- I'm from Caracas, Venezuela and I'm a composer, performer, and also improviser, which it kind of encapsulates all of these things together.

I began playing the piano when I was just seven months old.

It sounds a bit crazy, but my parents gave me a little toy piano and my parents were very surprised when they noticed that all I wanted to do was play with the piano and also try and pick out the tunes that my mom would sing to me at night to put me to sleep.

So by the time I was 18 months old, I had a repertoire of lullabies or Venezuelan songs, or the national anthem of Venezuela, and it was pretty clear that this was what I was born to do.

I kind of struggled with finding my own reasons for being an artist.

I think when you're born with a very obvious ability for one thing, it's very easy to get channeled into a life doing that.

But I think you have to come to a point where you really assess what it means to you and what you want to create with that talent and also how you want to live.

So I had many detours, totally zigzag kind of road, but I think that basically it's kind of enriched the way that I not only feel with the instrument, but also the way that I use music to communicate stories about my life and others' lives as well.

I am so Venezuelan, even though I didn't live there for most of my life and I think it permeates into everything that I do, everything that I feel, and everything that I compose, and the way that I play as well.

I think it kind of affords a certain spontaneity and also a very, very rhythmical backbone.

For me, music is not only melodic, but the rhythmical, let's say column of music is always very clear in what I perform and what I compose.

And I guess in that way, being Venezuelan and being Latin American, it really influences how I perceive music and how I also, you know, share it.

I will be playing my Latin concerto.

It's a three movement piece.

The first movement is a Mambo, the last movement is an Allegro Venezolano, and the second movement has a beautiful duet with a clarinet.

And it's kind of an homage to Argentina in a way.

And you hear influences of Cuban music or Venezuelan music, you know, music from the whole continent.

But more than anything, it's a statement as a Latin American about how, what we hear and what seduces of us, of Latin America is very much the surface.

And underneath that there are so many dark elements that don't allow us to fulfill our potential, that people tend to not want to look at that.

So it's a piece that initially you might think is quite fun and it's very virtuosic, and it is fun and it is virtuosic, but at the same time, it's kind of juxtaposed with these shadows that lurk behind that beauty and that, you know exotic color of Latin America.

So it's a bittersweet piece.

Carlos Miguel Prieto and I have known each other for very long time.

He's a real ally in so many ways, an amazing musician, an amazing human being.

We have already played the Latin Concerto several times around the world and we have many other concert programmed with my piece and I'm super excited to play it with the Minnesota Orchestra, because it's such a great orchestra and it's wonderful to go there.

I really look forward to bringing some of these Latin American heat waves, let's say, to the cold of Minnesota.