It's very important to me to not only excel in the classical music world, but connect to my roots and to people from Peru.
And coming from a family and a population where classical music isn't a main focus, it's important for me to bridge these two worlds and show that we have more in common than we might think.
The waltz was actually imported from Europe to Peru hundreds of years ago and it became a main form of popular criollo music.
And the one that I played is one of the most popular. It was declared a national cultural heritage.
And it does have a man who composed it, Augusto Polo Campos, but it was made popular in the voice of a female Afro-Peruvian singer who is usually identified with this piece.
It has lyrics, the title is Come Back. It's kind of a love song. It's a very, very popular song and I made a piano transcription.
Welcome back to the PianoPod. I am your host, Yuki Misong.
Thanks for tuning in for the second half of Season 3, Episode 18 with a guest, Priscila Navarro, List International Competition winner, concert pianist, educator, and the new Peruvian figure of the piano.
In part two, we focused on Priscila's effort to give back the gift of music to the people and musical community of her native country, Peru.
Don't forget to catch up on part one of this episode if you missed it.
Before continuing the show, I want to welcome everyone listening to the PianoPod for the first time.
I'm a classical pianist and educator from New York City, passionate about creating a thriving and meaningful community of the classical music industry through this podcast.
Please visit yukimisongsudio.com to find out more about my work.
In each episode of the PianoPod, I interview a guest speaker who has been breaking exciting new ground in the industry.
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So my friends, here is part two of the PianoPod's season three, episode 18 with Dr. Priscila Navarro. Please enjoy the show.
You are listening to the PianoPod where we talk to the brightest minds in the industry about how they are bringing the piano into the 21st century.
So we kind of want to shift gear toward a little bit more your vision.
So first thing, I realize that you're giving back the gift of music to the community of your native country.
So let's talk about that. You toured with Jodi Levitz. She is a professor of viola at the Frosst School of Music, right?
Yes, I met her during my master's studies. I started playing for a lot of her students.
I've always accompanied a lot throughout my career. You know, it was a way to get income and I loved the music.
So I played with several of her students and we connected really well. And she's an amazing viola player.
So after, you know, when I was in my art as diploma, we had found I had founded this Parnassus Music Society and we wanted to bring more concerts.
And I said, you know, oh, she would be wonderful. And I asked her if she would be willing to come. And she was she was absolutely willing to do it.
So we went to Peru. We played in several cities. We were on national TV. We played in like this historic hall.
She gave master classes and it was just a wonderful experience.
Yeah. And then I think I read this on the article. I think you performed on a historically important play all piano.
Oh, yes, we have some pianos that have survived throughout time because Peru at one point was one of the main destinations for Europeans.
So there is a playel piano in the city of Arequipa.
And Jodi also happens to be an expert in historical performance and she has played with for the pianos and everything.
And we had a program that included Schumann and Brahms. And so it was perfect for this for this piano.
And it was in this beautiful monastery. So, yeah, it was a wonderful experience.
Also, you gave a master class in Peru, right?
Yes, I've given many master classes in Peru. I've I've even been on the faculty at the National University of Music.
When it went to online, they invited me to participate. And I had, you know, very few students.
But yes, I've been in contact and organizing things with Peruvian institutions throughout my whole career.
I wanted to find a channel to do that that would kind of enable me to do that in a more organized way.
So that's why I founded the Parnassus Music Society, which has many other members.
My role is as an artistic director.
And through the Parnassus Music Society, we organized this tour with Jodi Levitz where she gave master classes, I gave master classes.
We also organized a tour for Dr. Michael Barron and I to do a duo piano concert tour.
And we went to five different cities in Peru. We went to a city in the Amazon.
We went to my hometown, which now has a grand piano and now has a music school.
Oh, wow, really? Yeah, yeah.
And we went to Arequipa and we went to Trujillo, which is another city on the coast.
So part of my mission is bringing music to many parts of Peru, not just the capital, you know,
because the capital, Lima, does get Yujuan and Evgeny Kisin and, you know, the big, big names.
Sandra Schiff has many times played there.
And Nelson Freire I first heard at that in Lima.
But outside of Lima, there aren't as many classical music concerts.
So part of my mission was decentralizing music and bringing it to many other cities.
And the other side of my mission was bringing artists that were not just, you know, fantastic pianists and musicians,
but that had something to contribute to the musical community of Peru.
Jodi Levitz was perhaps the first. She gave this wonderful master classes.
She has this vision of, you know, sharing and helping young musicians.
And that's very important because there are a lot of young music students in Peru
who benefit and need these inspiring opportunities to learn from great musicians.
