2025 Pianist in Residence: Daniel Inamorato Interview
PART I: PIANIST
7 min read“The possibilities are endless when you are not afraid”
Earlier this month, we announced our inaugural Pianist in Residence, Daniel Inamorato. A Brazilian-American born in Santo André, São Paulo, Brazil, Daniel now resides in Williamsburg, Virginia, where he teaches at the University of William & Mary. Shortly after the announcement, we sent him a series of questions via email, and Daniel responded with thoughtful answers. We are thrilled to finally share his in-depth interview with our community and beyond in three parts. Here is Part I: Pianist.
When did you first start playing the piano, and what or who inspired you to begin your musical journey?
My older sister was born with a physical disability that affected many muscles, so her doctor suggested that she should start working on a motion based activity to develop strength. My mother noticed that my sister loved our small toy piano, and found a piano teacher for her in the neighborhood.
I would shadow my sister in everything, help her walk around, try to learn her pieces, and eventually I also started taking lessons. Quickly realizing we needed a more experienced instructor; my mother went through many hurdles to get us into a private music conservatory in the city next to ours. We spent almost ten years having after school music classes there, which solidified our musicianship for life. This is me playing our toy piano at age 2:
What was your first concert experience like? How did it go, and how did you feel performing?
I performed my first concert with an orchestra at age 9, it was deeply transformative. We were at a really large church with hundreds of people crowded to watch the concert. I remember the feeling of sitting backstage trying to focus on recalling the music by memory and trying to “get mentally in the zone”. I wish every child had such an opportunity! Here is a low-quality upload recording of that performance:
At what point did you start performing professionally, and what motivated you to make that transition?
For me it wasn’t a transition, that's what I did. If I wasn’t at school, I was at the music conservatory taking classes, practicing and researching music. I was lucky to have many giant Brazilian artists around me to inspire me, and very early on, I was obsessed with music, art-cinema, philosophy and so forth. From ages 7 to 19 I went to an average of three piano competitions a year. At age 14 I got my first job as a choir accompanist, at 16 I was fully independent financially working as a pianist and teacher and traveling Brazil to teach and perform at music festivals. It was a wild ride, as I came from a very poor family and had to work for every small thing I needed, but having this ability allowed me to put in the work and accumulate the means to keep progressing little by little.
Was there a specific turning point in your career that changed the trajectory of your work?
Yes, I have had quite a few turning points! The most significant was probably in 2016, when because of a government delay delivering my US work visa, I wasn’t able to work for a full year. Not working for me equals not having the means to survive, so I went into a panic and got really depressed.
Luckily, I was aware that trauma needs an outing to leave the body, and so I decided to take it all into creating art. I started learning a Japanese dance form called Butoh, known also as “the dance of darkness”; I started writing pieces that reflected my angst; and I deepened my research on Neurodiversity, Gestural Oppression, and Avant-Garde art movements.
During this period, I also organized the structure of a project I call The Toy Piano Sanctuary & Neurodiversity Music Institute. All these decisions needed time to happen, and as I was so busy working as a pianist, I would never have had the energy to add so many creative pieces to my life’s puzzle.
How would you describe your approach to piano performance?
I approach performance outside of the piano first. Performativity is the quality of living in society and moving, talking, feeling what your culture and counter cultures taught you to begin with. I then approach the specifics of each body, neurotypical or neurodiverse, able or disabled, young or old, experienced or a novice, the state of the muscles and general abilities, it all changes how we choose to move, hear, and touch the instrument.
Generally, I strive for organized intensity. I believe we need a quantity of rehearsal and critical attention to organize the material, and then more time to allow the tensions accumulated during the creative process to vanish, keeping only a healthy and long-term lasting version of the performance. That amount of time is not always afforded, so I also advise my students to learn to perform under stress and short notice.
There is a large portion of my knowledge that I accumulated through struggling on the spot... finding it out “on the go”, shall I say. For example, sight reading at musical theater auditions... it is a wild experience, and at first, I was terrible at it, mostly because it tends to be pure chaos and madness. After multiple attempts, and intense sight reading training, voice lessons, conducting lessons and other experiences; sight reading in public became not only one of my strongest assets, but one of my favorite things to do. So, with time, if we persist and don’t freak out, we improve!
Do you have any advice for aspiring pianists?
The possibilities are endless when you are not afraid. Firstly, learn ALL styles you can and in debt. Meaning, it will take research on performance practices, reading history, learning multiple pieces from each composer, writing your own music in those styles, and years of reevaluating your experiences and technique to master your craft. When you approach a topic from as many angles as possible, you will be more flexible and able to control not only the instrument, but the audience.
Another big advice: SING A LOT. Take voice lessons, join a choir, make music with your entire body. I also truly recommend pianists to learn how to conduct from a very early age.
