Carmen da Silva

Carmen, daughter of a diplomat family, had an early introduction to music. She remembers when she was six, and her grandmother played a song that sounded so sad and beautiful at the same time. She tried to pick out some of the notes on the piano, but it turned out to be harder than expected. However, this planted the idea of playing the piano, and she began to take private piano lessons. At age 10, she was playing piano and some guitar, and she felt that music was a great way to express her feelings. “Music is so direct,” she says. “Within a second, you can go from sad to happy or the other way around, just by using notes and chords. Movies, paintings and dancing are also wonderful, but none of those can do that.” Having a father who worked as a diplomat, she and her family lived in several countries in Europe and Latin America, which instilled an interest for many music genres and cultures. “It was a great privilege to experience new counties, but at the same time I also felt so sad and a bit alone every time we left for a new country” Carmen says. But the piano helped out. She started to make her own versions of the songs that she and her friends used to listen to and send mp3 files to each one of them, which made keeping contact both exiting and fun. Now, many years later, Carmen knows how to play that song her grandmother played for her when she was still a young child. She later learned that the song was “Unchained Melody,” by The Righteous Brothers.