francesca gaza
Jazz/ pop/ baroque/ experimental & ?
musical background
• When and why did you start?
I started playing the piano when I was 6, but it wasn’t until 10 when I saw a Big Band playing for the first time, that I was raptured by what I was witnessing. I saw musicians interacting and speaking a sort of meta language that I didn’t understand. That’s when I got really hooked and started to apply to my High School Big Band to play in. I wanted to speak that language as well.
From the piano I slowly developed a love for singing and writing music in my early teens. I always had a crush on singers-songwriters and was mesmerized by their ability, but I was an extremely shy child and didn’t really believe I could perform my music in front of somebody ever. One day it just happened that I had to arrange a piece for the Big Band I was playing in. I was very scared of it but somehow it worked and I fell in love with the process of it.
• Where did you study? Any diplomas?
I studied in Siena, in the tuscan hills of Italy, where I did my Bachelor in Jazz Studies with a major in voice and a minor in Piano. During my time there I went to an Erasmus Semester in Riga in Latvia, which brought me back on the track of composing and arranging music. When I came back and finished by Bachelor in Siena, I went to Florence where I studied classical composition privately and then went on to do my Master in Basel at the Musikakademie with a Major in Composition at the Jazzcampus and a Minor at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, where I took classes of early music analysis.
• What was your favorite musician, style, instrument etc?
My favorite instrument was harp as I kid. I always wanted to take harp lessons but my parents would prefer me playing the piano so eventually I started liking that as well. I enjoyed a lot of old classical records by Italian composers of opera, like Puccini, Verdi, Rossini etc and would dance along to them, not really understanding what it was. Eventually I started discovering old Jazz Records from the 30s and 40s and really fell in love with them and got curious about the music and how it is made/ by who etc.
• Albums you loved (child / teenage / now)
from idea to creation
• What is your Methodology? Creative process?
I wish I had that! It is every time a little bit different. What I generally like to have is a direction, or a sort of fil rouge of any kind. It can be a musical motive, or an instrumentation that I particularly like or a text (which might also then not be used, but be there as a sub-text for me). What I generally do is that I start writing and often I feel stuck because my music indicates a pulse and a time very clearly, which I don’t really like often. So what I do, and most of the times helps me out, is to write a choral without using the piano. Just from the skeleton idea of a harmonic or melodic 3/4 voice piano part, I start imagining that it will be sung by 4 voices from Bach’s time. That often gets me out of the "stuck mode”.
What I like to have, is a little notebook with music paper where I write down small ideas, that seem insignificant, and then after a while I open it and often one of the many ideas pops out and feels right to be used.
• Do you have rituals?
I would like to have more because I think rituals help me to ground myself and be more creative. One ritual, aside form keeping a little journal with thoughts and thinks that matter to me during my days, is I try to make space once a week for a music night alone to myself. I then mostly sit at the piano and don’t write down or judge anything that comes out, I just play around and sing whatever comes to mind and have a little jam-session.
Sometimes it feels like a therapy session because bigger phrases or feelings come up which then I can deal with in a very personal way by transforming them into sound, which makes them seem clearer in my mind.
• Gear used
Paper, Pen & Piano and my little idea notebook!
I try to write everything first on paper. Only when I have a clear idea and have written out most of the pivot points of the music and arrangement I start putting it into Sibelius.
more about you.
• Instrument(s) (you play or would love to or in love with)
I play Piano and try to use my voice as an instrument. I secretly wish to play Viola da Gamba… maybe someday!
• Collaborations with partners to create a disk (label / manager / agent / mixing engineer / designer / press plant etc…)
I would love to create a place in the hills of Tuscany, where all sorts of different art forms meet with all sort of audiences from different backgrounds and interests!
• Pedagogical
Teaching and learning is one of the things I hold highest in my life. I myself don’t teach regularly (just sometimes and very few students), because I respect the art of teaching so much. I have had the privilege of being taught my incredible teachers/ humans and artists, and I don’t feel yet that I can step in their footsteps.
• Hobbies
1. Reading & Visiting cities and going into nature
2. Reading scores <3 (I know.. I’m nerdy)
fresh news
My third album will be out in June 2022 with my Italian octet band called “Lilac for People” .
Also there is a little collaboration in the making with an amazing Viola da Gamba player: she is wonderful!
And I am currently working on two really inspiring commissions for choir with baroque orchestra and for Piano & Mezzosoprano Duo, which will be performed this year. (Fingers crossed!)
future…
• Collaborations
One of my dreams would be to work with Les Arts Florissants or the Vocal Ensemble Grain de la Voix .
• How do you imagine music in the future?
Maybe the traditional setting of audience/ performer will be thought differently, f.i in a circle or so. And on top of that I imagine the music in the future to be very hard to label with genres, so to say to be post-genre :) (which doesn’t mean patch-work!) and I imagine it live :)
a child ask you how to be like you…
I would show him/ her some of the greatest music that I have heard so far and encourage him/ her to play whatever he/she loves. And play something together for inspiration !
• What did you learn on your own life creating, learning, composing, playing… music.
That it takes a lot of courage and work and dedication, but that with patience and humbleness the reward of art is bigger than the struggle. And I learned that I have a lot to learn and that failure is part of the process. :)