When it comes to practicing, short but focused sessions are better than long but unfocused. Go to concerts as often as possible, play for friends and ask for advice, go to the gym and keep your body active, and be nice to yourself and to each other: we are not on this Earth to prove a point.
PART II: ARTIST
10 min read“My favorite art form is absurd art. Anything absurdity based, I am there for it!”
Daniel is an extraordinary artist who transforms life’s overwhelming difficulties into powerful art and energy to uplift others. In Part II of the interview, he shares how he was introduced to non-European music in his early years, how learning contemporary music became a full-time occupation, and more about his roles as the creator of The Toy Piano Sanctuary & Neurodiversity Music Institute. He also discusses how he discovered Japanese Butoh, a powerful practice and dance that brings together all his diverse artistic interests into one.
How did you begin incorporating new music into your repertoire? Was it a natural progression, or did particular inspiration or opportunities influence this?
At every competition I went to in Brazil as a child, there was a mandatory performance of a Brazilian piece. The vast majority of pieces I had access to at the time were composed in the XX century and were my introduction to non-European post Romantic music. Then I found Bartok, and my mind was blown. Years later I made the first piano version of his Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta:
Then I found Schnittke and I was mad I didn’t hear about him earlier; same way I felt about Denison, Gubaidulina, and so many other powerhouse composers from the second half of the century. I finally started working with composers, and I premiered in 2012 my first official new music collaboration with a composer, Francisco Cortés-Alvarez, recording his piece Danza del Parque de las Acacias:
There is also personality; I think I was always an odd Queer child, and my understanding of the World brought me closer and closer to odd things. I have never rejected dissonances, but instead, I would turn off the lights, lay down in the floor, and listen to these pieces imagining that I was in a dream, or on at an Alighieri-Boudelaire-KaŅa mash-up story.
I have a very broad imagination; my family’s hobby was to rent five movies a week for us to watch (at the time, in cassette tapes). So very early on, I understood the importance of thematic development and allowing the plot to speak for itself. We watched everything, Fellini, Buñuel, Tarkovsky, Hitchcock; I was lucky enough to see these still young, so nothing surprised me when it came to oddness and unfamiliarity.
Learning contemporary music became a full-time occupation once I could finally put my hands on the scores. In the 1990’s, it was surprisingly difficult for a poor person in Brazil to have access to music scores, so pre-cellphones and pre-wildly-available-internet, we had to hunt for scores at libraries and master the use of expensive photocopy machines.
What do you enjoy most about playing new works?
The new angle it allows me to have without leaving the bench. It is a window to someone else’s experiences, and I am there for the ride. I go into deep dialogue mode, wondering what life they had, what was the spark that initiated the composition, what instruments and spaces they had available while working, what can the piece say about our modern life, and what does it say to me.
I also dab into re-writing pieces, making adaptations or improvising with themes I hear that call my attention. I can get lost for hours on end on a new piece, and come out on the other side having had a wonderful conversation with someone that I might or might not ever meet in person. But the great thing about our Era is that we can meet most composers and deeply research their lives, which makes performance even fuller of humanity and personified expression.
What kind of new works would you like to see living composers explore and write?
I would love for composers to use speech more often on keyboard music, on the molds of what Rzewsky did. More physical comedy or drama as Gilberto Mendes did. More daring conceptual music like John Cage’s chance music or his 4’33”.
I also try to be active against the concept of sanitized concerts and sanitized music, when everything is written only to please, and provoking is frowned upon. I love listening to hip hop and Brazilian funk, I don’t ever want to see myself only involved with aristocratic values. Unfortunately, showcasing a diversity of values is still taboo these days.
I truly appreciate bold topics and writing that isn’t conventional. My favorite art form is absurd art. Anything absurdity based, I am there for it! It doesn’t need to be busy or too full of information; you can say a lot as a composer with a few notes, if attached to good context and a strong point of view.
Political art is very powerful to me, as well as anything that is related with mental health, the inner workings of things, or metaphorical poetry. And let’s not discard our mathematical thinkers either... anything numerical and highly logical... count me in!
I particularly research a large portion of history that relates to oppression, and would love more pieces that talk about the dark side of things, such as obsessions, fears, oppression, BDSM/Kinks, etc.
But humor is not to be looked sideways either; it tends to be a powerful tool to showcase things from an angle people are open to accept.
Could you tell us more about The Toy Piano Sanctuary & Neurodiversity Music Institute, the program you created and directed?
