Translator: Javi Garriz Reviewer: antonella broglia
(Music)
(Applause)
It's been 10 years now since a fateful call changed my life.
I was in New York and I was looking for a flat.
I had decided to leave everything, quit my career as professional piper here
to pursuit a dream, to pursuit an ideal.
And the ideal was to become a classical pianist, which was my official degree,
and the ideal was to do a doctorate degree in classical piano.
I was walking by the streets of Manhattan when suddenly the phone rang.
I had been there barely one week looking for a flat.
It was my sister calling, she's here today,
and she said, "Cristina, dad is in intensive care, unconscious".
Suddenly, my world turned upside down.
Suddenly, just in the moment
that I had decided to start a new chapter,
chasing my lifelong dream by leaving behind an easy life as a bagpiper,
to start a bit more difficult one, suddenly, in a moment, everything changed.
And suddenly, in that moment, I didn't know what to do.
I was far away, afraid, insecure and most of all
I felt specially guilty.
I was where I wanted to be, but I wasn't where I ought to be.
I was away from my land, somewhere else.
And there, in that moment, as I was taking the decision,
and barely two weeks after arriving to NY, my father, without notice, died.
And in that moment, I started the real journey of my life.
I came back to Galicia, tried to pull myself together and start from scratch
and reconsider what it was that I wanted to do.
Then I really wanted to be close to my kin, so I dyed my hair green again,
grabbed the bagpipe again, and toured again in festivals, "romerias" and all
that a "gaiteira" from the late 90's was supposed to do.
I also had the illusion or superstition, like a good Galician,
that if I was ever to go back to New York
in the precise moment of my landing there, it would be my mother that would sicken
and leave.
And it was precisely her, like a good Galician, strong like a good galician,
strong like a good female Galician widow, that grabbed my arm very tightly
and said, "Cristina, didn't you have a dream?
Your father is not going to come back".
And so I left, and started all over again.
(Music)
(Applause)
My name is Cristina Pato and I'm a professional "gaiteira".
And even though I have a piano PhD and I teach at university
and I organize cultural events in my hometown, the only thing I'm known for
is being a "gaiteira", being Galician and being a woman.
It took me a 15 year career and a drastic decision
to understand that I had to assume the responsibility
of everything my profession was bringing on to me.
I had to assume the responsibility for having a talent.
I started playing the bagpipe when I was 4 years old,
because my sisters started before me, I'm the youngest of 4,
they started with piano when I was 5 years old.
And my mother, as always, wise Galician woman as she was,
decided that having a classical official training
was very important for our future.
So I grew in a middle ground between classical music
with hair up and glasses, and the world of traditional Galician music
and then folk, with green hair and a drummer behind me.
And everything in the middle which is what any young person
listens to, from Shostakovich to The Ramones,
even Red Hot Chili Peppers or Amalia Rodrigues.
In 1999, I released my first album, "Tolemia",
I was 18, and the record suddenly worked pretty well.
And suddenly all that intangible things represented by making a record
and creating some music, became very real
and supported me for years.
Just in case, as my mother used to say, "You keep studying it, child".
I kept studying and got a degree on Piano
and Chamber Music.
In 2002, I released "Xilento", my second solo album.
Of course, it didn't work as well as the first one,
but it was enough to support me pretty well
and, just in case, I took a Digital Arts Masters Degree
at Pompeu Fabra's University in Barcelona.
Then, in 2003, I got my wires crossed.
And I thought, "Damn, you can continue like this your whole life,
but there's nothing that you really love right now".
And in '99, when I had released "Tolemia", I had given up
all that life as a pianist,
that also had taken away my adolescence.
That 2003 was the year of the fateful phone call.
I left, returned, left, returned, I was in the middle
and two years later, I found myself
taking the decision of not following a path that was already created,
the one of a classical pianist, but that I had to invent my own.
And I started exploring. And there, in New York,
through encounters, most of them random,
or by coincidences of life, a figure appeared
that changed my vision of the classical music world,
and the traditional music world.
He was Osvaldo Golijov, composer back then
for example of Francis Ford Coppola's soundtracks.
He was a Jewish Argentinian composer,
living in the U.S., working for the Chicago Symphony.
And suddenly I show up there with my bagpipe,
with one of the better orchestras in the world,
as is the Chicago Symphony, playing a Golijov's work.
And then I started to see that everything
is much more connected than we think,
and there are more things that join us together when it comes to languages
and culture than things that separate us.
Through Osvaldo Golijov I met Yo Yo Ma.
And Yo Yo Ma, whom I consider my mentor nowadays,
also flipped my thoughts and with him I started to work
on his project "The Silk Road Ensemble", a collective of artists
from more than 20 countries that intend to explore
the connections between arts, education, technology and business.
All that, using the most basic values that musical activity shares.
Which are those values?
Collaboration, flexibility, passion, discipline...
And for me, the two most important ones:
generosity and curiosity.
Through my work with Yo Yo Ma, I realized that we, the artists
we are much more than what we bring onstage and show
when we are up here.
That this should be only the tip of the iceberg
of everything happening underneath,
in those areas of education, in those areas of business.
When we keep exploring without being afraid of failure
to reinvent ourselves.
In that path of continuous exploration, living in a city like New York,
where everyone comes from elsewhere
and where everyone of us brings our roots,
I started working with jazz musicians from New York.
Curiously, none of them was born in New York,
but all of them were New Yorkers.
Víctor Prieto, Emilio Solla, Paquito D'Rivera,
all of them showed me that freedom of expression
has nothing to do with language.
And, if the first musical language I had learnt
was the Galician bagpipe, why shouldn't I allow myself
to do with the Galician bagpipe whatever was running through my mind?
And there started my new path.
The world of jazz, halfway
between classical music and traditional music.
There's a quote from T.S. Eliot that says that we would never stop exploring,
and that by the end of our exploration we would return to the starting point
and discover the place for the first time.
That's what helped me...
Going back to New York after leaving and returning...
Living in the limbo helped me to keep perspective.
Living between two completely different cultures,
between two instruments that occupied different areas of my brain,
helped me see that everything is connected,
and mostly understand that roots travel with you.
It doesn't matter where you are or who you are.
It's in your way of talking and expressing,
it's in your way of communicating, in my case, in my instrument,
in the Galician bagpipe.
And the roots, if they come with me, they root again
in the place I choose to live.
And from that root something comes out, connected to your past,
but also staring towards the future
and absorbing everything around it.
Today, after 9 years in New York,
and feeling like Robert Park's Marginal Man,
living nowhere and always in the middle,
I feel very proud to understand that the sky is the limit,
as the Americans say, and there's always land
to put down roots.
If it's not here, then abroad.
If it's not at my mother's house, then in New York's Village.
But only ourselves put the limits.