Meet Leonardo Porro (aka Ledo)

We recently connected with Leonardo Porro (aka Ledo) and have shared our conversation below.

Leonardo, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.
It’s hard to tell when it really happened. I’ve been a musician all my life and now it’s hard to look back and identify a specific moment in which I said “That’s it, this is what I’m supposed to be doing”. I guess it happened gradually throughout a very dark moment of my adolescence when I felt truly lost and aimless. Purposeless, we could say. Since I was a kid I’d been bullied at school and even in high school I was struggling to find my own identity. Everyone around me seemed to be more focused, already on the “right track” (classic teenage phase, I later realized). It didn’t help that I actually was different. I had different interests, I wasn’t particularly gifted socially, and most importantly I couldn’t really play soccer (a vital part of society, if you’re growing up in Italy). A true recipe for disaster. When I was 16, I suddenly became very ill, as one of my facial nerves was burned by the combination of cold weather and a particularly resilient virus (I’m not gonna try to spell it). As a result, I spent most of that school term between home, hospitals, and multiple doctors’ offices. Needless to say, I had a lot of free time, that I spent alone at home mostly stoned by heavy drugs and medicines that I had to take for my treatment. That’s when I picked up the guitar that was collecting dust in the corner of my room. And then, there was light. I can’t even begin to describe what happened inside of me. It’s like something, a long lost part of me had been re-discovered. A severed limb was reattached. Since then, the tables turned. After searching for a long time among all my different interests (and I had many, just like now), I had found my calling. Both my self-esteem and my confidence grew. I came out of my shell. I started cultivating friendships. I started dating (stupid I know, but a milestone for me). I finally realized that I mattered, that I had a voice and things to say. That’s when I discovered songwriting. And I said to myself “This is what I am and I want to do this for the rest of my life”. A few years later, after attending their summer programs, I applied to Berklee College of Music and was accepted with a Songwriting and Vocal Scholarship. The only Italian male singer in the whole school. And now, almost 8 years from that moment, I’m producing and writing for record labels and international artists.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I’ve always been a curious and explorative kind of mind. My parents, especially my mother, saw to that from an early age, literally showering me with hobbies, creative inputs (music, cinema, visual art, books, and more…), and various disciplines. When I was a kid, I was particularly attracted to myths and legends. I must have read the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey” dozens of times. Hector and Ulysses were my favorite characters. The first symbolized duty and dedication, and the second one wit, adaptation, and resilience. Ironically, these are the skills I found myself valuing the most throughout my career thus far.

During my time at Berklee College of Music, I had a taste of everything the musical world had to offer. I let myself be contaminated by different cultures and musical approaches. I still had to find my own dimension among such a talented group of people. That’s where I truly learned the craft. As I was developing my songwriting skills (my primary focus being a recording artist), I learned how to play piano in addition to guitar, bass, and violin, I dived deep into music production and orchestration, I trained as a 360-degree composer, I studied music business and its nuances. While a lot of people would often criticize my all-round approach by defining it as superficial, I kept on going, as I’d learned the biggest lesson of all: in today’s world, so globalized, entangled, and ever-changing, the greatest skill one can have is the ability to adapt. And so I did.
Even throughout the pandemic, I constantly shifted my course, following the wind, planning but not too much ahead. That’s when Ledo came in.

Ledo is not just my artist project and my artist name, it’s what I am. A 360-degree musical project that embraces all the aspects of music I grew to love. Since my graduation from Berklee Magna C*m Laude in 2020, I released the “First Blood” EP, my first record as a solo artist on all streaming platforms. I worked as a songwriter, top-liner, and music producer for a growing number of international artists (both in Europe and the US). The projects I took part in have been released under many different record labels, publishers, and distributors (Warner Music, The Orchard, Frequency Music, ADA, to name a few…). I composed jingles and soundtracks for national television in Italy. As of now, living between Los Angeles and Milan (Italy), I’m currently working as a producer and author for various artists while starting to develop a social media presence through Instagram and TikTok (work in progress). My first release with a Major Label as a producer is set to happen in November with an emerging Italian artist.

As I said though, my interests go well beyond music. When I was still in college, I founded alongside two other students the first Climate-Change Musical Initiative at Berklee, called The MAMA Initiative. We worked on several climate and social-related projects in the Boston Area joined by students from both Harvard and MIT. We organized concerts with the goal of supporting climate justice. That’s when my activist work for climate started. I was later hired by the World Bank Group as a creative consultant for their climate-related musical projects. We organized and helped supporting concerts and events all over the world. At PRE-COP26, which took place in Milan in 2021, we launched Music4CLimate, an ever-growing initiative by the World Bank to support and empower musicians and their climate-related struggles all over the world.

I just turned 27, and now more than ever I want to push further and build my own future as a creative mind, within music and beyond.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Due to the internet, social media, and globalization, today’s world is filled to the brim with incredibly talented people, showcasing their skills every day through videos, music, and general media. How can one find his/her/their path, dimension, and/or place in all of this? The answer is vision, determination, and adaptability. Once you find that one “thing”, the something that makes you unique (and that only comes after exposing yourself to plenty of different inputs, hobbies, and experiences), learn how you can use it in many different – if not all – scenarios. Use your ultimate goal as a “destination”, a general idea of a plan, but do not try to plan the whole journey ahead. Life is unpredictable and it has its own way of leading you toward your future. Do not fight it, embrace it instead. Follow the tides while still being the one at the sail. You have to call your own shots. Be versatile like Ulysses and determined like Hector, and you’ll be fine. At least, this is what worked for me.

Do you think it’s better to go all in on our strengths or to try to be more well-rounded by investing effort on improving areas you aren’t as strong in?
The world we live in today, and society as well, are constantly shifting, changing, and evolving. Trends come and go and what’s unpopular today could very well be popular tomorrow. There is no way of knowing what the next day will bring. Both in career and in one’s personal life. What the COVID-19 outbreak has taught us is that the world can literally change overnight and that all the career/life planning in the world that we all value so much could be garbage material the next day. Lots of people found themselves stranded with no way of pursuing their work and career. I too was faced with the problem. And yet, the set of skills I’ve studied and developed (from songwriting and recording, all the way to arranging, production, and promotion) helped me shape the course of my career, and thus adapting to the resources at my disposal. All of this to say, I do believe developing one’s strengths is important indeed. I would never state the opposite. To learn one’s strengths and weaknesses it’s stage one of a successful career, many have told me. That being said, equal time should be invested in honing those skills that are vital and that one is not too familiar with. The missing pieces. Those are the ones who will make it or break it in the end. At Berklee, I started off as a singer-songwriter and I came out of it also as a composer, arranger, music producer, and multi-instrumentalist. Thanks to all the skills I had acquired, I was able to produce a fully finished record and release it during the pandemic while most people’s musical journey got frozen. All of this from my bedroom, without relying on anyone else but myself. Not only that, I was working as songwriter, top-liner, producer, and composer in other people’s projects. While they were somewhat dependent on me doing my part, I was completely independent.

That made it for me. That’s what I value most: adaptability. Adaptability means to develop a wide set of skills in order to withstand whatever comes your way career and life-wise. When it comes to teamwork (essential in today’s music industry and many others), you can always bring new and innovative ideas to the table while being able to speak everyone’s work language. When it comes to your own work, you can eliminate compromise and truly fulfill your creative vision. In the long run, I found that most of the successful people I’ve heard of and currently admire didn’t stop at one skill. They developed an encyclopedia of talents and knowledge that helped them rise to the top of their fields.

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