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A true phenomenon whose musical gifts became apparent before the age of 2, Venezuelan-born pianist Gabriela Montero is recognized worldwide as an innovative composer and performer.
With bona fides of ability and adventurousness, Montero looks to be a natural fit for Ravinia’s Breaking Barriers Festival. She kicks off the series, devoted to women composers and anchored by three concerts, including a program July 21 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
At Ravinia, she’ll perform her Piano Concerto No. 1, familiarly known as the “Latin Concerto.” Composed in 2016 and recorded in Chile a few years later, the work “is a chiaroscuro reflection on who we are as a continent, dark and light,” she said. “It has all the rhythms, the charm and the sensuality that people love about Latin America — but unfortunately, those characteristics keep the world from actually noticing what’s really going on. So it’s not a political piece, but it’s a statement: Not everything that glitters is gold.”
Known for adding off-the-cuff codas to her live performances, Montero has a knack for extraordinary improvisation. Some of her discography also features extemporaneous playing, such as “Bach and Beyond” (2006), “Baroque Improvisations” (2008) and a 2015 release that consists of her own composition, Ex Patria, along with Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and three improvised tracks.
Although improvisation was a rarity in the classical world of the 20th century, Montero’s spontaneous creations put her in amazing company. Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert were all masters of improvisation. “When I improvise, what I call ‘getting out of the way’ means that a different part of my brain is activated — one which doesn’t really have anything to do with music. My visual cortex goes crazy, and that’s what I improvise with. It kind of explains something: When I was a little girl, I would say to my father, ‘I have two brains.’ I’d play the repertoire, and then I’d go into this kind of trance where I improvise, and it’s very complex and I couldn’t explain it. It’s as though I do have two brains.”
Montero’s musical biography begins even before her memories do. Born in Caracas in 1970, she received a toy piano for Christmas when she was seven months old. “All I wanted to do, in my crib, was play this little piano,” she said. By the time she was 18 months old, “I had this repertoire of children’s songs, lullabies, the national anthem of Venezuela. Everything that I heard, everything that my mother would sing to me, I’d go to this piano and reproduce it.”
Her parents quickly recognized they were raising a prodigy, even though no one in their family had musical skill. “It was quite a curve ball for them,” Montero said. “They weren’t at all connected to classical music. But like all loving parents, they tried to make the best decisions possible to guide my talents.”
After 8-year-old Gabriela made her concert debut in Caracas, her family left Venezuela for the United States to pursue private education their daughter. Still, her path forward was not always smooth. She ended up with a teacher in Miami “who was not the right person for me. It was just closed-mindedness and not understanding the value of spontaneous composition.”
That led to an existential struggle that caused her to question her relationship with music. She stopped playing for a few years. Then out of desperation, she sent a tape to the Royal Academy of Music in London. “I got a full scholarship; they opened up their arms to me. I ended up studying with Hamish Milne, an incredible professor, musician and human being. So I really consider my music education to begin then, when I was 20.”
At 25, Montero entered another period of uncertainty after winning the bronze medal at the International Chopin Piano Competition. “After that, I started to play less and less. Again, the questions: ‘Why am I doing this? Is this what I want to do? Where am I going with this?’ I always have a lot of questions.” Two years later, she had her first of two children, which naturally led to even more questioning.
By age 31, she had stopped playing and was considering a career in psychology. But she made a fateful decision one night in Montreal: She attended a performance by Argentine pianist Martha Argerich, whom she describes as “a total original, and a very warm and very generous human being. She’s an icon who’s helped a lot of the younger generation.”
Montero had met her before, many years ago, as a teen. Nevertheless, “I went to see her backstage. She absolutely knew who I was,” she said. “I asked to have a coffee together. I was a new mom, and I wanted to discuss being a woman, being a mother, being an artist — how to reconcile those roles. She shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘Well, I don’t really have much advice, but I’d love hear you.’ ”
After some resistance, Montero played for Argerich the next night. “That really shook me out of my sleepiness. It just changed everything. That’s really the second part of my life: From there on, I got on that fast train, and I’ve been on that track ever since.”
Fast forward to the present, and it’s easy to understand why Montero carves out time to mentor a new generation and pay it forward: She recently collaborated with the global music conservatory OAcademy to create the Gabriela Montero Piano Lab, a mentorship program. She meets with her students virtually and in person, in Europe and in the States. “I learn a tremendous amount as well,” she said. “Mentoring and teaching have made my playing develop — it’s an active process on both parts.”
Of her knack for keyboard improvisation, she added, “I don’t plan it; it just happens by itself. It’s fun to see the reactions. It’s a process that’s beautiful when it’s shared.”
Her audience can’t see her visual cortex lighting up when her “second brain” ignites, but they hear the thrilling results as the notes flow from her fingertips. Referring to this singular talent, she admits with a chuckle: “It’s a nice glitch to have.”
This is an excerpt of an article that appears in Ravinia magazine. To read the full version, click here.
