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Tell me about your vision.

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Well, my vision is that I'm a classical pianist and as classical pianists, we were not taught,

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it was not in our curriculum to get out of their written score.

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So my vision is to help classical pianists from all over the world to easily improvise

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without too much theory at first, but rather in a more intuitive way, how to create their own music

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because that's how, what I believe is that when we create our own music or our own art in general,

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it could be gardening, it could be visual art, it could be any art, I think that we become more alive.

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And in creating your own music, if I talk about classical musicians,

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it's also because it's allowing you to understand better the composers and to be more rounded musicians,

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to be able to speak more languages, to play with more musicians and to be more rounded human beings as well.

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So this is my vision to help classical pianists freely improvise and get out of their written score.

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That's a very, very unique vision.

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I think that's the first time I've had someone along those lines with music.

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There's one thing to do what you do and perform in front of people,

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and there's the other thing to teach the art to other people.

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I think it's a very unique skill. So where did that vision come from?

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How did that come about?

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Yeah, when I was really young, I was creating my own music when I was about four or five, six.

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I was composing, I was improvising, and I was having lots of fun doing it.

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But when I pursued my classical studies, I put everything aside in favor of piano performance.

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I put the creative part aside and I studied the great composers' technique, and this was taking a lot of time.

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I even went so far as to win the Montreal Symphony Orchestra first prize at the age of 17.

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So it was really demanding to practice for many hours,

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and I didn't have time for the creative side that I had when I was really young.

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Then I developed injuries because of repetition of movements and the demands

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and the extreme rigor of being a concert pianist.

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I developed injuries and I couldn't play anymore.

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So I started teaching, and then by starting to teach, I was facing students coming to my studio

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and wanting to compose and improvise, and I couldn't guide them.

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And I felt frustrated also because I saw, you know, for years I've been studying and playing great,

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you know, really complicated music, but I could invent or create something very simple.

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And when people are asking you in a party, you know, to play something,

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you don't necessarily want to play Mozart's.

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So it's then that I started looking for different avenues of making music because I was blocked physically.

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I couldn't play anymore, and I was not having fun teaching.

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And I called short answers to help my students to get out of their written score.

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So this is where I met a group of improvisers in the United States, more on the East Coast.

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And I had such a revelation starting to improvise that it was easier than I thought

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and was coming out of the blue with just a few guidelines and a few triggers.

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And I could improvise in different styles. I could find my own style, which I found priceless.

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So it was like a huge revelation for me.

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And when I came back from these workshops, I was transmitting all this knowledge to my students,

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and we started having way more fun in our lessons because they became more alive, those lessons.

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Because when you improvise, you have to try a theory concept right away on the spot,

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and you master it more, and you live the music from the inside, which is the important key.

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So that's how I decided to finish a four-year, to complete a four-year program in improvisation,

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but not so much because of the certificate. It was more because I had so much fun doing it.

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And this is why I want to teach it today to people, because it transformed my life.

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Since then, I've been releasing piano album, solo album of improvisation.

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I've been composing songs. I've been composing piano solo music, and that came all from improvisation.

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So I believe that it's an important tool to develop, and it's very human also as a process

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to live the music from the inside, but also to learn to let go, to learn to live the moment,

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to go with the flow, to accept your sound. There's so much learning inside of it.

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Jose, first of all, doing what you did, starting to do that at four, five, six years old,

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that is very, very, very impressive. I don't even remember what I was doing when I was four or five years old.

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Music is some talent that I don't think I have. It's something I've never developed,

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but you don't need to have that to appreciate good music.

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No, you don't need to have that to appreciate the music.

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But I would say that human beings all have their own capacity of learning

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and have some musicality inside themselves. It's just that it hasn't been discovered or brought up.

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But I believe that everyone has a musical sound that you just need to start simple, you know, baby talk, babies talk.

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You can make vocal sounds. You can use drumming, if you like. This is already music.

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We think of being on stage and mastering complicated music, but it's not necessarily the case.

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To me, the simple, I think the music would be. I've tried actually in college,

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someone I knew who was teaching me how to do some piano for a little bit.

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I'm a very tough student, so they gave up easier than I did.

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And that was the end of piano lessons.

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But I used to sing when I was, I think, in high school or below that, maybe middle school.

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And that was the last of it. And since then, I have not developed those skills.

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But going back to the point of improvising music, that I've heard improvising in rap,

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improvising on top of your head, right, and other areas.

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But how does improvising music mix with the piano side of things? How do you do that?

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I want to know more about that. I think that's very intriguing.

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How do I teach improvisation?

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Yes. Yeah.

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Well, I start with very simple technique. It could be just to hold a drone.

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A drone is a sustained notes, and let's say like a bagpipe in your left hand.

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And improvising with just a few notes, and that is to support that drone.

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And just improvise with a few notes in your right hand that belong to a specific key or a specific mode.

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That's one technique. Another is just to start with a simple groove in your left hand.

