Marco Missinato is an artist, a music composer, a photographer, but mostly he’s a messenger of peace.
“Following our most joyful imagination by taking action is the key to the manifestation of the highest expression of ourselves in the physical journey.”
(Marco Missinato, November 2019)
In this episode of OWC RADiO, Composer Marco Missinato talks with Host Cirina Catania, about his early years as a child prodigy, his love of piano and music, and working as a photographer on one of Italy’s leading magazines and his journey on life’s spiritual path. We particularly loved his story about how he got the symphony director in Portugal to listen to his pitch about “Unfolding Secrets.” An example of how the universe takes care of us if we just “put it out there.” The result was a memorable symphony that will live in the hearts of the audience for years to come.
- You can listen to Marco’s music on iTunes and Bandcamp here.
- You can learn more about Marco here.
- For more about our host, Cirina Catania, visit cirinacatania.com.
If you enjoy our podcast, please subscribe and tell all your friends about us! We love our listeners. And, if you have ideas for segments, write to OWCRadio@catania.us. Cirina is always up for new ideas!
In This Episode
- 00:08 – Cirina introduces Marco Missinato, an artist, music composer, photographer, and a messenger of peace.
- 05:12 – Marco tells the story of how young he was when he started creating music using a cassette tape recorder.
- 12:28 – Marco shares the various jobs he had growing up, one of which is working for a magazine where he developed his photography skill.
- 18:38 – Marco describes his first time experiencing the United States of America, it was like love at first sight.
- 23:16 – Marco talks about his journey, starting as a singer for an Italian restaurant and going to Los Angeles to become a successful recording artist.
- 30:14 – How does Marco define abundance?
- 36:21 – Marco shares his contemporary classical album, Unfolding Secrets, which he produced with Emanuele Arnone and Kristin Hoffmann.
- 44:49 – Marco tells us the purpose of his workshop called; A Thursday Evening with Sounds of Oneness.
- 50:50 – Marco explains the quote; “As we walk the path, we realize we are the path.”
- 54:29 – Visit Marco Missinato’s website at marcomissinato.com to learn more about him and listen to his music.
Transcript
This is Cirina Catania with OWC Radio. I have Marco Missinato on the line with me today. He’s in Italy at the moment, so it’s a little bit late there, not too late, but thank you for doing this Marco.
Thank you. Thank you for having me with you and your audience. It’s lovely to be with you and spend some time with you.
Marco is an artist, a music composer photographer, but mostly he’s a messenger of peace. And I believe we really need that right now in our lives. So as someone who has been a dear friend for many, many years, it’s nice to catch up for me personally, and I’m happy to share Marco with our audience. Let’s get right to it, Marco. Tell everybody where you are and what you’re doing in your life at the moment.
Presently I am in Italy. Right now, I’m finishing to mix my latest album, which is entitled, Journey of the Soul. I am a creator, I create my own reality, and I love to express myself through the arts. So I can define myself as an artist, an artist with a heart.
Yes, a very big heart, and you share that heart. That’s what’s really wonderful about you. I’ve watched this for many, many years. So let’s go way way back. Where were you born? Where are your roots?
Yes, I was born in a small town near Venice, about 45 minutes north of Venice. The name of the town is Pordenone. And that’s where I was born from a very, very young couple, and they were barely 20 years old. They just met, and as soon they met, I was conceived.
You decided it was time for you to be born, and you said those are the people.
Yeah, like all of us. I choose my parents. I choose my location. I choose all the circumstances of my physical experience.
So that’s wonderful, though. So growing up, when did you first realize that you had this creative side? You started playing the piano very young, right?
Well, mostly, I started to create music very young. What happened is like most of the little children, I would say I was particularly sensitive as a child. I would say I was towards almost angelic energy, and it was very pure and open. When I was born, my mother didn’t feel any pain, and I didn’t cry, I was smiling already. So I was kind of a very soft and loving child. But with that sensibility, of course, I immediately felt the harshness of the separation and the suffering of the [collective which wasn’t really dramatic, but it was still there. And so, in order to do something about it, I would spontaneously go to the music to the sounds. And I will try to create something in order to make things even more loving and more peaceful. Because of course, being an Italian, there’s a lot of drama, but also the whole world is filled with a lot of scarcity, starvation, polarities of all kinds. And as a child, I was so sensitive, and I immediately tune in with that kind of vibration. And as a way to counteract that kind of rubbish, I started to create.
So how old were you when you have memories of doing this?
I was probably three years old or something.
I have a theory that what we love to do and what we are compelled to do when we’re very young children is our gift. A lot of people move away from that, but you didn’t. You stayed in it, and you were a bit of a protege with your music. Talk to me about some of the music as you advance that you got a little bit older, what did you then do? Because the world is not always ready for people like you.
