Some of you have asked me about my musical journey over the years, and I'm always happy to explain my personal musical voyage to anyone who is interested in hearing about it. It's for this reason, and also because it' s been more than 30 years since this journey began, that I thought it would be nice to write a series of blog entries explaining how I got started in music up to the present day.
In this first entry I'm going to focus on the year 1990, which is when I decided I wanted to dedicate myself to music, and I'll make a summary of everything up to 1995. I will talk about the following years later on in other posts, so welcome to the first part of my musical journey, which starts like this:
The year was 1990 and I was a young 20 year old boy who decided he wanted to become a serious musician. I had already studied piano and music theory from the age of 14 to 16 in a music school but when I reached adolescence I stopped going to lessons because by then I was more interested in going out with friends and having a good time, as is normal at that age. From 16 to 20 I was learning to play a Casio keyboard that my parents bought me all on my own, but I didn't spend much time practicing because, as I said, friends and having a good time were my priority at that time.
When I was in my twenties, a little more focused, I decided that I wanted to devote myself to music, but this time seriously, so I started to look for a music teacher to give private lessons and it was then that I was lucky enough to find Enric Torra Pòrtulas, a music teacher and also a very well-known pianist in the city of Mataró, where I live.
When I met Enric Torra, he was already an 80 year old man who was still active giving private lessons, that's how strong his vocation was: he loved teaching music and this was very obvious when he was giving lessons, he put a lot of enthusiasm into it.
Enric had been a renowned concert pianist in his youth, but for various personal reasons, he decided to give up concerts to devote himself to teaching music, and even became a teacher at the prestigious Marshall Academy in Barcelona. He was a precocious musician who, at only 7 years of age, accompanied the silent film projections of his father's cinema with the piano.
He also composed an opera, eleven symphonies, sardanas, instrumental works for trios, quartets and quintets, suites for piano, piano and orchestra, etc. He composed a total of more than 70 works.
The lessons with this teacher were a lot of fun and at first they were supposed to last an hour but we always took longer as neither of us were watching the clock. Enric liked to tell me anecdotes about his life and musical career, and I loved listening to them and was very surprised by all the things he had done.
With Enric I learned to play pieces by Bach, Schubert, Beethoven and Isaac Albéniz among others. His teaching focused on classical music, which he said was the basis of everything.
He also encouraged me to play with other musicians so I bought a second hand keyboard and started looking for bands that needed a keyboard player, they used to advertise through a classifieds magazine where there was a 'Musicians Wanted' section.
The first group I started playing with was from a small town in Catalonia in the western Vallés region called Ripollet. The group was made up of three guys and with my joining there were four of us. It was a band in which everything was done with synthesizers and drum machines in the style of Aha or Alphaville but singing in Spanish. I don't remember how long I was with them, but it wasn't that long because soon after, the singer had to go off to do his military service and another member was getting married and didn't have time to come to rehearsals. So the project was cut short. I don't even remember the name we gave the band.
After this band I played with others whose names I don't remember anymore, the truth is that I wasn't very comfortable with any of them because most of them were just hanging out and what I was looking for was to play with musicians who wanted to create something serious.
Later I joined an orchestra that was starting up as a keyboard player; we played some gigs in the area but I also ended up leaving because they forced me to play pasodobles and boleros, which I found very boring.
I remember that during that time, I was quite frustrated because I couldn't find musicians I could really connect with. Back then there was no internet and it was much harder to meet musicians who were on the same wavelength. Nowadays you can find a lot of Facebook groups and other communities of musicians who play a similar style of music to you and it's so much easier. I wasted so much time taking buses and trains to go to other towns and cities to meet musicians and all for nothing. Young musicians nowadays don't know how lucky to have the Internet and social networks, it has made things so much easier, at least in my case.
What I do remember with great affection is a job I had from 1991 to 1995 as a disc jockey and music presenter in a small local radio station in the town of Canet de Mar in the Maresme region.
During the four years that I was at this small radio station, there was one day that I remember in a very special way: the day that the Catalan band Sau came to do an interview in which I was working as the sound technician. I remember that after the interview, the two members of Sau, Pep Sala and Carles Sabater, came into the booth to greet me, something that other groups that also came to the station did not do. Pep and Carles were very nice and friendly.
So, in short, this is the summary of my beginnings in music from 1990 to 1995. It's all so far away but the memories are still very vivid.
In 1995, I decided to go to London to try my luck in the world of music, but I shall tell you all about that in the second part of this musical journey.
Juan Sánchez