Rising Music Star Christian Zezza On The Five Things You Need To Shine In The Music Industry
An Interview With Elana Cohen
Make other people successful and be happy for their achievements. The importance of building a healthy attitude towards people, focusing on providing a service before than expecting a reward, will eventually lead you to the same level of success.
As a part of our interview series with leaders, stars, and rising stars in the music industry, we had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Christian Zezza.
Guitarist, Producer-Composer and Music educator, Christian Zezza has been working professionally in the Music Industry for over 20 years.
He graduated in contemporary guitar and music harmony at the Academy of Music in his hometown Modena, Italy, then completing a certified guitar program at Musicians Institute, Hollywood, CA.
As a guitarist, he 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. His 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.
Christian has 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 he has been involved in.
As a music composer/producer for TV-Film and Media applications, he has been in partnership with some of the most relevant international Music Publishing Companies, providing exclusive custom music for TV/Film and general broadcasting. His music has been featured in some popular TV reality 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.
He has been 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, just to name a few.
As a music educator, he worked full time in several music academies for many years, then focusing his teaching career into the authorship of digital educational music video courses and e-books; he is the author of 4 educational books and 7 educational video courses related to a wide range of music subjects.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit about your “origin story”. Can you tell us the story of how you grew up?
I was born and raised in Italy, surrounded by a very stimulating musical environment, especially thanks to my dad who has always been a great music lover. I literally started absorbing all sorts of music influences at a very early age, which eventually became my musical backbone later on in my career, especially in regards of music production and arrangements.
Can you share a story with us about what brought you to this specific career path?
I remember building fake cardboard made electric guitars with my friends at a young age and acting like our favorite rock bands at that time such as Iron Maiden, Metallica, Guns ‘N Roses, etc. After few months we all started our first band playing real instruments!
Can you tell us the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
My very first recording studio experiences were done on a tape analog studio, which is to be considered a very rare opportunity for any young contemporary musician. I feel myself very fortunate, coming from such an old school type of recording techniques environment, which suddenly shifted into the most modern digital era.
It has been said that sometimes our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I firmly believe mistakes represent an important learning opportunity in every journey, either a professional career or any other life areas. I may mention thousands of mistakes that I made through my professional journey but I would say that not to be aware of our own uniqueness is the most dangerous mistake to be made; what I learned (and I’m still in a learning process) is to put the focus and energy on my strength instead of my weaknesses in order to make my authenticity and uniqueness the most valuable aspect of who I am and what I do.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
I’m very grateful and feel myself very lucky for having had the constant support of my family since the early days of me wanting to pursue a career path in the Music Industry. Of course, I could mention plenty of other people and experiences that have played a very important role on my personal and professional journey but, as I said, my first and main gratitude goes to my family for their unconditional support.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
I may mention one of my mom’s most common quote, which I’m gonna translate from the Italian language: “good times and bad times, they don’t last forever”. I think these words are very helpful to remind not to get extremely excited when everything seems to go in the most successful way, which may lead you into some sort of “almighty state of mind”, with the risk to literally collapse when you face a challenging experience; at the same time, try to be faithful and aware of your strength during the low vibe and challenging times, cause there’s always the light out of the tunnel.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?
I’ve been extremely fortunate to collaborate with some relevant international Publishing Companies in the music licensing industry for many years and I constantly produce new music for the TV-Film industry segment, which keeps me very busy and excited. In the past few months, I had the pleasure to provide some music for a very well-known international Chef reality show which will be aired soon on National Geographic and Disney Channel networks.
We are very interested in diversity in the entertainment industry. Can you share three reasons with our readers about why you think it’s important to have diversity represented in music, film, and television? How can that potentially affect our culture?
I believe diversity is the essence of humanity and represents a form of art itself. As I said before, uniqueness is the most important aspect especially in such a conformed society like the one we all live in. Diversity of race, gender, look and style deserve to be valued by the entertainment industry more and more.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why? Please share a story or example for each.
- Make other people successful and be happy for their achievements. The importance of building a healthy attitude towards people, focusing on providing a service before than expecting a reward, will eventually lead you to the same level of success.
- 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 your natural abilities.
- Don’t rush the process but trust every little step you take. As a Sagittarius sign, patience has never been my best strength! I learned to put value and enjoy every little moment on my journey. Sometimes if you run to fast you may miss all the treasures around.
- Always 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.
- No expectations equal more appreciation of the journey and makes you feel more relaxed focusing on the day-to-day tasks to reach your goals.
Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?
Like any other form of artistic profession, music asks you a lot in terms of investments, passion, determination, hard work, consistency, going through all the struggles in form of financial limitations, uncertainties about the future, which of course may lead you into negative feelings such as self-doubting your talents and personal qualities. Those are all common traits that every artist, no matter if it’s a musician, actor, dancer, may relate to, and so I did; I would say that it takes an enormous amount of blind passionate faith to overcome any of those challenges but at the end, if your artistic “vision” is truly pure and genuine, then all the rewards and good results will be presented to you when less you expect in any way and form. But you got to be serious about what you do!
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
Being a Music Educator for my whole life gave me the opportunity to share my experience with the younger generations, not only regarding the positive and inspiring aspects of the journey, but even more important for what has to do with the life bumps that inevitably may happen to all of us, and give them the right tools and awareness how to face them in the most efficient way.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :-)
Paul McCartney would probably be the person I would love to meet and possibly to even play together! I grew up with the Beatles music since I have memories and of course, for me he represents the one and only music God of all time still alive.
How can our readers follow you online?
You can follow my journey on my main websites https://www.tracklistmusic.com and https://www.christianzezza.it , which will lead you to any of my current professional projects.
This was very meaningful, thank you so much! We wish you continued success!
