What got you started into playing the piano?
Since I was young I always wanted to do music, but never piano. When I was sixteen, I had to decide what my major would be, and I decided on music as my career path. I already knew how to play the guitar, which I learned by ear through Youtube, but my father said that if I wanted to study music I had to do the piano. I couldn’t even play the piano, nor knew how it worked. But I switched to the piano and started from scratch at seventeen and I have grown to love it ever since.
Seventeen is definitely a late age to begin learning piano and using it to forge a career, why did you begin learning at that age?
The reason why I didn’t train in any instruments at a younger age was that in Columbia, which is where I am from, good piano lessons cost a lot of money and so the money that was saved in my childhood was used for those lessons that I would take in university.
What were your undergraduate studies like learning piano for the first time?
I did my undergraduate studies at Corporación Universitaria Reformada in Columbia. When I was there my teachers were shocked, not in a good way, that I only knew three basic chords and told me that if I didn’t learn the piles of classical music they gave me by the end of the semester it was over for me. So I would get up at 4 a.m. to do a devotional because I knew I couldn’t do this without God, then practice for hours. Throughout undergrad, I learned how to sight-read and learned music theory but in my country, classical music was not famous or widely recognized. The music that people loved was the music that you can dance to, like jazz or salsa, so I had to adapt and add those styles to my repertoire as well. Now I feel like I can teach classical and jazz music because of my training plus hundreds of hours of practice.
Who are your musical influences?
Honestly, my family. Just one of them is a professional saxophonist and was a wind symphony conductor as well, but all of them love music. The piano world was unfamiliar to me when I was younger so when I played guitar my influence was John Mayer. In terms of piano influences, I don’t really have any because all I heard and knew of the piano was from my formal training. Although, there was a jazz pianist I knew from my country, Jesús Molina, who became successful transitioning into the states so he motivated me to keep going and pushing especially as I went into grad school here at Andrews.
What is your overall goal with music?
I enjoy teaching, but with teaching, you need to have authority, or else you nor your students will get anything done. I hope that with all of my training and the fact that I can actually play piano, whereas other professors and mentors I had growing up were only conductors and couldn’t teach me how to perform, I can really be a good professor in the future. I want to be a good example to my future students on what it means to feel and perform music. That is why I am student-teaching here at Andrews and practicing and expanding my knowledge of music genres and styles, so I can cater to many musicians who want to learn different things. I hope to teach well enough so that one day my students can be my colleagues and we can be on the same level and just be able to talk and grow in music together. I envision myself having my own piano studio and or teaching at a university.
Tell me about a favorite performance of yours.
When I was about to finish my bachelor’s degree I received a scholarship. Through this scholarship, I was able to receive further education with a conductor in Argentina, who taught me certain principles, but as I mentioned before, I found that what conductors could teach me as an actual performer was very limited. But, with that training, I was also able to add my style and identity to my music and had the opportunity to perform a concert back in Columbia and play my music the way I uniquely play it, and that was special to me.
Ivan is an example of how you can have a vision and desire but hours must be put in to get to where you want to be. When learning a new skill, like an instrument, you must learn basic principles and once you learn them, you can add who you are and create the work you want to present to the world. That’s what I learned most from this interview with my piano teacher on campus. Bet you didn’t see that coming. You can have a chance to hear Ivan play at his recital during Spring semester.
The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of Andrews University. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, Andrews University or the Seventh-day Adventist church.