So now we have two main events that we kind of alternate between.
We have an international course for piano pedagogy and performance.
That started last year with Kevin Kenner.
He came and over the course of a week, he gave lessons to 12 piano students from all of Latin America.
And he gave a solo piano recital and he gave a concerto performance with a quintet made of Peruvian musicians.
So it was really a successful and incredibly wonderful.
And it was great for me to have, you know, you might think it's kind of like my festival, but I don't see it like way.
It's not attached to my name. I see it as this wonderful opportunity to bring my vision to reality,
to have people that I believe have something so rich to contribute
and give it back to students in Peru and the Peruvian audiences.
And besides that, we also organized an international competition for Latin American pianists.
And our first edition was fully online and had winners from Brazil, Peru and Colombia, I believe.
So Brazil, Peru and Colombia, but we had participants from other countries as well.
We had participants from Bolivia, from Ecuador, from Central America.
And our prizes, of course, besides the Morantari Prize, many students received scholarships to attend US schools.
In fact, at FGCU, we have a Colombian student who was a finalist at the competition and ended up receiving a scholarship to come.
One of the Brazilian students received a scholarship from Kevin Kenner to attend the Chopin Academy.
So it has just opened doors to these amazing opportunities.
And we hope that it will continue.
Our next event this year is bringing Michelle Kam to Peru for her South American debut.
And so I'm super excited because she is another person that I feel is inspirational beyond her performance.
I know you've met her as well.
So I met her at the Gilmore Festival.
Of course, I knew of her before, but I kind of got to know her there.
And she was so supportive and inspiring.
And I said, I have to bring her to Peru.
And we were able to set this up.
So she is coming.
She will be teaching and she will give the South American premiere of the Florence Prize Piano Concerto.
Amazing.
But Priscilla, to make that to happen, because I know a lot of my colleagues and myself try to make things happen,
but it's not very easy to do.
But you're doing it.
Well, we are very lucky because we work with a lot of institutions.
So this festival we co-organize with the National University of Music,
who has been very supportive.
And of course, it's a great opportunity for them as well,
because they're going to get to work with Michelle and see her firsthand.
But having precisely Lydia Hang as the president of the university,
has someone who sees the vision and value of these events and is able to support them.
And then my Parnassus Music Society, the members have been amazing, incredibly committed.
We spent so much time.
We donate our time to make these things happen.
And we've received the support of many other institutions who have basically funded or given their support to our events.
That's incredible.
Now, also you mentioned that, for example, the students who won the competition through the Parnassus Music,
they had the chance to come to the United States to study for a certain amount of period of time.
Then you also have to be in touch with consulates, embassies, that sort of thing.
Yes, absolutely.
And we've been lucky also, well, I've been lucky in cultivating relationships with the Peruvian consulates all around.
We've worked with some of the embassies in Peru and we're hoping to work with the American Embassy for Michelle,
if they could show some support, especially with the premiere of the Florence Price Piano Concerto.
It's been helpful also to work with the Peruvian consulate here.
There were members of the embassy at the concert that you attended,
but I also worked with a cultural attaché in putting together a concert at the Kennedy Center for Peruvian and Ecuadorian works
because we were celebrating 25 years of the peace treaty between Peru and Ecuador.
So having those kind of collaborations with consulates and embassies is very important because artists, in a way, are ambassadors for their countries.
You're also promoting the music by Latin American composers by performing.
And as we talked about, Regressa, which the Peruvian waltz that you did, the piano transcription.
But also I saw the online performance by Manuel Ponce and then Ernesto Lecona.
Lecona is the Cuban composer.
You know, ever since the summer of 2020 when the Black Lives Matter movement shook the whole world, including in the classical music world, right?
And then there are more and more pianists and educators and organizations and musical institutions
encouraging all the pianists and piano students to diversify the repertoire list.
And you have been obviously doing that before then.
But what do you think about this whole shift in the classical music world?
I think it's wonderful, of course.
It's difficult, obviously, because we still love Bach and Beethoven, you know.
And so going to the other extreme of saying, you know, we're not going to play any of the standard repertoire.
I also think it's not healthy. It kind of defeats the purpose of this.
The purpose of this is that we are enriching the repertoire by bringing in all these voices that have been either neglected
or just haven't received the attention that they deserved.
And also, I think it's important because as musicians, classical music has often been only about the European tradition.
And that is not always all of our identity, you know.
Our identities are complex and they have many facets.
And music is a way of reflecting that.