Well, I have to say that in my perception, we are all prodigies. It’s just that most of us immediately get into a forgetfulness stage by the programming of the environment. But yes, I had a unique gift, and I believe everybody has a unique gift. But the difference is that I didn’t go into programming for some reason. I didn’t immediately become an obedient puppet following the curriculum. I was always outside of the curriculum, of course, I was endorsing the curriculum because I have to, but I never get lost in it. So I maintain a connection with, I’d say the higher self, I maintain a strong connection with my true self. And that was a big plus for me because it allows me to keep being myself and don’t get lost close to unconsciousness.
Usually, what we love and are compelled to do when we're very young becomes a true gift when we get older. Click To TweetHow long did you live in Italy before you started moving to other places in the world?
For the first 25 years, I was in Italy. When I was six years old, my closest family, my mother and my father moved to the big city in the center of Rome, the capital. And then I spent another 25 years and in those times of schools, of course, I was already creating music. My music was within the four walls of my little tiny room with whatever instrument I had available at the time. And at the time, I used a typical old fashioned tape recorder, and there were cassettes at that time. And because my process of creativity for me was completely tenuous, there was no training. So I went into the habit to recall whatever will come through because the mind was not involved. And so I will come in through one passage, and then I will not be able to repeat it unless they record it. And so after a few years, I had the room filled with hundreds of tapes of ideas and melodies and then became my library of music, which I’m still tapping into today when I produce music.
So you kept all those cassettes?
Yes. And now, I transform them into digital information. But I have hundreds and hundreds of melodies that are waiting for me.
Oh, that’s wonderful. That’s wonderful. So for creating these melodies, are you using the piano? What instrument were you playing, or are you singing?
Yeah, there were different stages. In the first few years, I only had a little flute, toy guitar, and then at a certain point, my music started to get noticed by the environment, by my family. And so I got a little keyboard and then after that a bigger keyboard, and I finally got an organ when I was ten years old my mother gave me an organ. And for me, that was a major thing. And then finally I got an upright piano when I was 14. And that was interesting because at that time, I already had hundreds and hundreds of melodies, and of course, the family was completely tapping to survival, and I was all about surviving. Everybody has a job and has to run left and right, so they didn’t really give too much attention to what was happening to me. My mother started to hear my melody. I was playing basically five-six hours a day, composing. Every time she would come back from work, she would hear music, and she wanted to figure out at a certain point. That’s what adults do mostly with children, and they want to see if they are really gifted by measuring them with society’s rules and regulations. And that’s usually a big mistake because society is not necessarily in line with what a little child carries themselves. But what happened is that my mother invited a very big or important person in Italy, in terms of music, compositions and everything else. I was about 14 years old, and my mother invited him for dinner, and she wanted him to basically listen to what I was doing. And I know at the time I was very introverted, I really didn’t like to perform in front of people. It was my own thing. But it was a habit that every time a cousin, a relative, or a friend would come, I would have to play some music for them, and so I did with this professor. He listened to me, and I played a few melodies that I was composing, and he said, “No, he doesn’t have any talent and has no gift at all. It’s a waste of time for you to invest in music. He needs to get a job,”
Oh my goodness, really?
It was an interesting situation because it was a test for me to see how much I was going to stay in integrity with my heart, despite what the outside source was telling me. And I didn’t take it negatively, it actually for me was a relief, because I certainly didn’t want to get involved with the educational music system because I felt that I needed to maintain myself to a certain level of purity in order to be able to download those kinds of melodies. If I started to get polluted with a lot of right and wrong mess about music, I would have lost the connection. And so I would have physical symptoms and contractive symptoms when somebody or like my mother said, “Well, why don’t you study channels?” “Why don’t you study compositions?” a part of me will say, you already did, you know everything about music, you don’t need to do that now there is something else for you. And so when this guy did not acknowledge my gift, for me was actually a relief. It was like, Ah, okay, good so I can maintain my freedom, and I can maintain my imagination and creativity without dealing with this kind of situation.
I think it’s important because many people who are creative would have let that basically kill their creativity. You didn’t allow that, you were so confident and so joyous in what you were doing. It bounced off, and you just kept going. That, to me, is very, very important for people to learn how to do.
It wasn’t even so much courage, it was just like, Oh, good, good, so I can keep doing my thing without being bothered. That was the kind of feeling that I got. I didn’t take it like, I’m not good, and I’m not good enough, I didn’t go to that at all. And that was a good thing because it allows me to continue and do what I’m doing today.
So you were 14 when that happened. Where did you go from there? What happened from there?
