Carlos Ordiano is a talented arranger, pianist and composer who has given us the honor of talking to us and telling us a bit about his career.
Carlos was born in Southern California and was raised in a family of Latino parents who have always loved the music of their roots, which led the artist to be continuously exposed to these rhythms from an early age.
With a consolidated career, his specialty is Latin jazz piano and he has a long list of collaborations with big names in the California music industry.
Carlos’ beginnings in music
After thanking the invitation to this interview, Carlos told us a little bit about how his interest in music began since he was a child. He told us that no one in his family was engaged in music professionally, but one day an uncle of his gave him a toy piano when he was five years old.
He loved the gift so much he told his father he wanted to devote himself to music as a young child, which led him to hire a piano instructor for his son so that he could learn to play the instrument as soon as possible. The problem was that the child only learned by watching his instructor’s hands, so he never learned to read music. The day came when the teacher gave up and told Carlos’ father to find someone else, since he could do nothing for the boy.
After that disappointment, Carlos stopped playing for a year until he resumed his interest in music and again took piano lessons, obtaining much better results than the last time.
During his learning process, he played a little bit bass and trumpet, but no instrument ever became as important as the piano.
His brothers Ruben and Oscar were also taking music lessons in parallel and decided to follow the path of music like Carlos. Ruben is a bass player and Oscar is a guitarist.
When he was 19, he went to study recording engineering at Golden West College, but he found this career very boring, so he decided to learn to read and compose music, since he did not have much experience with these areas yet. This is how he started playing in a Latin jazz band in which he learned a lot more about music in general and got a lot of support from the band leader and, of course, from his parents.
Groups
Carlos has participated in several groups from various genres and the first one was formed by him and his uncles when he was a child. The music they made consisted of cumbias and rancheras back then.
When he arrived at school, he began to focus his attention on Latin jazz, salsa, son montuno and other Latin genres, which led him to participate in groups based on these rhythms. In fact, he also began to be a replacement in several salsa groups when a member was missing. This is how he gained the experience he needed to work with other artists and orchestras in different areas.
Such is the case of the jazz-funk group Modern Time, with which he plays in a small Californian club every Wednesday and Sunday. From time to time, he also plays with his brother Rubén in Santa Ana and, on these occasions, they call themselves The Ordiano Brothers.
Another important group he became involved with was La Santa Cecilia. La Marisoul, their lead singer, had a big band project and wanted his friend Carlos to arrange some of their new songs, which gave a unique touch to the chords of each piece of music.
Santa Ana Community College
As for his time at Santa Ana Community College, Carlos confesses that he was not a very good student, since he had no interest in subjects such as English or mathematics. He was only interested in music and that is what he focused all his attention on. This caused him to take a long time to graduate and obtain the academic degree he was opting for.
After searching many institutes, he finally obtained a scholarship at Cal State Long Beach College thanks to which he studied things like orchestration for big bands and small groups. During his studies at this school, he only had to pay for parking and textbooks he needed. His stay at this school helped him create many important connections in the industry until finally graduating in 2010 and earning his bachelor’s degree in jazz piano.
To clinch the matter, Carlos has pointed out that the academic part is important to have more specialized vocabulary in music and build links with other colleagues, but at the end of the day, this is not necessary for a musician to be good. In fact, he said that many of the musicians he most admires do not have any formal academic training, so it is not strictly necessary to have a university degree in that field.
Read also: Large projects of Mexican pianist and composer Irving Flores
