Name: Leonor Falcón
Nationality: Venezuelan
Occupation: Violinist, violist, improviser, composer, educator
Current release: Leonor Falcón teams up with Sana Nagano for Peach and Tomato, out August 1st 2023 via 577.

[Read our Sana Nagano interview]

If you enjoyed this Leonor Falcón interview, and would like to find out more about her music, visit her official website. She is also on Instagram, and Facebook.

Over the course of her career, Leonor Falcón has worked with a wide range of artists, including Kiesza and Joanna Wallfisch.

[Read our Kiesza interview]
[Read our Joanna Wallfisch interview]



When did you first start getting interested in musical improvisation?  

I first got interested in more traditional jazz improvisation as a child / pre-teen, because of records that I’d find in my family’s collection. I got obsessed with the style and took every opportunity I had growing up to learn about this and apply it to my instrument.

Later as an adult, once I moved to New York, I started going to Karl Berger’s Improvisers Orchestra at the Jazz Gallery and this music blew my mind. I asked him if I could join the orchestra and that’s how I started getting into free improvisation. I met a lot of musicians there that I had the opportunity to talk to, learn from, and eventually play in their own projects, and that nurtured me so much.

Sana also joined the ensemble, we were already Queens College colleagues and hung out a lot. But I think it is safe to say that Karl was a huge influence on both of us. Our idea of creating Peach & Tomato came when we were at one of his workshops.

Which artists, approaches, albums or performances involving prominent use of improvisation captured your imagination in the beginning?

As I mentioned before, watching the Karl Berger’s CIO was a trip for me. It was my first big influence on improvisation.

Other artists that captured me in the beginning and still do so now are Bill Frisell, Mat Maneri, Craig Taborn, Sara Serpa, Jen Shyu, Lee Konitz, Cecile McLorin Salvant.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to improvisation?

What I love about improvisation is the interaction with others. The listening part is my favorite, like picking my colleague’s brain’s sound.

The more I know the person I’m playing with and the more I feel comfortable at a personal level with them the better I can complement their sound or what they are proposing at the moment.

Deep listening, as well as feeling respected at a personal and musical level. Those are the two key ideas that come to mind for me to feel at ease in an improv situation. If these two things are not happening, music cannot flow for me.

Do you see yourself as part of a tradition or historic lineage?

I’ve never thought of it like that at all (me being a part of a tradition or historic lineage). But I guess you end up being part of the tradition that influences you the most. The problem is I feel a bit like an outcast in that I’ve been influenced by many different styles that I love.

I love rock, I think this genre has influenced me and I’ve been able to channel that when working with my band CHAMA. The three of us: Juanma Trujillo, Arturo García, and myself have been longtime lovers of rock and our compositions reflect that as well as our jazz influences, all of that through a very free improvisational approach.



I also love classical and contemporary music, and I think that is reflected a bit in Peach & Tomato: In “Etude 1” and “Etude 2” I was trying to imitate the Bartok violin duets’ style, or when we decided to take Prokofiev’s two violin sonata and dissect it, version it, and play around with it.

What was your own learning curve / creative development like when it comes to improvisation - what were the challenges and breakthroughs?

In the very beginning, the biggest challenge was of course to just free myself. I’m classically trained (very much so) and started finally getting into improvisation when I was 25. When you are trained in this discipline -classical-, with very strict mentors and such a heavy structure around this music it can be very difficult to trust yourself to get out of that and create your own thing, think outside the box, and feel comfortable with that.

As I did my first record, after much inner work, I realized how much the music I recorded was a reflection of who I was at that particular time, and it didn’t have to be perfect. I felt a profound need to accept myself at that moment so that that music could go out there without me feeling any fears or regrets. I understood how important it was for me to do so in that moment and I knew a second record was going to be different, and it was!

I feel like a different musician in my first Imaga Mondo attempt than my second one, and thankfully I like the second one better, which means I’m getting better at liking myself :)

Tell me about your instrument and/or tools, please. How would you describe the relationship with it? What are its most important qualities and how do they influence the musical results and your own performance?  

I’m a violinist, but always had a weakness for the viola. So I started playing and learning viola on my own about 20 years ago. It was very difficult to find someone who would teach me because at the time and in the school I was it was either one instrument or the other.

I think in the end this is why I enjoy playing the viola way more. I didn’t have the same strictness around it as I had with the violin. There was no big expectation of me, I would just enjoy it, and that’s what I continue to do today. My instrument is a very cheap and simple one, smaller sized than usual because since I was a violinist first it was hard for my body to adapt to a big size viola.

I started using pedals once my father gave me one of his which was a bit broken, and I still use it today because I find that particular one super funny sounding (it’s a Chorus / Boss very out of tune and has a very metallic sound, two knobs are out). After that, I added a few more, an echo, an octave pedal, and a Wah-Wah that I don’t use for that sound but more for the weird effects it gives me when I use different techniques in my instrument.

How do you feel your sense of identity influences your collaborations?

I have a difficult relationship with the word Identity … I recently wrote an essay about it. I think my tendency is more to camouflage myself and absorb whatever is around me than impose a certain influence on people.

I don’t enjoy being labeled as one thing - although I’m slowly learning I can be many different things at once - because I don’t feel like I’m one thing. That’s why I love making music because each style or genre or situation allows me to be different things.

It’s a bit like acting. Actors become different people as they take on different roles, and I feel very different each time I play depending on who I play with, which style we play, where and under what circumstances and I enjoy this so much. This allows me to keep exploring many different aspects of myself.

Do you feel as though you are able to express yourself more fully in solo mode or, conversely, through the interaction with other musicians? Are you “gaining” or “sacrificing” something in a collaboration?

As of now I definitely feel like I can better express myself when I play with others, or with just one more person.

I’ve been recently trying to develop a solo set and it feels like a different universe to me. All the ideas, the material, the inspiration, and the energy have to come from me and I’m still looking for enough of those to be able to present a whole set of music. But it is definitely a fantastic challenge, one that has to do with finding and getting to know myself in a deeper sense.

And to answer your second question: I’m never sacrificing in a collaboration, in the worst-case scenario, I’ve gained insight into what not to do.

To you, are there rules in improvisation? If so, what kind of rules are these?

The most important rule I’d say is to listen. Find yourself in the space you’re at, feel the other/s, and listen to what they propose so that you can react accordingly, whether this is going against them, with them, or in a totally different direction.

In a live situation, decisions between creatives often work without words. How does this process work – and how does it change your performance compared to a solo performance?

Again, just listening. But not in a superficial way, listening and feeling the other person, their intentions.

It is different than a solo performance because you can work with what the other musician is giving you. In a solo performance, you need to come up with all the ideas, the structure and the shape.

How do you see the relationship between sound, space and performance and what are some of your strategies and approaches of working with them?

In a concert, there’s the sound, the space, the performance, and the audience. You cannot control all of these. I like to arrive early and feel the space, even if I’m not sound checking, understand where I’ll be standing and if the room has a good or not great acoustic, if I get to soundcheck then adjust accordingly.

I am in control of how I perform, nothing else, I cannot control the space or how it sounds, and either the audience or its reaction. So at the moment of performing, I try to let go, be myself, and use my ears and my intuition as much as possible.

In a way, improvisations remind us of the transitory nature of life. What, do you feel, can music and improvisation express and reveal about life and death?

About life: just the present moment, what is happening there and then whether it’s emotions or exhaustion or love, but it stays in that moment.

About death: I’d say sometimes your vibrations can be so strong you can feel like you can connect to something beyond your understanding when you play.

It doesn’t happen to me all the time, but when it does, the music just flows in an effortless way.