I did a huge variety of different things. I actually studied at the actor studio, the New York Actor Studio, they were in Rome, and I did acting not because I wanted to become an actor because it was an interesting way to work my inner creative muscle. I enjoyed it very much, and it was wonderful, and if I had chosen to be an actor, I probably would have some talent there, but it wasn’t, it was just a way to express myself to go deeper into certain parts of myself that I wanted to explore with. So I did that. Life took me to many, many other situations. At a certain point, of course, there was the high school time and the college time, and then I had to be in the military for one year because it was mandatory. So at the age of 23, I was in the military for one year. Before I went into the military, I started to work in a magazine. I want to make some money to buy some microphones, so I was doing all kinds of jobs. I was doing modeling because I was very photogenic, and that was another way for me to quickly make some money.
Talk to me about the magazine. What was the magazine because your photography was gorgeous. I remember seeing some of those.
I started to work with magazines, but in which my mother was involved, because my mother, at a certain point, literally created these magazines. Which wasn’t a magazine at first, it was a small newspaper, and it was about scientific and magazine reports. The latest news was from professors and doctors at the European level, even at a world level. And so my mother was teamed up with quite a remarkable journalist, and the two of them started to create this newspaper. It was their dream, they wanted to create this newspaper, and so they started to work. And I started to get involved with it, first, by just literally helping them as a handyman to do things. There was a time; in the beginning, we didn’t even have the money to mail the magazine. So I would deliver the magazines I would go all over Italy to deliver the magazines to the hospitals and to doctors. And then, I started to work into the graphic because the newspapers started to be richer in content. And I started to play with the idea of composition graphics. At the time, there was no computer, so it was all cut and paste and losing the glue and all that, and then taking a picture. And then at a certain point, I would say a couple of years later, they make the newspaper turn into a magazine. And the magazines, of course, require pictures. And I said I would take pictures, let’s do that. And so with some money from the magazine, I bought an old Nikkormat, at the time it was a very old camera, Nikkormat was the beginning of Nikon. And I started to take pictures. At first, I would go just so that we know there is an article about big professors, so I will go to the hospital and take pictures of the professor sitting at his desk. But then I started to be more creative, and as I was moving deeper into the picture, the pictures we’re starting to be more impactful to the magazine itself because I was starting to do things that were very interesting. For example, let’s say there was an article about diabetes. I will take a picture of ice cream or sugar and make all this interesting blending of colors. And then that article would be very colorful and beautiful. And usually the kind of category of magazines until then, they were quite plain, black and white and deal with formal lines that looked like reports and quite boring. And that started to create a layout where we stood out and also started to get more attention and then we started to get into Milan. And that’s when we started to get some serious money and become bigger, then become two magazines, three magazines. At that point, I had professional lighting. I was traveling. And so I did this for a few years. And that was the initiation for me to be a photographer; at the same time, I kept making my music, which is my priority. In fact, all the money I would make from photography would go into music. I would rent the little studio to record a few things with a good microphone, and so on. So those were my days in the 70s and the 80s. And then a certain point, what happened is where the magazine industry had a big scandal with the pharmaceutical industry. And so the whole industry collapses for about a couple of years. And so, inevitably, magazines could not sustain itself because at that point, we were at the level where we had a substantial amount of expenses to maintain number after a number of magazines. So in three months, we could not get the sponsor. And so the whole thing collapsed. It was a big turning point because, at that point, I was already nomadic as a photographer, I came first in America as a photographer to take pictures of people with AIDS. Because at that time, AIDS was a new happening, and there were only a few patients in New York and in San Francisco. There were no patients in Europe just yet. And so they flew me to America to take pictures and make a story and make articles about AIDS. And so that was the very first time I came to America.
Do you still have those stories handy? Can you find them?
I still have some stories, and I have a lot of pictures. Yes.
I think that what you did at that point if I remember because it’s been many years since you showed me some of those magazines, you were combining photojournalism and the news aspect of what you were doing with this incredible sense of creativity, and your ability to see the graphics and the colors and the composition and tell a story with the emotions behind the picture. I think your photography does that as much as your music does. Obviously, the music is your first love, but by the way, for those of you who will be listening to this, Marco has a site called missinatophotography.com, and you can see some of his photography there. You can also go to marcomissinato.com and get to it from there. But I encourage everyone to look at those pictures because they say a lot about how you see the world.
America, for me, was like love at first sight. So I rise to America and smell the freedom, the immense possibility of this country. I was really really excited when I went to New York, to San Francisco, to Los Angeles. And so I went back home, with that seed inside my system, it was ready to flourish. Eventually, I was on time. And I came back with almost 6000 slides. So I took a lot of pictures because, at that point, I was a professional photographer. So I had a pass, and I could basically enter any place because it was an internationally recognized pass that very few people have, it’s not easy to obtain. And so those pictures were valuable for the magazine because they cover a lot of topics for the next years to come. But those years never came because again, everything collapsed. And so, at that point, it was a big turning point for me. Okay, so the photography is temporarily collapsing, I could have gone to Milan and get some jobs from other situations, but I wasn’t really the kind of person that gets a job.