And for audiences to see that, I think, makes it much more attractive and much more relatable to know that it's not just, you know,
a museum piece that you are to observe and pass by, but it's actually a human being who is expressing themselves through this wide range of musical expressions.
So, of course, as Latin American, my legacy is in Latin American music.
I love Bach. That's part of my identity too.
But I also want to explore what happened in my part of the world through those centuries.
So, a lot of it is me doing research on what actually is the history and not just, you know, the cliches.
And, you know, we all love Ginastera and Villalobos, but there is a lot more to Latin American music.
And so I've devoted a lot of time to exploring that.
I did a recital of Latin American music at the Hilton Head Bravo Piano Festival.
You know, you mentioned Manuel Ponce is one of the kind of romantic Mexican composers.
Then from Cuba, we have Ernesto Lecuana, but we also have Ignacio Cervantes and many other, you know, this tradition of Cuban dances that has been passed on.
Currently, I am working on a program of music by Tania León.
She's a Pulitzer Prize winner composer and the only musician to, you know, be awarded in the recent Kennedy Honors.
Very, very inspirational Cuban American, Black American.
So her identity also, even just in trying to describe her, is like she's all these things.
Obviously, she's not just one thing, but that's part of it.
And, you know, acknowledging that and seeing that our voice includes many facets.
So and then on the Peruvian side, I've played, I premiered a piece by Jimmy Lopez.
And Jimmy Lopez is a Peruvian composer who lives in San Francisco in California, but he really lives in the whole world because he's, you know, having his works premiered.
He was in New York, actually, close to the time I was there because the New York Philharmonic was playing one of his orchestral works.
He's been composer in residence at various orchestras, and he's just very, very successful.
And it was a big inspiration to me in seeing that a Peruvian artist can have success in the classical music world.
And, you know, to get to play his pieces was just like an added bonus.
I want to talk a little bit more about, you know, philosophical topics.
So let's start with this. You're a musician, but also you chose the path of being an educator, which shows, you know, obviously you are teaching full time at Florida Gulf Coast University.
But also with this organization you created, Parnassus Music, that's, you know, part of being an educator.
Right. So what do you think? What are the skills that are required or demanded as musicians of the 21st century, especially the classical musicians?
I think that it's very important to acknowledge that the world needs something besides the traditional pianist.
You know, we used to think that being a pianist was, you know, practicing all day and reading the biographies of composers and, you know, having the best listers and dental aides, or achieving that kind of, you know, only artistic excellence.
And of course there is the side of that. But the world today needs an artist who is able to engage audiences.
Because the audience is not any, it's, isn't any more ready-made. The audience is not just there. We have to create the audience.
We have to show that classical music is relevant. It's relevant today and it's relevant to regular people.
And that is part of our responsibility. It used to be that your responsibility was practicing and the manager was doing something else and the organizer was doing something else.
But more and more we see, you know, just recently in Florida, an orchestra nearby had to close because they were running out of funds.
And that's happening all around the country. And not to mention, you know, the rest of the world.
So we see that we need, as musicians, we need to engage audiences. And there are many opportunities to do that.
Part of what's difficult as a teacher is that you can't just say like, oh, create a YouTube channel or, oh, start your own series.
Or, you know, there's all these possibilities. But it is our responsibility to show students that they have to be engaging musicians.
They have to be able to talk to audiences. They have to be able to speak about their pieces and why they're, they have to be able to put into words why what they're doing is important.
And why you need to listen to this Bach piece, you know.
And I think that part of why I see that so much is because I had to do that. Introducing my family to classical music.
I couldn't just be like, oh, you have to listen to Bach because Bach is important.
Or, you know, you have to listen to Mozart because Mozart is, I like Mozart.
No, I have to think about what value am I adding to your life by introducing you to this music?
Do you actually need to have Mozart and Bach in your life?
And having to think about that made me much more aware and sensitive to doing the same thing for young people.
Because young people are just as strange often from classical music as my friends were back in Peru, you know.
My roommate is not listening to Mozart on her morning drive.
So I think that that is one of the main things. And that can take many forms.
You know, students, I have friends who have started their own their own series, who have started their own nonprofits to to be able to hold concerts.
Or people who are successful online, who have wonderful YouTube channels, who start this video series of of things.
Or, you know, you can just take so many forms.
But the root of it is understanding that you have to create your own sphere.
You have to find your own niche of where you will thrive.
And you have to do that because it's not ready for you. It's not just made for you. It's not waiting for you.
You actually have to build it. Absolutely. Well said. Yes, I agree with you.
And then the reason why I started the podcast is really about audience engagement.
That's I've come to realize. Well, we really have to do something actively relating to that topic.
