What was one of your biggest challenges in living in New York City ?
Knowing that I might not be able to stay as long as I wanted . I love NYC . I spent one of the best moments of my life there and I wanted to stay a bit longer but I knew I needed to come back to Spain . It was so easy to get along with the city , the people , the rhythm there makes it hard to leave . I miss it but I feel I will go back .
So you go to one of the top acting schools in the country and you end up forming a band and playing gigs in NYC - how did that transition happen ?
Before I moved to NYC I was playing some gigs in Madrid with a jazz band and I wanted to keep doing it . A friend of mine was working at the jazz club “ Swing 46 ” in Manhattan and he told me he was leaving so I took his job . I was the barker there as well as wardrobe boy and waiter sometimes . I was earning some bucks while I was in school .
Every night we had jazz and swing bands and I was dying to sing there . I asked the manager and she said she could only give a gig like that in 4 months or so . One of my colleagues in the club knew about it and he told me that just across the street from where we work there was another club , “ Danny ’ s ” and he knew the owner . I went there , talked with him and got the gig . In the school we had voice lessons so we always had a professional pianist in the class . One of them was David Epstein ; I talked with him about it and said that I needed musicians for a gig . It turned out he had a Trio ! So we played together .
Obviously you love acting and theater as well as music , but which has a stronger hold on your spirit ? Which , if you had to give up one , would you be able to walk away from ?
Music has a stronger hold on me , definitely . Through acting I understood that my talent was in music . I was so obsessed with acting that I didn ’ t pay attention to my true natural ability . I think singing is another way of acting , at least that ’ s what I do when I sing ; I perform songs , I deliver the message and the feelings in the lyrics , which is like a script to me . And when I ’ m doing my music videos I calm the actor in me while I am in front of the camera . Let ’ s say with music I have the best of both worlds in one .
I love acting but it happened to be that music hit first . I was getting more offers as a singer than as an actor . I guess I would be able to walk away “ painfully ” from acting .
Some of your influences have been Frank Sinatra and Aretha Franklin , both icons and classic performers , what is it about them that attracted you ?
The way they delivered the songs , their presence on stage . They were the perfect examples of what it ’ s like to be an artist . They didn ’ t just sing the songs , they lived it and made you feel a part of it as if they lived the story . There ’ s a big difference between a singer and an artist . Today we have a lot of singers but only a few can call themselves artists .
42 THE CONE - ISSUE # 10 - SUMMER 2016