I cannot see you punching a clock. I’m sorry, no, that’s never gonna happen.
Yeah, so at that point, I did my military service. I did amazing stuff, and so I said, I think it’s time for me to go to America and start a new adventure. And so I did, I sold some of my pictures and had a few thousand dollars in my pocket. I bought a ticket, and I brought my little keeper, and I arrived in Los Angeles. And at the time, I didn’t speak English, and I didn’t know anybody. So it was quite an interesting adventure to be in such a different city because Los Angeles is quite different from the Italian cities. I remember arriving in Los Angeles. I was looking for a center because, in Italy, there’s a square in the center of the city. I couldn’t find it in Los Angeles. I always felt like I was outside of the city. And I couldn’t speak to anybody because I didn’t speak English I would say just a few words.
Oh, we call it an urban sprawl. It’s urban sprawl, and it’s like tentacles everywhere. We don’t have the squares as they have in Europe.
I chose Los Angeles for a specific reason because I needed to stay and have a visa permit. So the best way to do that was to become a student. And so for the first time in my life, I became a student, and I enrolled myself in a school of music. But I didn’t want to do those long, three, four years, five years of music college, and the shorter, exciting school that I could find was the Musician Institute in Hollywood, which shows only one year graduation time and it was expensive but not as expensive as Berkeley. So for me, it was okay. I’ll pretend to be a student for one year, at least so I can buy time and then see where we can take it from there. And so I arrived, and after a couple of months, I began the course, of course, I could not really understand what they were saying, but somehow I was doing my thing, and somehow people recognized what I was doing was good enough to get graduated. But I never really learned a lot, I just shared what I really felt was in me. It was a good experience, it was a lot of fun, I made a lot of friends, and I had enough time to start to strategize and see how I could proceed with the American adventure. And so after I graduated, I finally bought a little car, spending $1500. I bought a very old Station Wagon Volvo. And I was very happy because I could carry all the keyboards because at the time I started to sing in order to make some money. So I said I don’t want to get a job and also I could not get a job because I wasn’t a resident, but if I can start to sing, I can get some tips. I never considered myself a professional singer, but somehow I found a job in a small Italian restaurant, and it was long long hours, and the busboy was making much more money than me for sure. And every day, I would load the sound system with the speakers, and it was like four or five hours of singing, and I was just making tips, so it was like, I don’t know, $20-$30 and sometimes $50, that was the situation. But there was starting to do something in me because it forces me to sing for many many hours. At first, I started to sing Italian songs because they tell you a restaurant wanted me to send me Italian songs and then from there I started to refine my repertoire and after it took me a good three-four years but then I started to break through into the celebrity in Hollywood. I started to get hired by Hollywood stars, rich and famous, by billionaires. I started to work for monarchies, and I ended up singing for the queen of Jordan. I ended up singing for the Minister of Iran for a situation where politicians were there. So it took me a good five-six years by the time I saw all kinds of songs in Spanish in English. I would sing jazz, and I would sing the American classic, the Italian classics. And so I had an asset that allows me to pay my bills and also start to produce my own music. And that’s when, of course, I started to record an album to this music.
I think that’s around the time that I met you, I believe, many years ago, you were prolific. I remember you being prolific. I remember you being nonstop, loving what you did, and no matter what came at you, you just kept moving forward, you kept giving back. It wasn’t that you were performing; it always felt to me that you were giving yourself and asking the audience to open up and receive it and to give back to you. Am I right about that?
Yeah, for some reason, I never gained a fascination with fame, about a successful career in the music industry. For me, as you said, it was really sharing for the same reason I was creating music when I was a little child to create a sense of love among the people in my family. I was doing the same other large scales now. I was creating music to create oneness to create unity to create love and peacefulness, and there was the intent. At that time, I couldn’t really elaborate on it as much as I do now, but inside me, there was my motivation. So I was very pure. My approach and my creativity.
You’ve been offered big contracts, you’ve had people in your life who have wanted to make you into a big star, and you’ve turned it down because you wanted to keep your music pure. Correct?
Yes.
Why did you turn it down? What motivates you to take this, as you call it, the journey of imagination and the solitary sometimes solitary approach too in your life? Talk to us about where all that comes from?
Yeah, definitely solitude was the major ingredient in my Los Angeles story, which lasted about 20 years. I had good friends, but the solitude was part of it. There was quite a sense of deep soul loneliness in those times. In regards to the music, every time I would come close to a situation where it involved the music industry, I would literally feel a strong contraction on my stomach, it was a strong message about what I am doing was not for that reason, at that time. I remember, many people would propose the idea that I was scared, you need to heal, you need to figure out things, you’re afraid of success. But I was never convinced about that idea. My soul was telling me, “Don’t do that because you have to be patient,” but eventually, this music will be used for something that is different.
