Da Capo Conversations 2.0 with Angélica Negrón and Carla Lucero

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 174: Da Capo Conversations 2.0 with Angélica Negrón and Carla Lucero

Looking for a way to listen to diverse creators and to support equity in the arts? Tune in weekly to For Good Measure!

Today we revisit Angélica Negrón's and Carla Lucero's perspectives on their musical journey and background. If you enjoyed today’s conversation and want to know more about Angélica Negrón and Carla Lucero, check them out here and here. Parts of this episode originally premiered in November 2021, click here and in February 2024, click here.

This podcast is made possible in part by a grant from the California Arts Council and generous donors, like you. Want to support For Good Measure and E4TT? Make a tax-deductible donation or sign up for our newsletter, and subscribe to the podcast!

Intro music: “Trifolium” by Gabriela Ortiz, performed by E4TT (Ilana Blumberg, violin; Abigail Monroe, cello; Margaret Halbig, piano), as part of “Below the Surface: Music by Women Composers,” January 29, 2022
Outro music: “Lake Turkana” by Marcus Norris, performed by E4TT (Margaret Halbig, piano), as part of “Alchemy,” October 15, 2021

Transcription courtesy of Otter.ai.

Co-Producer, Host, and E4TT co-founder: Nanette McGuinness
Co-Producer and Audio Engineer: Stephanie M. Neumann
Podcast Cover Art: Brennan Stokes
Interns: Renata Volchinskaya, Sam Mason, Yoyo Hung-Yu Lin

Chapters

• 0:31 Today we revisit Angélica Negrón's and Carla Lucero's perspectives on their musical journey and background. Here's what Angélica Negrón had to say.
• 3:39 Here's what Carla Lucero had to say.

Transcript

Nanette McGuinness  00:00

[INTRO MUSIC] Welcome to For Good Measure, an interview series celebrating diverse composers and other creative artists, sponsored by a grant from the California Arts Council. I'm Nanette McGuinness, Artistic Executive Director of Ensemble for These Times. In this week's episode, we begin our Da Capo Conversations 2.0, a mini series where we'll be giving familiar segments a topical twist. [INTRO MUSIC ENDS] Today we revisit Angélica Negrón's and Carla Lucero's perspectives on their musical journey and background. Here's what Angélica Negrón had to say.

Angélica Negrón  00:41

I started playing piano when I was young, around seven, and I would mostly play the songs from Disney musicals, like a Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and a little bit of classical, but just mostly those Disney tunes. And then I started playing violin. I started at the Conservatory of Music in Puerto Rico, which is where I was born and raised, and I played in orchestras my whole life, and I always loved violin, but never saw myself as a concert violinist, but I just kept doing it because I really loved music, but I was really curious about the sounds around me and the environment, also really curious about the other instruments in the orchestra, but I just didn't know what that meant for me. I always played music by that white men, and even though I obviously had a love for that music and I enjoyed playing it, there was always this kind of missing piece that my curiosity as a as a person was not, was not really being fulfilled in the music I was making. So I started playing music in bands, mostly very active in the in the DIY scene in San Juan in in Puerto Rico, and started making my own music while I was also studying violin. And then around that same time, I started studying film and the University of Puerto Rico, that's where I met a lot of my my friends that I was making music with. And through films, I discovered film music, and then through film music, I discovered the music of living composers. At the same time, also, I was listening to a lot of Bang on a Can records, Chronos Quartet, just a lot of discoveries of things that were really important for for me as an artist and and through that, I I realized that there were living people making music, and that My curiosity for the sounds around me and for other instruments did not mean that I just wasn't sure what instrument I wanted to play, and that I was lost as a as a performer, but mostly that what I wanted to do was to write for all these instruments and and also, at the same time, found out that there was composition department in the conservatory. It was very small. It was all male at that time. So I joined the composition department. I switched from violin to composing, and yeah, and that was it. I kind of never looked back after that.

Nanette McGuinness  03:39

Here's what Carla Lucero had to say.

Carla Lucero  03:42

Well, I was told that I came out of the womb as a musical person.

Nanette McGuinness  03:48

[laughs]

Carla Lucero  03:49

My parents told me that when I was a baby, they'd be singing a tune, you know, on the radio, and there's a radio going, and they'd be singing, and my little hand would pop up and over their mouths if they hit the wrong note. [laughs] Rude. So they would, they would purposely, some... sometimes sing the wrong notes just to watch, you know, to see what...

Nanette McGuinness  04:21

Your reaction!

