Venezuelan musician Alí Bello has become one of the best Latin music violinists in New York, so we could not miss the opportunity to talk to him and learn as much as we could about his fascinating story. The young man has given his best to become a true icon of Latin Jazz in his current city of residence, so do not miss this great conversation.
Alí’s beginnings in the world of music thanks to El Sistema
From a young age, Alí became interested in music, which led him to join the National System of Youth and Children’s Orchestras and Choirs of Venezuela, where he studied classical music as an extracurricular activity. This in order for Alí and his classmates to be busy in any activity until their parents came to pick them up after work.
This was when an orchestra or school of music was formed clase to his father’s work, so Bello was enrolled in these classes from 2 to 5 p.m. after school. So it went for him since he was in kindergarten, and he learned to play the xylophone and the recorder. When the boy was seven years old, the school orchestra located in La Rinconada, Caracas, was officially created, but due to how small Ali was, the only instrument the school could assign him according to his size was the violin, which he keeps playing diligently to this day.
After many years of being part of the National Youth Orchestra, he got ahead with his musical career and decided to go to the United States to continue his university studies and train as a professional musician.
Other instruments besides the violin
In addition to the violin, Alí also plays a lot of percussion, since he considers it very important. He thinks every folk and Latin musician must handle percussion as efficient as possible and each of its rhythms in order to internalize the style they want to play on any instrument.
“Percussion and singing have always fascinated me, so I try to devote myself to both even a little bit, but it is undeniable that the violin has always been my main instrument. I’ve tried to focus all styles and everything I work on towards the violin to turn it into the main element,” the musician added on this subject.
How the opportunity to study in the United States came about
Initially, Alí was supported by his violin teacher Margaret Pardee, who taught at the Juilliard School and went to Venezuela to give master classes. It was Pardee who encouraged Alí to continue his education in New York, which he finally achieved thanks to the Gran Mariscal de Ayacucho scholarship fund and the Simón Bolívar Musical Foundation.
This is how the Venezuelan artist obtained his bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, and PHD.
At college, he met Johnny Almendra, thanks to whom he discovered genres other than classical music, in which he was not only the performer of melodies but could also create his own music. He then discovered styles of Venezuelan and Latin music that inspired him to explore more varied rhythms different from what he had known before.
He played regularly with Johnny Almendra and his modern charanga group Los Jovenes del Barrio for a time and subsequently played for La Típica Novel and other orchestras. As Alí gained experience in the world of charanga and Latin music in general, he started having opportunities to learn and explore other genres such as Brazilian music, Afro-Cuban music, Latin jazz, and many more.
Collaborations with major artists in the industry
All this hard-won ground gave Alí the opportunity and the honor to collaborate with great artists in the industry such as Tito Puente, Eddie Palmieri, Johnny Pacheco, Rudy Calzado, Pedro Cortés, José Fajardo senior, Pupi Legarreta, and many more. All these figures helped him not only to have a better understanding of the Afro-Cuban style and tradition, but also of the influence of New York on music.
Thanks to this knowledge base, he had the courage to release a record album, La Charanga Syndicate, in which, as the name suggests, he uses charanga and all the influences coming from the musicians he has known and continues to know. For this reason, he feels he now has something to say and bring to the style.
Another important thing for his career was his participation in Jay-Z’s concert to celebrate the anniversary of the release of his first album. The rapper wanted to mark the occasion by playing with a symphony orchestra, so hired many musicians of all kinds to make a great show at Radio City Music Hall in New York. Fortunately for Ali, he was well-known in the music scene at the time, so he was contacted to participate in the event.
In that sense, the violinist is very happy to be in New York, as the world’s greatest artists always take this city into account for their concerts, which gives musicians like him the opportunity to have access to these great figures in the industry.
Ali as an arranger
In addition to being a percussionist and violinist, Ali has also ventured into musical arrangements quite successfully thanks to all the academic training he had received up until then. However, as he became a more experienced professional, he began to notice that his own ideas and thoughts came to life in his work. So, having the theory in his head, he could take those ideas he had had and develop them within the rhythmic and stylistic elements which are willing to use on each occasion.
In addition to that, the artist also works on production and mixing a bit to achieve the necessary sound. He even has his own studio where he plays for his own productions and other artists’ records as a freelancer.
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