Yeah, I never saw it as fear. I saw it as just this very quiet acceptance of who you were and joyfulness about you. How do you define JOI? How do you know as a creative person when you’ve given that to other people, and when you have it in yourself, talk about JOI, where does that come from?
JOI is our natural state of being. When we are organically in balance, and we are in integrity with our hearts, we follow our JOI . There is no other way. My formula has always been; follow my JOI with no expectations. So I will remove the expectation from my doing, and that would remove the drama completely, the contraction, and the disappointment because my reward was coming through the action of being creative itself. So I was already rewarded at the end of the process. So everything else was the extra bonus for me. Of course, this is something I learned as an anchor is a knowledge as I was walking my path. And now it’s quite consolidated, but it was always there. I always do things because they give me joy. If I wouldn’t see the point of doing something that doesn’t need it because then I would shift into this scarcity survival mechanism, and then I will be out of integrity with my heart. And with a probe I would say, what I was doing is that if I do that, I would say okay, life, I do not trust you, I trust my fear more than your life. And so I get out of my integrity, and I do whatever I need to do to survive, that would have been a mess, would have been counteractive for me. And somehow, everything worked because I always had just exactly what I needed at any given time. So this idea of scarcity and survival mechanisms, I think, I suspect they’re artificially created to create a sort of control in the masses. In reality, our natural state of being is joyful, is abundance, it’s fun, it’s a work of service. That’s our natural state of being.
We are all prodigies. It's just that most of us immediately forget about our talents because of our programming. Click To TweetDefine abundance.
Abundance is to have the freedom to be fully who you are, fully yourself is for me is the highest level of abundance. It doesn’t have anything to do with possession or anything like that. The more you are yourself, the more you’re abundantly connected with life, and then life responds to you accordingly.
There are so many people that I want to hear this message, and I’m so grateful that you’re still doing this after all these years, and your music is beautiful. Talk about resonance with your music. Can you tell us what you mean by that?
In my perception, we all come from sound, and everything is resonance, everything is vibration. So life expresses itself, created first as a sound wave, and then from the sound waves, it crystallizes into metal. So our blueprint is sound, and sounds have two options: either is dissonant or is resonance. These are the two choices, right? So when we step out of our integrity with our heart, we leave an experience of dissonance, which is a wonderful experience. There’s nothing wrong with that, and it’s just an experience. When we are telling in our hearts, we live an experience of resonance. So we are resonating, it means everything flows because we are fully ourselves, we don’t compromise. So, in my perception, since I was a child, what I notice is that humanity, because of the polarity of the experience because we are living in such a harsh environment, we step into a dissonance situation. And so the responsibility of the musician, when he is a fully awakened musician when he’s fully responsible, is to create music that tunes back the dissonance of each individual into resonance. That’s why I call it Sounds of Oneness, what I do because my idea is to create a musical experience where everybody, in the end, their heart is fully open. And so now they are in resonance with their internal gift.
That’s beautiful and so true. A lot of people talk about we are one, we are the world, and I think that music is healing. It’s very healing for not just on a psychological, emotional, spiritual level, but also on a physical level. I’ve seen studies where people who have had strokes and who can’t talk, but they can sing. The brainwaves are altered when you listen to music. And I know that you’ve also created music for pets as well as for people, right? I thought that was an interesting journey too. Talk about that for a minute.
Well, there was an interesting idea that came from the fact that when I was a child, every time I would compose some music, I would notice animals who can’t. Little butterflies, a little cat or dog or bird, would come nearby. So I noticed that I felt nature actually was responding even more than humanity to what I was doing. They were much more receptive to the sound and so I came to that realization that music can also be very supportive and healing for pets. Because pets have very heavy-duty work, they have to cooperate with the contraction of their owners, and they’re always surviving, and so they’re constantly tense and contracting. They do this wonderful, amazing work to bring somehow with their presence, with their unconditional love, they heal, they have that ability. And so I also felt it could be a support for them too to listen to some good music.
It really works. I’ve seen the reaction of these animals when the music starts to play. You talk about 144,000 Open Hearts Live Events. Can you tell us a little bit about those?