Carla Lucero  04:22

Yeah, yeah. [laughs] And then also, my dad had an accordion, and he said that he would play high notes, and, you know, something kind of peppy, and I would be very happy. And then he played the low notes, and I'd start crying. And, you know, so they knew that I was very musical, you know, at a very young age. So they started me on piano lessons at four. Mm, hmm, four years old.

Nanette McGuinness  04:48

Early!

Carla Lucero  04:48

Yeah, early, because they couldn't keep me away from musical instruments. They'd lose me in department stores and find me, you know, and those old department stores. Were there actually musical instruments. They find me like reaching up trying to play the piano and whatever was there, I outgrew my teacher pretty quickly, at about nine, and then then I was officially on the track to become a concert pianist start taking lessons from from another amazing teacher. And so when I auditioned for Cal Arts, I got in as a piano major. All throughout this time though, my my special childhood and adolescence, I was writing little tunes. You know, I was very I always had music in my head, and I would because I had the piano lessons, I could jot down melodies and and all of that. What I found out, though, in college, later on, was that I wasn't being trained, theoretically, you know, I was being trained as a technician.

Nanette McGuinness  05:58

Correct.

Carla Lucero  05:59

Yeah, but really not understanding what was happening, the theory behind what I was playing and then writing, you know, I basically, you know, they were melodies and but I, but I didn't understand, like I would write a compliment, but I really didn't understand what I was writing, so, but I knew I wanted To be a composer, I and I was, I'm deathly afraid of performing.

Nanette McGuinness  06:25

Oh...

Carla Lucero  06:26

Yeah, lots of performance anxiety, so. But I thought a, I didn't think there were any living composers. And B, I thought, my God, you know, woman, Oh my I'm nuts. So my first year of being a piano major, I audited composition courses, theory classes in particular, because I thought, you know, what is this? You know, what is this, you know, the theory and all of that. And I audited the classes and understood what the professors were expecting of their students, so I put my portfolio together in the first year as a piano major, and then transferred, or made my change my major to composition, and they got me in as a second year student. Got a pretty good portfolio, but as soon as I got there, and I noticed this when I was auditing the classes, there's not a woman in sight, you know, not, not any students, nor the professors, you know, all men. And to add to that, no people of color whatsoever.

Nanette McGuinness  07:39

Yeah, yeah.

Carla Lucero  07:40

The only time I would encounter people of color was in more of, like the general music courses, you know, people who are not really specializing, students not specializing in either performance or composition. It's just, you know, overall...

Nanette McGuinness  07:59

General Ed.

Carla Lucero  08:00

...education, yeah, and yeah. But in terms of my fellow students in my major, I was the only woman and I was the only person of color.

Nanette McGuinness  08:12

Wow.

Carla Lucero  08:13

It was insane. And I remember when I told my parents that I had changed my major, my mom said, I'm gonna kill myself, you know, swear she, she thought my life was over because I wasn't going to be a pianist. And, you know, this is they invested everything in, in that dream. But then also, and then my dad asked, you know, are there living composers? You know, it was like, it's like, it's like, was like me saying I want to be a unicorn, basically.

Nanette McGuinness  08:45

Right, right.

Carla Lucero  08:46

You know, it was really difficult, because I felt... my parents always supported me, you know, no matter what. But this was a real, real hard left, you know, for them.

Nanette McGuinness  09:00

Yeah.

Carla Lucero  09:01

As for my professors, they were, they were supportive. And there were, there were women in the performance Yeah, as performance majors, a lot of them, but yeah, just in composition, I was it. So yeah...

Nanette McGuinness  09:18

Wow.

Carla Lucero  09:19

And then I learned about Pauline Oliveros, and I thought, "Oh, my God, there is a woman composer!" So I was like, Oh, I gotta, you know, find out more about her and... and that kind of led me on a journey where I could find some role models. But in terms of having a role model there during my education. No, I didn't have that.

Nanette McGuinness  09:44

[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for listening to For Good Measure's Da Capo Conversations and a special thank you to our guests for joining us today. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our podcast by clicking on the subscribe button, and support us by sharing it with your friends, posting about it on social media, and leaving us a rating and a review. To learn more about E4TT, our concert season online and in the Bay Area, or to make a tax-deductible donation, please visit us at e4tt.org. This podcast is made possible in part by a grant from the California Arts Council and generous donors like you. For Good measure is produced by Nanette McGuinness and Ensemble for These Times, and design by Brennan Stokes, with special thanks to co-producer and audio engineer Stephanie M. Neumann. Remember to keep supporting equity in the arts and tune in next week "for good measure." [OUTRO MUSIC ENDS]