NEW
DEMOS

MY "WHY" IN MUSIC

     Piano was a language I learned before both English and Spanish, becoming the primary way I express myself and transmit emotion to the people around me. Though musical collaboration in high school and college has showed me the power of music to create connections and elevate one's spirit, escaping in it to fill voids meant to be filled by other things has also showed me how detrimental it can be, leading me to better understand why so many artists go astray in terms of mental health and substance abuse, which I was lucky enough to avoid. Using this experience, I hope to create music in a new way, music that's main goal is to elevate one's soul, face hardship rather than escape it, and reveal how the benefits of music can mask its adverse effects.

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MUSIC'S POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE EFFECTS​​​​​​

     Among many, the most meaningful positive experience I have been part of has been creating a music club at my high school and playing for elderly residents and memory care patients at Kline Galland Home. Initially, I explored musical service on my own. Playing for the residents was overwhelming in the sense that I did not know how to interact with the community and underwhelming in the sense that the my performances were concluded with only a few, weak claps. But after coming back each Friday, I began to understand that the residents' appearance may not been what I thought. At one point, Mr. Dick even asked to play the drums with me, and we did! We ended up improvising Bossa Nova for the audience. Eventually, I performed with members of the music club I founded at Seattle Prep, and our musical/personal growth became a source of joy for all of us, inspiring us to return to our new friends weekly. It was at this moment where I realized that another component of music's transcendance is its ability to break down barriers between even the most unlikely of connections.

     Until my first year of college, I had only experienced the positive effects of music. Difficult personal situations led me to feel extremely empty and escape into music to feel better. Though at first, I did use music to express my pain and face what had happened, it began to feel so life-giving that everything else felt useless, leading me to ignore other responsibilities that were also life-giving. This attempt to fill an initial void with music ended up fixing some of it and creating new voids that made me to feel even more empty. After a certain point, music became an escape and then a cage almost that trapped me in these negative emotions. It was not until I had made the difficult decision to stop creating and listening to music for a while that I was able to return to the "real world" feel more full again. All in all, it is just important to create and listen to music with moderation and use it as a means of elevating one's soul rather than escaping a harsh reality.

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HIGH SCHOOL

     Under high school band instructors, Sarah Bost and Elliot Weeks, I expanded my repertoire from classical to jazz. Apart from the relationships I formed with them and peers, improvisation was by far the most valuable asset I gained in the Seattle Prep Jazz Band. In 2021, I learned "Dear Theodosia" from Hamilton by ear and began improvising over it. After a few sessions, I'd created my first song, an instrumental parody now published as "Daydreams," feeling a sense of freedom coming from creating rather than solely interpreting.

     In sophomore year of high school, I fell in love with composition in the classical style I had been learning for over a decade. Spending up to two hours a day improvising for the majority of my sophomore and juinor years of high school culminated in the 4 classical ballades I released in October 2023, "Soto Parra Ballades," significantly inspired by Frederic Chopin's ballades which I performed privately and publicly, internationally. At the same time, I began exploring Bossa Nova and Synthwave, leading me to release an 80s-style remix of Lena Raine's "Infinite Amethyst," amassing 30,000+ streams on social media platforms. I began producing with FL Studio in early 2024 and released an album of 13 demos by December, "XXIV." 

COLLEGE

     For years, I believed instrumental music was superior to music with lyrics because words limited expression, but after becoming enthralled with Luis Miguel's 80s Latin Pop ballads, I realized lyrics give more direction to the music to drive a more powerful message home, leading me to begin songwriting in the summer before college and begin vocal training at Brown University under Tyler Cesario in Oct 2024. In a matter of months, I was accepted into the Brown University Applied Music Program for Voice, allowing me to take part masterclasses with grammy-awarded artists and performances. I also enjoyed collaborating with classmates on music projects and decided to pursue music making more independently to allow myself to focus on building a career within the medical sciences. 

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