Yes, there was a time a few years ago, in order to set to a higher level of consciousness, humanity would have to reach a number of, let’s say, more awakened people. And that is a precise number, which is 144,000. One hundred forty-four in sacred geometry and a unique number. And the idea is that when that number of people become awakened, they create a domino reaction to the whole of humanity and will feel that kind of situation. So my idea was to create a sequence of live performances, together with live streaming, where I could gather simultaneously, exactly the number and with the music, open the heart of the number and consequently call humanity with a filled positive reaction to it. The good news is that we already reached that awakening, so now we are over. So things, in fact, for the people that are more tune in with the subtle energy of the collective, they can feel that a lot of things are changing, a lot of things are moving. And that’s because we reached that massive number of awakening, now we are far beyond that.
I think you’re at the crest of the hill. It’s wonderful to watch. Talk to me about Unfolding Secrets.
It was my last project in America. It was a collection of music that I created when I was much younger, and some were more recent. I felt guided to create an album that had more like a classic contemporary kind of flavor because it can penetrate the heart from other levels. And so I started to produce the album, I wrote all the music, and then I produced the album with a good friend of mine. He’s also an Italian was taking care helping you with the arrangements or with the strings arrangement.
And who was that?
His name is Emanuele Arnone, he lives in Los Angeles too, and he’s a wonderful musician. When the album was finished, I felt it wasn’t finished. I really heard soprano vocals, and so I started to search for soprano singers until I found one on Facebook, Kristin Hoffmann, which is a soprano singer in New York. And I felt the resonance, and so I contacted her and said, “Hi, Kristin, my name is Mark. I’m a composer. I make some music. Would you like to sing some of the melodies with me?” And I sent her a couple of tracks, and she loved it, and she wanted to do it. She is very professional. And she sent me back this file, perfectly recorded, wonderfully executed, and it was beautiful. And so that was the final patch with Unfolding Secrets was needed at the time. And then, after that, I took a break because every time I finished a novel, I gave all I got, so I needed to stay put for a moment. And I responded to an invitation from a good friend of mine, which was years and years, she was inviting me to visit her in Ecuador. And so I went to Ecuador just fully with the idea of a vacation, but it turned out not to be a vacation at all. Because as soon as I got there, I felt that something was happening in Ecuador. I remember for some reason it was Easter, and I was sitting at a table with a lot of Ecuadorian, aristocratic people having dinner with them. And I announced that I was going to do a concert in the city of Cuenca with the philharmonic orchestra. So I don’t know why I said that, but I said it.
I love that. That’s wonderful.
And everybody looked at me like, “You’re crazy, do you know how difficult it is to get to the Philharmonic Orchestra? It takes years just to talk to the music director.” Immediately, as often happens, when you spontaneously enthusiastically say something that is a dream, everybody tries to turn you down, right? Actually, for me it is the opposite, it makes me even more excited. Oh, no, no, I’m going to do a concert, and I’m going to do it in a couple of months, and you are all invited. And the day after the dinner, I went to the Conservatory of Music in the city of Cuenca in Ecuador. And I went to the Philharmonic Orchestra, identified the music director, and I introduced myself, and I talked to him. At first, he was a little bit skeptical, who are you? Often music directors can be difficult people because they have quite an attitude in a good way.
They’re very protective of the way they want to do things because that’s their livelihood, and that’s what they’re about.
So I talked to him, as usual, when I talk to people, I always break through the idea of hierarchy. If I talk to a cleaning lady or I talk to President Trump, I talk the same way. I’m very genuine. So I said, “Hello, Maestro,” I gave him a hug. “How are you? I’m Italian. I’m so excited to see you, and guess what? I have a beautiful record, and I would like you and your orchestra to play.” That’s how I introduced myself. He said, “Are you crazy? We are busy for the next three years. We are booked completely,” and I said, “It’s ok, don’t worry, Maestro. It’s okay, and I’m very busy too. I’m a composer, and I have a lot of things going on in New York. So it was just an opportunity for you and your orchestra to play from a complete composer.” That kind of changed his attitude a little bit. And so he took me to the studio, and he put the CD on, and he started to close his eyes and start to listen. He said, “It’s beautiful, it’s good.” I said, “Okay. so you like it?” “Yeah, it’s beautiful, but I’m too busy.” I shook my hands and said, “It’s okay. It was lovely to meet you. Too bad. I also have a famous soprano singer that is willing to come to sing with you.” And then a day after I received a phone call from his manager, “The maestro would like to talk to you again to see you again.” so I came back. He said, “Well, I can put a couple of your songs on my next concert,” I said, “No, don’t have time to just do two songs. I will not fly, the big soprano singer from New York, Kristin Hoffmann, just to do two songs. Either we do the whole concert, or we don’t.” And then he said, “Okay, I’ll give you two nights,” and so we got two concerts.
Unbelievable. What did your friends say who was at the table that night? When you call them to tell them to invite them.
Then after a few weeks, because it took a few weeks to coordinate, Kristina has to come, and then we produce some videos. We went to the forest to sing and to do some shooting. I did a documentary about Unfolding Secrets and what is behind the scene. And then finally we had these two beautiful concerts at the Philharmonic Orchestra. And that’s when I called my friend, and nobody could believe that it was happening. And that was the story of my Ecuador experience.
