Today we’d like to introduce you to Ferran Rico Andrés.
Hi Ferran, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Thank you for having me! So I’m a musician from Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. I’m 24 now, and I’m studying my a double major in electric bass performance and contemporary writing and producing in Berklee College of Music, Boston, Massachusetts. I started with music self-taught and I earned multiple scholarships to study music in Barcelona; and when I finished (awarded with the Extraordinary Award to the best student of my promotion), I applied again for other scholarships and financial aids and I got into Berklee with a full economic coverage (tuition, flights, food, apartment…), which was nothing but a fantasy dream for my one-year ago-self! In Barcelona, I was taught by the great, 5 times Grammy awarded bass player and composer Michael League, who moved nearby my town and has been my mentor for two years. He has been a huge influence in my music, approach to study and my work ethic. I am currently editing my first original music album while also recording new stuff to be released in the early future.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Not at all! Plenty of some smaller, some bigger struggles of aaaall kinds. Starting with being an international student in the US, it is everything but easy to get on top of every form, certificate, fee, visa, protocol and paperwork needed; and it is never-ending. Also changing your life from night to day, leaving everything and everyone you have around and starting from scratch in a different country in the US as a European is not emotionally and practically easy at all. It takes time, resilience and faith, but everything comes with hard constant work and love for the music, which is the ultimate, inner, unstoppable and resilient engine.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’m first a musician. I love music and I am thankful for having the gift to devote my life to the attempt of compelling and moving people’s emotions. It is ultimately an amazing job, not easy at all, but very rewarding: you’re dedicating your life to make the world more beautiful and trying to glue the world up with this magic and power language music is and has. That being said, I play electric and upright bass, guitar, a little bit of piano; I write songs and have my own project under my name playing my originals (mostly jazz-fusion with funk, pop and world musics-based), I love to arrange and have been privileged enough to work for big bands, small and medium formations as the arranger and orchestrator; and I like to produce and I’m getting a lot into it lately.
I guess I’ve always been a fan of letting your work speak for you instead of selling fairy tales with words!
What do you like and dislike about the city?
Boston is a really nice place to live. Being a part of the US, I feel it is one of the most “European” places to live (specially its center). There are barely no weapons and it is safe; there’s a lot of very talented young people from all places of the world (due to having a very small city with Harvard, MIT, Boston College, New England School, Boston University, Berklee College of Music… Almost door by door); it has a lot of green areas and water, it has seasons… It just feels like home to me being from Europe! A real drag about Boston is the winter. Last winter it got to -22 F…! But in the rest of the year, it does get a lot better 🙂
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ferran_rico/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNYX1i2qfCH98YTUBbBXmDg
