Artist insights featuring Sérgio Carolino

In a so-called “postmodern” society where competition is fierce and relentless, I believe we have to develop a number of skills in order to "survive". We have to be able to accept and achieve high levels of musical excellence when engaging in the performance of different works that may cover baroque music, symphony orchestra, wind orchestra, brass band and chamber music in different formations, and of course when performing assorted music genres such as jazz, big band, bop, post-bop, dixieland, blues, second line, zydeco, cajun, pop, soul, rock, funk, Balkanmusic and even free and spontaneous improvised music.

For this to happen, we need to have the necessary tools to perform these roles with the appropriate language and style. Academies and music conservatories, universities and polytechnics provide us with some very useful skills and tools, but only to a certain extent. I thus suggest that, in order to achieve the much desired success, we must have one foot inside the academic system and one foot outside. Only thus will we be able to gain true experience and find out what we really need in order to achieve success and a career marked by musical excellence as stage musicians, in what I call the "Real World".

A modern musician adapts to this new reality and this new market in the world of music and is true and genuine "chameleon"! A hybrid artist! An "All-terrain musician"! This is not easy to achieve, quite the contrary, and requires many hours, days, months, years of study, and above all, a fair deal of dedication and serious and responsible commitment.

Learning, assimilating, developing and, above all, understanding the myriad of musical styles is of vital importance. Having an open mind and accepting new musical and life approaches and philosophies is also paramount to achieve acceptance in such a demanding and competitive musical society.

There are characteristics inherent in humans (and all other mammals) that must be taken into account and developed. I refer above all to the powers of Intuition and Imitation, which will certainly be extremely useful and I would even say, essential. A further essential characteristic for me is Curiosity, the permanent desire to learn and evolve.

Despite everything I describe in the paragraphs above, we still have what I consider to be most important thing, and which will define and differentiate us from other individuals in different artistic areas: discovering and developing our own DNA - unique, personal and non-transferable.

Individuals who engage in discovery and who are not afraid of showing their own style, their own sound, timbre and words, traits that everyone can recognize after a few seconds of listening.

From a young age, I always had a strong personality, and a childhood guided by a desire to be different from other young people around me. Being different, unique, not in the sense of being better than others, just different. Just ME.

Sérgio Carolino is one of the most acclaimed tubists, in demand as a soloist and teacher in the most prestigious festivals around the world. His international reputation has been established by his interpretation of the standard and contemporary repertoire for tuba and his stylistic approach to jazz, funk and improvised music.