I think that when you’re doing what the universe is sending you, what the universe is communicating with you that you should be doing, then everything falls into place. So that was a total example of you listening to the voice and letting it happen. You were there, you knew what to say, and it happened. When you talk about Walking the Path, what do you mean by that?
Well, we all are on a path, in a journey, the physical journey, the birth journey, and it’s a fascinating, beautiful path, and we have the free will to choose how we’re going to walk through that journey. So that’s what I mean walking the path is walking your life, to fully own your life, honor your life, and live it fully. That’s the way to go. But the reason why that Ecuadorian episode was successful is that I didn’t have any expectations. I did, I was not needy, I didn’t need anything. I was just playing with it. Don’t take anything too seriously and play with everybody and everything, and then allow this playfulness to crystallize in creating the most joyful and most beautiful way. And I think that’s one of the most wonderful formulas to follow your JOI without expectations. Because the moment you put expectation, then you start to be contracted, you start to manipulate, and so you lose your purity intent. And you lose your childlike approach, which is basically the secret of life in many ways.
And I totally agree with that. That’s what’s kept me going in my life is finding that JOI and just going with it and playing with it and being childlike, allowing that inner child to play with you every day. It’s amazing what you can accomplish in your life when you do that. You talk about from dissonance to resonance, and you were mentioning that a few minutes ago and I remember the video that I saw that you had sent me a while back called.
Yeah.
And you started out the workshop by telling people that, and I should let you probably tell this, but what I’m remembering is that you told people that you wanted the music to help them open their hearts and that you’re going to start with minor chords and work towards the major chords. Explain that to people who don’t understand music very much, why that is and how that worked in that particular instance and throughout your life.
Okay, so the purpose of that experience was to create a heart-opening oneness experience. And the reason why I started with a tune in the minor key is that I want to create a contrast. Because the minor key creates a vibration like sadness, a heavy emotional situation that is beautiful to be felt, some of the most beautiful music in the past is in minor keys. But I want to initiate the process with that kind of situation and then slowly build up into gradually getting to the oneness, the heart-opening situation. That’s what I did. And those people were particularly open, and so this experience was very successful. In the end, everybody was just literally crying and hugging each other. They kept talking about this experience, until today I’m still receiving emails saying, Oh my god, that was an incredible experience, I can’t wait to do it again. So that proves how powerful music can be.
Do you think you’re going to do another one anytime soon? Or what are you working on right now? You’ve you talked about your in post on your new album?
Yes, to answer your question, that’s what I am here to do. I’m here to create oneness and create a heart-opening experience and emotional release through the power of music. So yes, that’s what I want to do more than anything else. And so, the idea is to create concerts and create an experience where there are specific frequencies. There are specific melodies in order to create an environment that facilitates the release of emotions. Because one of the biggest challenges for humanity right now is that they have a lot of emotion that are stuck in their system that needs to be released so that they can fly higher.
Artfully utilizing graphics and colors can always tell a compelling story behind a picture. Click To TweetI agree. This might be completely off the subject, but I’m curious about how you feel. There are a lot of people searching for Nirvana, searching for their joy, searching for a higher meaning, and they turned to things like drugs or Ayahuasca, or Kava Kava, they’re using substances to help them open up. So, Marco, you have a very pure approach, how do you feel about special aids? I guess you would call it.
In my perception, there is no right and wrong. There are just experiences. So if you resonate towards doing an Ayahuasca journey, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just an experience. And if you need to do a DMT experience or drug experience, whatever your soul is driving to you is what you need to do at any given moment. It was interesting this experience on what I did with the A Thursday Evening with Sounds of Oneness we just mentioned, because at the end when people started to share their experience, a few of them they said, “It was beautiful for me to understand that in order to get high, I don’t necessarily need to add an external device like Ayahuasca, I can do it without a tool or a toy, I can do it myself.” And that’s the most beautiful thing to become aware of. Because in truth, a drug trip is just a permission slip that attempts to give you permission to be what you already are. You just have to open your heart, and you can get there instantly. But some people, we have a lot of contraction, fear, limiting beliefs, programs which don’t allow us to do that. And so if an Ayahuasca journey is what you feel you want to do, by all means, I think it’s a wonderful experience.
Yeah. When I asked you the question, I got a very strong feeling that no, it’s not necessarily that people can do it without all of that. They just need to trust themselves. So it’s interesting, that’s why I asked it. I’ve always felt that I’m actually better off when I don’t have any of that around me because then I have more freedom I can fly higher on my own. I’m not judging it.