What is your thought on keeping the classical music relevant and the music industry thriving in this fast paced society and especially the post pandemic era?
So I think that part of it is is also in our focus as musicians.
You know, oftentimes we are focused on playing the best that we can on being accurate and professional and being a good pianist.
And that's great. And we should be good pianists. But we have to be more than that.
Even in music itself, I find that oftentimes we present music as kind of this circus act of, you know, this really amazing thing that this person can do.
Look at what I can do. And that to people is cool and it might attract a first comer.
That's what we find. People go one time to a concert. But the problem is that they don't come back.
Because if it is a circus show, if it is just an act, we don't need to see it again because we've already seen it.
So our focus must be in what are we communicating?
You know, what are we how are we connecting with our audience in our music itself?
So having colors, having sensitivity and having a personality, a uniqueness about your interpretations and finding that personality is so worth it.
Not just being good and not just being able to play a good Rachmaninoff's third piano concerto.
But what exactly makes that interpretation you? And why is it that we need to hear you play it?
Because if it's just good, we already have good Rachmaninoff's thirds. We already have good everything.
You know, what we need is a new vision of each and every work, a vision that reflects our current world.
So I feel that, you know, starting already with musicians and with the way we see our own music career, we have to shift our focus a little bit.
And then in the way we approach audiences, you know, I do a lot of home concerts.
I do a lot of this kind of intimate settings where I get to talk to people where even if they've never been to a concert,
they are welcome to come and they're welcome to ask questions and they're welcome to, you know, if they don't like it, they can leave.
It's not an obligation. And having those kind of friendlier settings is also helpful because some people might not be ready to dress up and go to a full two hour concert,
but they might be willing to come to somebody else's home and get to hear what is this interesting thing that somebody else is doing.
So having different outputs and settings where we can present classical music is also very important.
And the last thing is in teaching and in the way that we teach, you know, one thing that I find in many, you know,
conservatories and the long lasting legacy and that is that the teaching itself is so limited to the world that used to be that is no longer true.
You know, and it's so sad to say and I love this teachers and it's inspiring and it's great to be in that world.
But when you go out into the real world, you know, not much not much of it is necessarily transferable.
Well, let me pause. So what exactly do you mean by that? I can agree with you.
But specifically, what's let's say the old school way of teaching. I mean, I was taught that way.
Yeah. And many of us are and like you go to your undergrad, right? You study.
All you do is talk about the music. All you do is, you know, be inspired by this. Oh, but when Brahms met Liszt and Liszt and that and, you know, and that's great.
You never talk about what you might end up doing. You never talk about how to speak about your pieces.
You never talk about how to engage your audiences. You never talk about career paths.
Never that that can then can happen. You know, you don't even talk about possible injuries.
You don't even talk about the economic side of things.
You know, you're just you just assume that you do all your life on your on the side and you come here just to talk about Brahms and Bach.
And, you know, so and and, oh, we prepare for competitions. And but I feel like it's so limited and it's so honestly now unrealistic.
Because truth is, you're going to go out and you're most likely not going to be just playing Bach and Brahms for your living.
So it might be it's good to talk about those things, you know, and tell your students you need to be ready to explain why you like this piece.
You need to be ready to have other skills, other personal skills.
So that's that's what I that's what I mean, mainly that, you know, and you teach the same way someone that is pursuing a concert career as you teach someone who just wants to have music on the side,
as you teach someone who is, you know, there's music educators, there's music therapists, there's all kinds of different musicians.
And a lot of times in that kind of really high end conservatory thinking, we only think that musicians are the people that are practicing 12 hours a day and playing this high level music.
And instead of embracing the full kind of palette of types of musicians that there can be and and using that as a bigger community.
Thank you for saying that. Amen. I get to interview a wide range of pianists and composers.
And so sometimes I invite, you know, musicians from like a few generations before my my time.
So then they would say, Oh, conservatories should be just music only because that's the only time you get to be 24 seven musicians.
And once you are out, you really have to learn the real life. But then to me, it's like, yes, but you know, I live in twenty four century.
And then actually, our lives are much more complicated. You know, my my job as a piano teacher is, of course, to teach piano lessons, but also how to relate to people.
Right. How to be in the society. That's actually really important.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think there's this there's this whole question that we should constantly ask ourselves.
And it is the role of music in society. We don't ask that if we just assume that what we've been told is the truth and is the only thing that there is.
We could be in trouble. And the covid kind of put a light on that because it showed that we could do without a lot of things that we weren't really thinking about.
Making music an important part of society.
And and precisely because we're putting ourselves into this little sphere. And I agree. Yes.
