Yilian Cañizares grew up in Vedado, the neighbourhood next to Havana’s Plaza de la Revolution. Early musical memories include her grandfather serenading her on guitar, and her mother singing as she accompanied herself on piano.
“Every weekend I’d be taken to see a classical orchestra, jazz quartet or salsa band,” she remembers. “My mother said I’d be chatting away, telling her I wanted to be up on the stage.”
At age seven, she won a place at the prestigious Manuel Saumell music academy, to study piano and violin. This was the austerity-hit 1990s, Cuba’s so-called ‘Special Period’: “It was tough getting equipment, getting anything,” says Cañizares. She won the National Violin Contest of Cuba four times, nonetheless.
Cañizares was 14-years-old when she was offered a scholarship to study in Caracas, Venezuela. Two years later, a masterclass with a visiting Swiss-based teacher changed her life. “He told me I was gifted, and encouraged me to apply for a place at his music conservatory.”
In 2000 Cañizares found herself in western Switzerland, where her playing and technique hit a whole new level. Big name orchestras beckoned: on moving to Lausanne she spent six years contributing note-perfect takes to symphonies, concertos and operas. Along the way, she began to feel like she was losing something. Craving a creative outlet, she quit.
She assembled a quartet of musicians from Germany, Venezuela and Switzerland (and later, Cuba) and named it Ochumare, after the orisha deity of rainbows. Six months later, they won the 2008 Montreux Jazz Festival Competition. In 2011 she graced Giles Peterson’s Havana Cultura project, and has gone on to share stages with jazz gods including Ibrahim Malouf and Omar Sosa.
Yilian Cañizares, a woman born in Cuba and living in Switzerland. An artist as passionate about classical music as she is about jazz, salsa, hip hop and rhythms from elsewhere. A unique performer who, when called upon, is able to join voice and violin and express herself as an orchestra might.
My sound reflects the richness and mixture of cultures that I carry with me today. It is who I am: a woman. A Cuban. A musician. A citizen of the world.