Exactly. I don’t want to judge it as bad or wrong. So, I respond to you in this fashion because I don’t believe there is anything right or wrong is whatever is in resonance, whatever resonates for you is watching you do. It’s really, really simple. But sometimes we get confused, and we think something is resonating but, in reality, is not a true organic resonance. So we need to be able to discern what is organic resonance, and what is fictitious mind resonance, which is the ego.
You have a quote on your website that I saw that says, “As we walk the path, we realize we are the path.” What inspired that?
The realization that the journey is more important than the destination. The journey is what we are here for, not the destination. And so when we surrender completing the journey, that’s when we get really a juice of this physical experience, rather than constantly be concerned about when we’re arriving, where are we going, how do we get there, this constantly is a contraction. But if you surrender it into the journey, then eventually, you come to the realization that the journey is what we are here for and not the destination.
So I would love to be able to talk more with you. There’s so much to hear from you so much to learn from you, so much to experience with you. What do you want to tell everyone listening before we go, is there a message you want to specifically give to those who are listening to this?
I know how difficult it is for all of us to be on this journey. It is quite challenging and is probably the most challenging choice that the soul can make. But these difficulties are the most fascinating and most beautiful journey ever. And so, at this point, I think what is really relevant for each of us in the planning is to, first of all, try to get in connection with our own uniqueness with our own gifts. But I realized that many of us are so disconnected where they don’t even believe they have the gift. And they think the gift is something for just a few special selected, but it’s not true, we all are special, and we all have uniqueness. The pursuit of finding our uniqueness, if we haven’t found it just yet, is obtained by deprogramming yourself. This is what we need to do right now. We have a lot of programs that are embedded in our system, a lot of belief systems to be limiting beliefs, limiting our imagination. And so right now what is most relevant more than a career, whatever the most important thing at this point is to identify all those problems that serve us well until now when we need to let them go. So with a new level of freedom and possibility, it can enter our life. And so every time we feel a contraction or let’s say, somebody triggers us or push our buttons, and we enter in sort of reaction, this person, or this situation that is pushing our buttons is our best friend because it’s showing us what is within ourselves and we need to recognize and let go because it doesn’t serve us anymore.
That’s the mirror image that tells us the truth.
Yeah, of course, there’s much, much more, this is a very vast topic. And this is a very short summarization of it because we could talk for hours about this situation. But this is where we need to look at, starting to ask the questions; how can we be of service? The choices that we make today, what way is it helping humanity? In what way is it making a difference? These are very important questions we need to ask ourselves.
Well, I think what you’re doing is incredibly important and absolutely beautiful. Where can people go to learn more about this, and would it be on marcomissinato.com? Would that be the best place?
Yes.
And also, you can get some of Marco’s music on Bandcamp, correct?
Yes, it’s in Bandcamp.
So go to Bandcamp, search for Marco Missinato, and you can get Unfolding Secrets. I bought the album and was listening to it yesterday again. It was nice to revisit it. It’s absolutely beautiful. And I encourage everyone to walk this path with Marco, give each other encouragement and lots of love and lots of joy. This is Cirina Catania with OWC Radio, and I want to thank Other World Computing for sponsoring this broadcast so that we can talk to wonderful people like Marco. And remember what I tell you guys, get up off your chairs and go do something wonderful today. Thanks for listening.
Important Links
- Marco Missinato
- 144,000 Open Hearts Live
- Events
- Bandcamp
- Emanuele Arnone
- JOI
- Journey of the Soul
- Kristin Hoffmann
- New York Actor Studio
- Nikkormat
- Nikon
- Sounds of Oneness
- Station Wagon Volvo
- Unfolding Secrets
- Walking the Path
Checklist
- Help children discover their gifts and talents at a very young age by exposing them to different activities. This will encourage them to find what they love doing best.
- Hone your creativity by continuously finding ways to absorb art or express yourself. Read more books, explore more artwork. Create more art.
- Understand sensitivity is not a weakness. Empathy and vulnerability turn out to be one of the best strengths a person can have.
- Know that it’s okay to be different. You don’t have to be the person society forces you to be. As long as you’re comfortable with who you are, that’s what matters.
- Keep practicing and improving your talents. That’s the beauty of having a gift you can share with others. There’s always room for growth.
- Find the beauty in everything, even amidst hardships and challenges. Art has the power to turn pain into beauty. Express your feelings in a song, a poem, or a painting.
- Go on an adventure. Explore the world and meet new people. Don’t be afraid of the unknown. This will be your best source of inspiration.
- Don’t just pursue your dreams for fame. Always do it for love, and the rest will follow.
- Make it a mission to find your happiness and keep your light burning within. Let your purpose be something that aims to be of service to others.
- Check out Marco Missinato’s website to learn more about his creative works and advocacy.
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