We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Christian Zezza a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Christian, so excited to have you with us today. So much we can chat about, but one of the questions we are most interested in is how you have managed to keep your creativity alive.
Getting out of the comfort zone, whatever it may be as far as professional or personal life areas, is what I think represents the main element that helps people pushing their abilities beyond any boundaries, including creativity in the form of artistic expression. Besides any natural given talent, everybody may encounter the so called “writer’s block” sometimes in life, making the inspiration flow more or less stuck. In my case, working on a daily basis as a composer-producer to serve the sync music licensing industry with constant new material, experiencing writer’s blocks can be a very common situation, which I try to avoid by constantly learning and experimenting new production techniques, keep studying new concepts and put in practice as much as I can. As I said before, this represents getting out of my comfort zone, being in the student’s perspective and not laying in the comfort state of what I already know and do, which may lead to kill creativity sooner or later.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I’m a guitarist, producer-composer and music educator working in the Music Industry for over 20 years.
I graduated in contemporary guitar and music harmony at the Academy of Music in my hometown Modena, Italy, then completing a certified guitar program at Musicians Institute, Hollywood, CA. As a guitarist, I toured and recorded with hundreds of artists around Italy, Europe and U.S., also working as a musical instruments’ demonstrator for many relevant international Companies, as well as a solo artist. My guitar recordings have been included in some of the most prestigious international Theatrical Musicals, such as the worldwide touring musical “The portrait of Dorian Gray”, a Pierre Cardin Production.
I’ve been featured in several international highly distinguished music events, conventions, press conferences and international competitions, always playing a critical role for the highly distinguished companies and projects I’ve been involved in.
As a music composer/producer for TV-Film and Media applications, which represents my main creative focus, I’ve been in partnership with some of the most relevant international Music Publishing Companies, providing exclusive custom music for TV/Film and general broadcasting. My music has been featured in some popular reality TV shows such as “The Voice”, “Gordon Ramsay – Uncharted”, and major TV networks such as National Geographic, Disney Channel, Fox Sports, and distributed globally in more than 40 countries.
I was awarded by multiple international Music Film Festivals and organizations such as Hollywood Music in Media Awards, Intercontinental Music Awards, Oniros Film Festival, TMA Awards, Akademia Music Awards, The Thing in the Basement Horror Fest, and many more.
As a music educator, I worked full time in several music academies for many years, then focusing my teaching career into the authorship of digital educational music video courses and e-books; I am the author of 4 educational books and 7 educational video-courses related to a wide range of music subjects.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
More than the technical skills or specific qualities, I would refer to personal awareness areas in order to make the journey as smooth and enjoyable as possible. The following personal awareness areas are some of my favorite to be listed, so here they are:
1) Work on your strengths rather than your weaknesses. We all have our distinctive strengths but for some reasons there’s a common tendency to be focused on the aspects of ourselves that we don’t like. It’s just a matter of shifting the perspective and follow our natural abilities.
2) Ask yourself what’s the real purpose behind what you do. If you’re trying to escape your insecurities by wearing a mask so that the rest of the world may appreciate you better, well you are off road! Acceptance of who you are is always the key and again, work on your strengths rather than your weaknesses.
3) Don’t rush the process but trust every little step you take. Enjoy every little moment on your journey, sometimes if you run too fast you may miss all the treasures around.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
Speaking of human qualities, I tend to create the best and organic relations with no-ego type of people. I would say that the first and foremost quality that I look into a potential business partner is a genuine human spirit. As far as business qualities, I guess I would choose someone with a strong passion and work ethic, no procrastination, a strong sense for achieving goals and attention to detail. In general, someone who is a team player and who can contribute with its own best qualities to compensate whatever lacking areas the other team members may experience.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.christianzezza.it
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/christianzezza.guitarist
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-zezza-b17123bb/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChristianZezza
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuBnCBBWvC8A0g8cuXFve-Q
