Today we’d like to introduce you to Christian Zezza.
Hi Christian, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I’m a guitarist, composer/producer and music educator working professionally in the Music Industry for over 20 years. I graduated in contemporary guitar and music harmony at the Academy of Music in my hometown Modena, Italy.
I also attended a certified guitar program at Musicians Institute, Hollywood, CA.
In 2016 I got a U.S. artist visa thanks to the whole amount of awards and professional achievements that I have built throughout my entire career.
Along the years I toured and recorded with hundreds of artists around Italy, Europe and U.S., as a guitarist, musical instruments demonstrator for major international music brands such as Ik Multimedia, Godin Guitars and Eko Guitars, as well as a solo artist.
I’ve been featured as a guitarist performer and musical instruments demonstrator 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 I’ve been involved with.
My 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. The Musical has been touring non-stop internationally in the most important Theaters in Europe and US.
As a music composer/producer for TV-Film and Media applications, I’ve been in partnership with some of the most relevant international Music Publishing Companies for several years, providing exclusive custom music for TV/Film and general broadcasting. My music has been used in some popular TV reality shows such as “The Voice” and major TV networks such as National Geographic, Disney Channel and distributed globally in more than 40 countries.
I’ve been awarded by multiple international Film Festivals and organizations such as Hollywood Music in Media Awards, Intercontinental Music Awards, Oniros Film Festival, TMA Awards, Akademia Music Awards, just to name a few.
As a music educator I worked full-time in several music schools for more than 10 years, then focusing my teaching career into the authorship of educational music video courses and books; I’m the author of 4 educational books and 7 educational video courses related to a wide range of music subjects.
Currently, I run my boutique Music Production/Publishing Company “Tracklist Music”, operating in the Music Licensing Industry and providing educational, recording and production music services.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I firmly believe obstacles and challenges represent an important learning opportunity in every journey, either a professional or any other life areas. First of all, 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 which, as we all know, it’s not exactly the most safe and secure road as far as making a living out of it.
Instead, as 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!
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I may focus the wide amount of activities that I do in music into 3 macro-areas: the guitar work, the music composition and production, the educational work. Starting from the “guitar world”, guitar represents my starting point as a musician, like it would be the first language that you learn.
I come from a very musical family because both of my parents have always been very passionate about listening to music (and that’s where my musical DNA comes from since I was a baby), but I actually started playing guitar when I was 15, so not at a very young age.
At the same time, I found communicating through the guitar very natural so that it became a natural form of expression till these days.
The majority of my guitar activities have been based on live performances with bands, most of them cover bands, live performances with singer/songwriters and, of course, performing as a solo artist playing my instrumental guitar based music which has been part of my career since the beginning of my journey. I’ve been collaborating with several musical instrument Companies, having the opportunity to perform my solo instrumental guitar music at important showcases and conventions in Europe and U.S., playing in historical venues such as the House of Blues, The Roxy, several editions of the NAMM Show, and the list goes on and on.
The other big area related to my guitar activities consists of studio work, which I’ve always been very passionate in. The recording guitar subject became a very focused aspect in my professional life, not necessary based on being a “session guitarist” for other artists, but in particular at the service of my productions for the Music Licensing business, other than for my instrumental guitar albums which I keep producing as well.
I would say that the recording environment is the one I feel more comfortable in, rather than the live stage, because I feel my creativity free to be expressed, and being able to build some form of art that is durable and people can listen to as time goes by.
Of course, I keep myself open and available to provide my guitar studio work services according to the requests, especially when they come from my long-standing producers/studio owners collaborators, which is always a pleasure to work with and for.
The second professional Macro-area consists of being a music composer-producer for the music licensing industry, an area where the composer/producer’s perspective is aimed at creating content that will be used in support of any form of visual media, from the simplest videos on social media platforms to the more highly professional scenarios such as television and film applications.
The creative aspect of music composition and production has always represented an important role on me as a musician; stepping into the Music Licensing world was the natural consequence of what I have always loved to do, with the added value of being part of a real, organized and exciting industry. I started approaching the recording and production techniques when I was in my early 20’s, and since then I continued deepen my professional skills until I moved to L.A., which has represented the most important step of my professional life in this regard because I was able to finally understand and have an open vision on what is the real business related to what I was already doing, but with no professional direction. As of today, I collaborate with some relevant music publishers, providing exclusive music for their international catalogues for the TV-Film licensing segment.
The 3rd professional Macro-area is based on the educational activities, today mostly focused on creating digital products in the form of video courses and e-books. I started this service model around early 2020 when the pandemic hit, and I wanted to maximize and optimize the quarantine time by doing something that would have represented the foundation of something professionally solid and with a long-term type of vision. So, thanks to one of my older friends and collaborator from the company “VideocorsiPro”, I was introduced to the world of the video courses production and educational digital course publishing and, as today I can proudly offer a wide catalogue of educational products through multiple online platforms. The interesting fact is that all my educational products are focused on the main areas that I have talked so far: the world of guitar, the music licensing and music composition/production areas.
Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc?
I’m very passionate about everything related to personal growth subject, which I have been studying in-depth for several years by reading multiple books, some of which I would love to suggest to all the readers:
NAPOLEON HILL
Think and grow rich
Outwitting the devil
NEVILLE GODDARD
At your command
Feeling is the secret
The power of awareness
JOSEPH MURPHY
The power of your subconscious mind
EARL NIGHTINGALE
The strangest secret
Here are some of my favorite movies related to personal growth:
The Secret
Matrix
Peaceful Warrior
Interstate 60
The Truman Show
Groundhog Day
Conversations with God
And some of my favorite channels and resources that may provide interesting life coaching help to do your best in life:
Bob Proctor
Louise Haey
Tony Robbins
Joe Dispenza
Andrew Carnegie
Joseph Rodrigues
You are creators
Your Universe
Jake Ducey
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.christianzezza.it
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/christianzezza.guitarist
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChristianZezza
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuBnCBBWvC8A0g8cuXFve-Q
- Other: https://www.tracklistmusic.com