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And add up a few notes in your right hand.

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These are very simple techniques.

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And then I guide people to look in their repertoire, a classical repertoire.

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And these, what we call grooves, could be called ostinati, repeated rhythmic pattern, melodic pattern.

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And they find some, and I say, now could you improvise using these eight bars of music, repeating patterns,

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and improvise with just a few notes in your right hand.

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And then people, oh, I didn't know that music was written out of patterns, ostinatis.

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And that's another technique.

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Sometimes it could be, you know, with chord progressions, you know, specific chord progressions.

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And sometimes I use Let It Be from the Beatles.

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And I say, look, this is a famous chord progression that tons of songs were written with.

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And so we go through that chord progression, like let's say four chords in a row, and then a few notes in your right hand.

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You can improvise a melody.

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So there's many ways I teach a little bit about how to improvise in a classical style, how to improvise in world music.

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I have books also, very simple books, not too much theory, with already given patterns and a few notes to guide the students.

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And then, you know, you can start improvising in a little bit of jazz, a little bit of world music, classical pop.

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And I also teach how to improvise very intuitively out of an image, a poem.

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And that could be not necessarily sounding right and good, but sounding like an inner landscape, let's say.

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Thank you for sharing that.

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My next question for you, I think you've already answered that.

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But I think you're some of those people who don't just do music, you live music.

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What would you say is the why of what you do?

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What gets you out of bed every morning to do what you do?

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Oh, that's so important.

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Well, yes, I shared a little bit of this when I told you about my story.

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It's because improvisation opened doors to my musical life and to my life in general.

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And it has enlarged my vision of music and has brought the fun back that I lost a long way because classical musicians are so, you know, it's like ballad dancers.

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It's really strict and rigorous and it's very demanding.

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And sometimes we lose the fun.

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And I got back with improvisation.

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And the way it was taught to me was in a very humanistic way.

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Like it was including all types of musicians because in classical music, you have to be on top or you're nobody.

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But that group of musicians, it was called Music for People.

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It could gather, you know, like first class musicians with people, you know, nonprofessional playing in their basement.

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And we were all playing together.

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And from different backgrounds, music therapists, classical, jazz, whatever.

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And we were all playing together.

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So to me, it transformed my life to do this.

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And it's not like all my colleagues who've been through this training said it.

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We all said the same thing.

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So I want what gets me out of bed is that I want to help other classical musicians to enlarge their vision of music and to teach in a more, you know, in a better way or more fun way.

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Better wouldn't be necessarily the word, but in a very exciting way and practical at the same time.

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And to, yeah, to experience music from the inside and to communicate because music is a wonderful way to communicate with other human beings.

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And with improvisation, you can right away start to make music without learning necessarily how to read.

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So this is why I really, I really do it to help other musicians to experience what I experienced through it.

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And that keeps me still alive as a musician.

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That's awesome.

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I first I agree with you that music is also a very another good way of communicating with people.

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There's so many times where people can just stay at a place and just feel and and sometimes people don't even speak the same languages when they're listening to music.

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Doesn't have to be just tune.

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I think they can feel a lot of stuff that goes on.

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I don't know what rhythms those are.

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I don't know how that exactly works, but I know it works because I felt it my way.

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And second thing, if I understand that correctly, your goal is.

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The reason why you get out of bed and why you do things because classical music, I want to say, has its way.

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And there's a lot of repetition involved and there's a lot of patterns you have to follow and it can get tiring, maybe boring.

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And there's a lot more.

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So if improvisation for us brought out of the way to make it more fun and lightning and maybe more encouraging, is that did I hear that right?

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Or would you want to add or remove something from that?

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Well, what I want to add is that I don't teach improvisation to become key.

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Jared's, you know, great jazz improviser.

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I don't teach improvisation to be necessarily good at it or to perform, because that's also what I want to musicians, classical pianists to experience, is to get out of the performance mode to have to be perfect and have to.

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And I believe that the way I teach improvisation is also to express themselves.

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And that's the most important key is to release emotions, is to have a reflection back of who they are when they improvise and that, oh, that came from me and I don't know why, but it came out this way and it's a release.

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So, of course, I'm giving them tools and their specific parameters, but I'm trying not to be too strict either in my classes, because what I want is that people experience music from the inside and, you know, express who they are, express their music with certain parameters.

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And of course, I'm saying without the theory overwhelm at first, because if there is too much theory, then they get into their head.

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But of course, later on, we can add some more layers of understanding of how far we can go with improvisations.

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And then my programs, I have a level one and a level two.

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And so I introduce people very simply and I have different levels. There are some piano teachers and there's some nonprofessional as well. So it's not necessarily that you have to be professional to follow my programs.

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If you are, I would, you know, switch you or direct you already to the second level.

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But yeah, so it's not just to perform music, but to live it from the inside.

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Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.

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I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.

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This is going to get more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement as well.

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We'll invite people to participate in the show. And thank you for giving us your time and attention.

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I hope you have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.