I started to learn the piano when I was six. I am still working at it. Hard.
My mother was an amateur pianist and she was my first exposure to the instrument. My mom’s family was musical, she had 2 sisters and the three of them played. I was given piano lessons, but I was lucky, because 20 years earlier my cousin Bush was not allowed to study piano due to it being”a lady’s pursuit” and “improper for a boy”.
| My first teachers of note were Marcia Freyre and Marcia Freyre de Andrade, two exiled Cuban pianists who used to teach a few blocks from my home in Mexico City. I didn’t practice very hard when I was younger, but I kept making progress, so my teachers encouraged me on. I won a silver medal as a teen in the Estudio Internacional de Arte. |
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| My headshot in 1985 |
I met Mario Feninger when he came to play in Mexico City and later, when I heard him play in Los Angeles, California. It was after hearing him play The Pathetique Sonata of Beethoven and the Minute Waltz of Chopin, that I decided to become a concert pianist
In 1981 I moved to Los Angeles to study with Mario and his partner, Ian Brooks. I spent four years working with them until I started appearing in concert in Mexico City. From 1985 to 1988 I appeared in recital in different venues and I also appeared on TV repeatedly, in a TV Show called “Estudio 54”.
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On the set of Estudio 54
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However, in 1988, before leaving for a tour in South America, something happened. I was practicing the 6th Hungarian Rhapsody of Liszt, I did a jump with my left hand, falling hard on my left pinky to get the bass note out and I felt a searing pain on the outside of my left wrist.
I had injured my left hand.