pianists or musicians who served as inspirations to you as
you advanced in your career?
GM: I did, of course! In those younger years when I was
with this teacher in Miami, unfortunately, she didn’t
allow me to know any of the great pianists except for
Arrau (she had worked for a little bit with Arrau). I felt
deprived of this great encyclopedia of amazing musicians
for a very long time. Then in my twenties, I discovered
Moiseiwitsch and Leschetizky, and of course Edwin
Fischer, and Annie Fischer, and so many great pianists
of the past, like Horowitz and Richter. I have always had
a particular affinity with Martha, and we have become
very close. I am very drawn to pianists of the past, their
approach to themselves on stage, to the score, and the
whole philosophy behind what it was to be an artist at
that time, and what an artist represented on stage.
 LEARN
LS: Your CD Solatino, for which you won a Grammy
for Best Classical Album at the 2015 Latin Grammy
Awards, focuses exclusively on works by Latin American
composers. How do audiences around the globe receive
repertoire from this corner of the world?
GM: I think people love it! It is still classified slightly
outside of classical music; I think more and more that
I’m seeing a real want for this kind of migration of
cultures and sounds and composing. I found that with
my own concerto, the Latin Concerto, which I play a
lot, there’s an incredible openness to classical music
language with other rhythms, harmonies, and influences.
Ginastera is absolutely accepted and adored, also
Villa-Lobos. More and more, we see programming
that combines this kind of repertoire and people find
the connection between the styles. I see more diversity
in programming, which is good.
LS: Since you mentioned your Latin Concerto, perhaps
we can talk about your role as a composer. In 2011, the
Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields premiered your
composition Ex Patria. Can you share with us the genesis
of this piece?
GM: I wrote Ex Patria in 2011 and I dedicated it to the
19,336 victims of homicide in Venezuela that year, which
was significant. I made a public statement in 2010
through my recording Solatino. I asked the BMI Label to
remove the color red from the logo—which was always
white and red—and to substitute it with black, because
I wanted there to be a mourning element to my recording.
It was not the first time BMI was asked this, but it was the
first time the label granted it to an artist. The Beatles tried
to get the same results, but they didn’t succeed. I did!
I wanted to make a statement about banning red, which
represented Chavismo and communism. It was a big
deal, a big statement, that came at a cost and risk, but
I felt I needed to do that! I was already denouncing what
was happening in Venezuela very loudly. I realized that
words can only have a certain effect on human beings,
because we’re so used to seeing numbers and statistics.
When you address a humanitarian crisis like the one
Venezuela has lived since 1999 through numbers and
statistics, it doesn’t have the same reach or effect as with
music. I decided to write a piece of music that would help
people understand and live in their own skin what it felt
like to be Venezuelan. It’s a piece that is crushing and
I wrote Ex Patria in
2011 and I dedicated
it to the 19,336 victims
of homicide in
Venezuela that year,
which was significant.
Spring Issue 2022 Vol 14 No 1 / 13
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My composing has always

been linked to my advocacy,
because music has become a
tool for me to not just express
what I want to express, but
also to reveal and to inform.

suffocating. It is a piece where you feel like you

are living that situation, even if you’re comfortably
sitting in your house. It puts you in the skin of
Venezuelans. That’s what Ex Patria did. I think it
served its purpose as a reporting, archival piece
that brought people closer to the Venezuelan
situation, especially at a time when there was
so much silence about Venezuela. Ten years ago,
you didn’t hear anything about Venezuela! It was
a good vehicle for the messages I wanted to
bring out into the world.
LS: Are there other compositions that you
can talk to us about?
GM: I wish I had more time to compose. It is really
hard to compose when you’re on the road all
the time performing. That’s something I want to
remedy. I want to have more time to compose,
which means performing a bit less. My composing
has always been linked to my advocacy because
music has become a tool for me to not just express
what I want to express, but also to reveal and to
inform. It’s always linked to something to do with
Venezuela. My last composition is for string
orchestra and piano, called Babel. It is very much
about the biblical story of Babel. After my experience
the last eleven years as an advocate for Venezuela,
having to learn so much about politics and the
Venezuelan situation and being a speaker on
behalf of the people and their problems, I got to
a point where I said, “My gosh, I’m speaking so
clearly, I’m speaking with evidence in hand, yet,

