Interviews

Walt Ribeiro: Perfectly Orchestrated

By Marcos Bernal-Salas

Thursday, April 5, 2007

What’s the definition of an artist? Like beauty, some may say that art and its interpretation is on the eyes of the beholder. That might seem fair. But what happens when the artist is a musician. People can’t see his or her art by playing the latest CD or MP3 tracks in their players or PC laptop. It’s hard to determine how a musician becomes an artist or whether the artist ultimately becomes a musician. But even more surprising is to encounter a combination of both.

Walt Ribeiro fits that description. Clearly, I run the risk of labeling him at such an early stage of his career but his CD debut ‘I.I’, released back in October 2006, is an impressive effort from a young musician. It’s also amazing and unexpected how Ribeiro went from Graphic Design to Music Composition to everyone’s surprise within one semester at college. And things have developed very well for him after making the decision. “I didn’t even tell anyone about this whole idea. Not even after working on it for two years. I didn’t want anyone [to shut the idea down].” It should come to no surprise then that his perseverance, and now known-well-kept secret, has made ‘I.I’ a well received success within the greater Philadelphia and New Jersey area.

Ribeiro’s ‘I.I’ plays out like a film soundtrack fusing strong and calming melodies that interact with one another. “That was the one thing I knew for sure [I wanted in the CD]. Though the ‘Prelude’ of the CD wasn’t written after 30 hours of composing”; Ribeiro revealed. The listener is introduced to high strings, roaring percussion and bass throughout the tracks aptly titled ‘Wounds’, ‘Spectre’ and the ‘SQ’ series; which are haunting and soothing at the same time.

‘I.I’ is an 80 piece orchestra that is definitely a one man show. Ribeiro produced, mixed and orchestrated the whole CD where notation programs and digital software replaced the live audio band. This fact might make a huge difference in a classical music CD but that’s not the case here. Ribeiro’s musical passion and creativity lead him to use the latest digital technology to release a CD that might have seemed unrealistic and impossible to accomplish. “I began writing the score in 2005, completed by April 2006, and then had a product with no one to perform it.”

But where does Ribeiro’s passion come from? Why does a young composer go for the classical music outlet? One might be surprised to find that the 23-year-old composer has a great array of different musical influences that go from Tchaikovsky to Bjork. “I care about music in general whether is rap or techno, or classical or folk, or blues. Classical music, in a sense is not even look at it [these days]. My drive is to push the envelope and change things a bit. There’s no new music out there but I have the opportunity to show people that there is a way, and need, to create new music.”

Walt Ribeiro’s unique approach to music, classical for that matter, is not just impressive but also an inspirational account of that everything is possible if you put your mind to it. The outcome for Ribeiro, and selected audiences, plays like a grand orchestra that should not go without the greatest of applause.

For more on Walt Ribeiro click here