Laura Farré Rozada Pianist

I was born in Vilanova i la Geltrú, a city in the seacoast near Barcelona, and I started
playing piano when I was 5. I had a very broad education from an early age, mixing
artistic and scientific studies, so in the end, I balanced two bachelor’s degrees: one in
mathematics at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) and another one in piano
performance at the Catalonia College of Music (ESMUC). After finishing my Master’s at
ESMUC, I decided that I wanted to specialise in contemporary music, for this reason, I
took a second Master’s at the Royal College of Music in London, and auditioned and
secured the NEXT 2018/2019 residency with Birmingham Contemporary Music Group
(BCMG). Among all the piano professors I have had over the years, the most influential
and supportive have been Jordi Vilaprinyó Del Perugia, Jean-François Dichamp and
Stanislav Pochekin. All three of them provided me with very useful tools for organising
my practice and gave me a very solid cultural background, beyond music. Jean-François
Dichamp, who was my professor at ESMUC, taught me a very solid technique and an
extraordinary musicality which significantly transformed me as a performer.
It is hard to choose what is my favourite music, since I have listened to so many
different genres over my lifetime, and each has influenced me in a different way, but
probably the music I feel most at home at is the repertoire I have recorded for my solo
albums The French Reverie (2018) and Nimbus (2021). Beyond being repertoire I really
enjoy playing, it also conditions my practice routine. This usually lasts 8 hours,
sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on my engagements. During my practice,
I follow a method that I have developed over the years for learning and memorising
music, informed by my training in mathematics, and that is the core of my
Midlands4Cities-funded doctoral research at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. The
central element of the method is developing a very detailed conceptual idea of the
repertoire I have to perform, to focus easier when performing, and dealing better with
performance anxiety and memory lapses in stressful situations, such as recitals,
competitions and auditions. This method has helped me in achieving my dream of
being a prolific performer and touring internationally, which is something that I would
like to keep doing in the upcoming years. Beyond my doctoral research, I enjoy
disseminating the connections between music and mathematics, either in the form of
lecture-recitals or radio shows, the latter at Catalan and Spanish National Radios.