14 / PIANO MAGAZINE
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photo by
Anders Brogaard

everyone is speaking on top of one another and nobody’s really

listening!” It is a piece that illustrates this feeling of dissonance,
of speaking truth to power, and very often feeling that words just
get mangled, and ideas don’t reach their destination and resolve
this chaos. Currently, I am also finishing my Piano Preludes.
LS: You talk about your busy schedule, wishing you had more
time for composing. How do you balance your professional life I’m trying to find a
with your personal and family life?
better balance in my
GM: I don’t know how it works! It’s a constant juggling act.
There are no easy tricks or fixes. Sometimes it’s better, sometimes life because I don’t
it’s worse. But I have to say that last year was kind of a rest, which
I really needed. I think we all need to take time to pay attention want it all to be about
to the little things, the simple things, those things that are most
meaningful. I’m trying to find a better balance in my life because work. Even inspiration
I don’t want it all to be about work. Even inspiration needs a break!
We need to recharge and the difficult thing with being a performer,
needs a break!
a mom, a wife, a composer, an advocate, is that at some point,
you have to find space just to be you, not just to be all these different
roles. That’s one of my main concerns right now. I’m trying to
find a better balance.
LS: What does 2022 look like?
GM: Lots of things! I have my Carnegie Hall recital this March,
which is, of course, major and very exciting. I made my debut at
Carnegie Hall in 2019 and, apparently, I was the first woman to

Spring Issue 2022 Vol 14 No 1 / 15

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Realize that you have

power as an artist to speak,
to get involved. Be informed.
Speak for the right people.
Speak on behalf of people!

photo by Anders Brogaard

ever play her own concerto at Carnegie Hall,

so that was nice! I also have a recital at Wigmore
Hall, concerts in Europe and the United States.
Things fell apart because of COVID, so there’s
a lot of restructuring, but we’re starting to find
a more organized schedule for next year and
the following. I also have a tour with Mirga
Gražinyte-Tyla conducting the City of Birmingham

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I also start a wonderful new relationship with the
National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa. We
recorded the Clara Schumann CD before COVID,
which was a wonderful thing with them! I have
a residency with them; I am also finishing my
residency with the Basel Symphony Orchestra.
There is a lot of flying back and forth between the
United States and Europe. I am also starting my
Gabriela Montero Piano Lab with nine amazingly
talented pianists that I’ve selected. It’s going
to be online and sometimes in person. It will be
a yearlong mentorship, where I will not only
be teaching them, but also advising and being
everything a mentor hopes to be to students.
I’m starting a new phase where I hope to be

16 / PIANO MAGAZINE
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sharing more with the younger generations, as

a pedagogue, as a teacher—opening more space
for that in my life because I love to do it.
LS: What advice would you have for young
professionals and young students as they immerse
themselves in our profession?
GM: There are no guarantees, nor formulas. My
career path has been so full of detours and all kinds
of crazy U-turns; it hasn’t been a straight road.
What I always try to say to the younger generation
is not to do this because you’re expecting a result or
because you want to be famous, or you want to make
money, or you want to have this kind of status. What
keeps you grounded is always just thinking about the
music and wanting to be a better artist. That’s a
process of self-discovery, that’s constant questioning,
always striving to get to the root of the meaning of
why you do this, and that it never stops mattering “I think I deserve to
why you do this. Never lose sight of the higher goals,
which are really to become a better communicator show myself, exactly as
and a better person through it. Also, realize that you
have power as an artist to speak, to get involved. I am, and whether the
Be informed. Speak for the right people. Speak on
behalf of people! Use your music for more than just music world will accept
entertainment! In that way, follow the model of
Shostakovich, maybe even Prokofiev in a different
it or not, that’s kind
way; composers who were telling a story of the time.
To me, it’s all about meaning and purpose. I’m always
of their problem, but I
refocusing everything, so I never lose sight of have to be honest and
what’s important.
LS: Gabriela, thank you for sharing highlights about
just be all of myself on
your life and career! I am grateful that through your stage, not half.”
art and advocacy for human rights, you make this
a better world for all of us.
GM: Thank you, Luis. I hope so! As I tell my girls,
I try my best! I hope I shared a little bit of loving
inspiration in this interview. Thank you.  

LUIS SANCHEZ has maintained an active performing

and teaching career and has appeared in concerts in the
United States, South America, Europe, and Asia. He is
currently Professor of Piano and Director of Keyboard
Studies at Texas A&M University-Commerce. He also
serves as Director of International Engagement for the
Frances Clark Center.

Spring Issue 2022 Vol 14 No 1 / 17

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