ABOUT
WHO
It is said that our name marks us as individuals, that names “represent our identity, not only because they are a convenient way to distinguish us from one another, but because they define us. The name we receive at birth is not accidental. It is, to some extent, prophetic”
I am Carmen Sofía.
Carmen, in Latin, means song or poem. Sofia, in ancient Greek, means wisdom.
Managing the coexistence of my two names, which indeed define me, has often been a true challenge. A passion for music and a passion for knowledge. Fortunately, time tends to put things in their rightful place and I now realise that Carmen and Sofía walk together; they reinforce each other, learn from each other and support each other. The path has always been the same, I simply had to stop for a moment to see that they were not two pairs of imprints on the ground but just one pair with the force of two footprints.
I am Carmen Sofía and I am a composer. This is how it has been as long as I can remember.
WHAT
There are books 30 pages long, 300 pages long and 853 pages long. There are movies 90 minutes long, while others are 120 or 180 minutes long.
I tell stories, I don’t count minutes, because every story needs a different time frame to be told.
I like to think that what I do are movies. It’s just that they are a little unusual. My movies are shot without a camera, but they have a true plot, intense characters and a very special soundtrack where nothing is coincidental.
My camera is a piano, my plots are lyrics, my characters speak through my voice and the soundtrack is built on audio tracks, hundreds of musical arrangements and thousands of feelings.
Visualizing the image of the movie is easy, you just need to get carried away by everything else. That part… I leave it to you.
HOW
Honestly? I have no idea…
I listen to the songs in my mind before writing a single sentence, before playing a single note. I am not the one who chooses the moment when they decide to materialize, I only open the door so that they step into the light What I live, what I hear, what I see, what I think, what I dream; the things that make me happy, the things that hurt me, the things that give me hope, the things that discourage me, the things that make me strong, the things that terrify me… They create the stories that I want to tell as if there were movies.
A song may start with a word, with a title, with a melody that, sometimes, I am only able to hum. But once it starts, it’s unstoppable and I have to sit at the piano so it can come alive. After that, the hard work begins: instruments, arrangements, rhythms, chorus… until what I hear in my head becomes a reality so that you can hear it too.