ABOUT ME
My name is Mireia Clua, and I am a violinist, improviser and teacher. Music has been a great source of pleasure and discovery since my early childhood.
I started learning how to play the instrument in a classical training context, which exposed me to such beautiful music and gave me a very organized learning path.
My musical growth was also influenced by my father, who was a music lover and had a huge collection of vinyls in a variety of styles, from jazz to progressive rock, pop, singer songwriters and classical symphonies. In the weekends, we often played together his favorite rock tunes from the 70s, him strumming the chords on the guitar while I played the melodies by ear on the violin. So as I grew up, I got to play a wide variety of music composed by other musicians.
One summer, I was in an intensive training course and I met a young classical violinist who was improvising melodies on the spot, playing purely from his imagination, flowing with joy and freedom over a couple of chords that his friend was strumming. Something clicked in me.
This is what I wanted: to express the music inside me. Since then, I’ve dedicated my life to living that moment and to help other musicians do the same.
ABOUT ME
My name is Mireia Clua, and I am a violinist, improviser and teacher. Music has been a great source of pleasure and discovery since my early childhood.
I started learning how to play the instrument in a classical training context, which exposed me to such beautiful music and gave me a very organized learning path.
My musical growth was also influenced by my father, who was a music lover and had a huge collection of vinyls in a variety of styles, from jazz to progressive rock, pop, singer songwriters and classical symphonies. In the weekends, we often played together his favorite rock tunes from the 70s, him strumming the chords on the guitar while I played the melodies by ear on the violin. So as I grew up, I got to play a wide variety of music composed by other musicians.
One summer, I was in an intensive training course and I met a young classical violinist who was improvising melodies on the spot, playing purely from his imagination, flowing with joy and freedom over a couple of chords that his friend was strumming. Something clicked in me.
This is what I wanted: to express the music inside me. Since then, I’ve dedicated my life to living that moment and to help other musicians do the same.
At first, this search wasn't easy, and I took some wrong turns before finding my path.
The first tools I got from various sources were all about studying licks and formulas that I would copy and paste in my solos to sound “jazzy”. I felt so incompetent at it! And again, I was trapped in a paradigm of playing what other people had created, so I could sound like them.
It took some courage to leave that world and start developing my own way of playing that is connected with my ear and my imagination, and that feels as right as talking. The personal longing for this ability would ultimately lead me to a much simpler understanding of harmony that unlocked the doors to my musical creativity.
And there is such a joy and a thrill in tapping into your musical mind and playing from there - it feels like a kind of magic! I see it in myself and my own enjoyment of music. I see it in my listeners' eyes and in their smiles, and when they say time passed too quickly. I see it in my students when they discover they are creative, that they have found the way to connect with themselves and express their own music.
I have been blessed to share my musical vision through performing and teaching, and accompany many people in their personal journeys. From teaching young violin students in Barcelona, to creating social music projects in Nicaragua and Dominican Republic where I spent many happy years, and coaching adult students from all around the globe at Improvise for Real, a project that I co-founded.