College is the time to practice as much as you can to discover as much as you can, because you might not get to practice as much when you graduate.
But at the same time, if we leave it all for after and I've seen this with my friends, it is such a difficult experience to finish and realize that all that you've learned, you might never get to use.
You might not be able to show that. So it would make for a smoother transition.
If we thought about it just a little bit earlier and we thought about how we can still use our music and how we can remain a musician.
And we made that part of the transition and the education process.
I think it's at least for me, like, I know there's a lot of things that I would have liked to know that I didn't.
And that made it very difficult after I finished. And I tried to do that with my students.
I tried to tell them like, look, this is what you're going to have to might end up doing.
Start doing it now. See what parts of it you like so that you don't have to start from zero.
And it's not like you jump into this freezing pool, but you take steps towards making that transition.
Yeah, absolutely.
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Let's talk about your next phase next step in your career.
So well this summer we have the International Course of Pedagogy and Performance in Peru.
It's in August, it's in mid August and we have Michelle Cann and I will also be performing and teaching there.
And it's very exciting. We're going to have a concert with the Orchestra of the National University of Music as kind of the pre-closing event of this festival.
Beyond that, I'm going to be working with Jeremy Deng at the Music Academy in Santa Barbara.
I'm really excited because I've also been a big fan of him as the way he presents classical music in this different light and he plays the global variations in a very personal and unique way.
So I'm excited for that. I'm going to be having some performances out there in California.
And then I will be at the Maverick Concert Series in August where I will be performing music by Tania León, Jimmy Lopez and Isaac Albanis.
I will play the first two books of Iberia and then works by living composers Tania León and Jimmy Lopez.
Wonderful. I did Iberia, I did number three. I skipped one and two and then went to three. Oh, so difficult.
I love Iberia. Part of what Soto Rodriguez did for me is connect me to Spanish music.
So I love Goyescas and Iberia are my big two works. I've performed actually Iberia as a set in this two-hour concert.
Oh my goodness.
It's ridiculously crazy, but again, it's music that I feel is underappreciated and often not seen in its full light because it's not seen under the right lenses.
So I feel part of my contribution is showing that.
Wow. Yeah. Iberia. Yes. Wonderful. Wonderful set of pieces. Great.
So now before we go, advice for young musicians.
Okay. So first of all, fall in love with music because honestly, the career path, if you are a music major and this is your career path, there's going to be a lot of difficulties.
But if you're in love with music and you see the value that you're adding to society, it's worth it.
It makes it worth all the instability that there might be and the uncertainty because our career paths are not as straight as you go to university, you get a job and you're there.
No, we have to go through this whole process. So fall in love with music.
Find out why music is relevant, why you think that it's important.
And of course, work hard. Of course, you do have to practice. But think about what you're adding to society and what the value in what you're doing is beyond just being a good pianist.
You know, and then be inspired by people who are doing this by artists who are going beyond the being a great pianist, but who are actually living a long lasting legacy that is impacting the music world itself.
So, Priscilla, this has been such a really fun and inspiring conversation. So before I let you go, we have one more thing to do. It's called the PianoPod rapid fire questions.
And this is part of the show where I get to ask fun questions to each guest. And now here's a little warning. As silly as these questions may sound, your answers may reveal who you truly are.
So are you ready? Yes. Okay. So please answer them with the shortest responses as possible. No explanation is necessary. Question number one. What is your comfort food? Fried things.
Right. How do you like your coffee? I love the cappuccino or if it's drip coffee, just black cats or dogs, dogs. What is your word or words to live by? Hope and love. What is the most important quality you look for in other people?
Loyalty and persistence. Name three people who inspire you, living or dead? Johann Sebastian Bach, my mother, and Lydia, my first teacher. Name one piece in your current playlist.
The Wanderer Fantasy by Schubert. So last question. Fill in the blank. Music is blank. Music is life. Great. Ding ding. You won.
So that concludes this episode of the Piano Pod. Thank you Priscilla for joining my show today and sharing your beautiful stories and insights and expertise. You can learn more about Priscilla and her amazing work through her website at priscilla navarro.com and her social media accounts.
All the links are listed in the show notes. Thank you to my wonderful audience and fans for tuning in. If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate and review it on whatever podcasting platform you use. Remember to hit the thumbs up button and subscribe to my YouTube channel if you are watching this episode on YouTube.
Follow the Piano Pod on social media to get the latest piano news via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. I will see you for the next episode of the Piano Pod. Bye everyone and thank you Priscilla. Thank you so much. Thank you. Bye.