Ravinia 2023 Issue 3

PATRICK GIPSON/RAVINIA After improvising an encore to her 2012 appearance at Ravinia with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, performing Grieg’s Piano Concerto, Gabriela Montero accepts an enthusiastic ovation from the front row. “ MENTORING AND TEACHING HAVE MADE MY PLAYING DEVELOP—IT’S AN ACTIVE PROCESS ON BOTH PARTS. ” I I I I WHAT INTRIGUED researchers about the inner workings of Mon- tero’s little grey cells is what makes her especially notable among her cohort of top classical musicians: The Venezuelan-born pianist has a knack for extraordinary improvisation. She’s known for adding an off-the-cuff coda to the end of her live performances. Some of her discography features extemporaneous playing, too, includ- ing 2006’s Bach and Beyond , 2008’s Baroque Improvisations , and a 2015 release that comprises her own com- position, Ex Patria , along with Rach- maninoff and three improv tracks. Although a rarity in the classical world of the 20th and 21st centuries, Montero’s spontaneous creations put her in amazing company: Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert were all masters of improvisation. Given her remarkable status among modern-day musicians, she was a natural subject for Dr. Limb, who had previously spent years studying the brains of jazz and hip-hop artists, both of whom are renowned for freestyling. As the pub- lished study notes, “Gabriela Montero is unique because she is a world-class classical pianist who not only perfects her performance of standard Western art repertoire but is also equally active in generative musical activities like improvisation.” In preparation for the actual test- ing session at Johns Hopkins Uni- versity School of Medicine, Montero practiced playing a custom-made MIDI keyboard while laying supine in a mock scanner. After she became comfortable with that, “I ended up in an MRI machine for about two hours while they examined my brain during three different tasks,” she tells Ravinia Magazine. “They wanted to see how my brain behaves when I play a memorized piece, then a scale, then an improvisation. I never knew which order would be given. They wanted to see what happens when my brains switches randomly from one [musical approach] to another. “What they found was really amazing,” she continues. “When I im- provise, what I call ‘getting out of the way’ means that a different part of my brain is activated—one which doesn’t really have anything to do with music. My visual cortex goes crazy, and that’s what I improvise with. “It’s beautiful, because it kind of explains something: When I was a little girl, I would say to my father, ‘I have two brains.’ I’d play the reper- toire, and then I’d go into this kind of trance where I improvise, and it’s very complex and I couldn’t explain it. It’s as though I do have two brains.” MONTERO’S MUSICAL biography begins even before her memories do. Born in Caracas in 1970, she received a toy piano for Christmas when she was seven months old. Her parents soon noticed something. “All I wanted to do, in my crib, was play this little piano,” she says. “By the time I was a year-and-a-half, I had this repertoire of children’s songs, lullabies, the na- tional anthem of Venezuela. Every- thing that I heard, everything that my mother would sing to me, I’d go to this piano and reproduce it.” Her parents quickly recognized they were raising a prodigy, even though nobody in their family had musical skill. “It was quite a curve ball for them. They really didn’t know what they were doing,” Montero ex- plains. “They weren’t at all connected to classical music. But like all loving parents, they tried to make the best decisions possible to guide my talents.” After 8-year-old Gabriela made her concert debut in Caracas, the Family Montero left Venezuela for the United States, pursuing private education. Still, her path forward was not always smooth. She ended up with a teacher in Miami “who was not the right person for me. It was just closed-mindedness, really, and not understanding the value of sponta- neous composition.” That led to an existential strug- gle that caused her to question her relationship with music. “I actually stopped playing for a few years. I turned my back on it completely,” she continues. “And then, out of des- peration, I sent a tape to the Royal RAVINIA.ORG • RAVINIA MAGAZINE 7