The Sanctuary is the culmination of many of my interests teaching and researching neurodiversity, non-traditional piano repertoire, music pedagogy and avant-garde political performance arts. I now own the largest collection of toy pianos and chord organs in the United States, and our first Composition Competition is about to select 49 Microludes for toy pianos in an homage to the 49 victims murdered by one mass shooter at Pulse Nightclub, in Orlando Florida. The entrance fee is a donation to the Human Rights Campaign, and the due date to send your Microsludes is May 1st 2025, the rules can be found at:
Through the Sanctuary, I have organized many programs to help Latin American musicians with their applications to study abroad, following their processes very closely while they chose schools, helping them with their English writing emails and letters of application, finding good pianos for their audition videos; even finding jobs to complement their incomes while studying abroad.
I also taught many classes in how to teach music for neurotypical and disabled students, and my goal is to one day have an actual music museum that doubles as a school and research institute, so, lots of work ahead.
Could you share your experience as a Butoh performer and what draws you to this unique art form?
Japanese Butoh, known as the dance of darkness, it’s a post Second World War dance created by Kazue Ohno and Tatsumi Hijikata, translating trauma, oddness, pain, anguish, and pure emotion into motion. It is a very powerful practice that I love dearly. I studied it in New York, Chicago and Mexico and have had compositions written for toy pianos, Butoh dancer and electronics:
Unfortunately, I have had much more than my fair share of difficulty in life, which results in trauma that the body holds too very strongly. So, I am a natural candidate for Butoh, as it allows for a large portion of release of the restraints that we keep in place to live and function in our ordinary daily lives. It is actually a perfect dance to mix with contemporary music, toy pianos and political Art, so I can free many birds with one key and get five giggles with one tickle.
What are you working on now, and what keeps you busy at the moment?
I just came back from Canada where I performed Latin American music with my clarinet and piano Duo Del’Ato. I am playing Shostakovitch’s second piano concerto in eight weeks with the William & Mary band and I am trying to learn all his preludes and fugues.
Soon I will be premiering five solo piano pieces by composer-Jazz pianist Eric Lyttle, my colleague at William & Mary. Then in May I will be learning the toy piano pieces resulting from the competition (The Pulse Suite), alongside working on repertoire for solo recitals coming up, including learning as much music from the Abundant Silence Catalogue as I possibly can so I can play it for you in August.
PART III: EDUCATOR
7 min read“Teaching is a privilege I have inherited from having had amazing teachers.”
In the final part of the interview, Daniel shares his influences, the teachers who supported his journey in becoming an artist, his extensive experience teaching people of all backgrounds and abilities across multiple cultures, particularly highlighted by his role as a co-sponsor of the Brazilian Manifesto on Anti-Ableism and Anti-Psychophobia in music education, and what excites him about being FCP/AS’s Pianist in Residence.
Who have been some of your most influential teachers or mentors, and what key lessons did you learn from them? Any memorable moments or favorite lessons?
I could spend many hours talking about my amazing teachers and the lessons they taught me. My most indelible interaction was with Luciana Sayuri Shimabuco, my first teacher at the conservatory when I was 7 years old, and then again, my teacher for the final two years of my undergraduate studies at University of São Paulo.
She was not only extremely organized and methodical in her approach to piano pedagogy, but also helped me in many other ways: allowed me to practice at her house for many hours a week; with rides to the university and competitions; even playing a concert with me to collect enough money for me to move to the US. I consider her a mother-teacher and she is, no doubt, the main reason why I didn’t give up to life’s adversities, and kept fighting to become an artist.
One of my favorite memories was when she would get all her students at the conservatory on Sundays, so we would have no other option but to practice ALL DAY LONG, while alternating performing at master classes.
While she was at a far-away room teaching someone else, she would still be paying attention to you from across the walls and building floors; eventually opening a window and shouting “it is F shaaarp” or “it is finger fooour”. So, I knew I had to always be on my best behavior regardless of her being in the room or not. She is a brilliant human being and teacher!
When did you start teaching, and do you specialize in any particular areas or approaches?
My favorite “game” when I was young was to “play school” - I would align my sister, my best friend and all our dolls and teddy bears in the back of the house for... mathematics class... and would force them to solve equations.... ...I know.... too much nerd... 😊 ... but I have always loved sharing information.
I started teaching at music festivals across Brazil when I was 16 years old and had my first real position as a teacher when I was 18, working with neurodiverse and disabled students at a really large social program in the city of São Paulo.
I don’t discriminate based on body or brain type, in fact I am a co-sponsor of the Brazilian Manifesto on Anti-Ableism and Anti-Psychophobia in music education. So, after more than 20 years teaching any kind of body and brain, in multiple cultures, believe me, YOU WILL LEARN at my lessons 😊 and partially because I also have a large collection of pedagogic tools, from adapted instruments and unique flash cards to methodologies that are not for normative bodies.
How would you describe your teaching style and philosophy?
My students would probably describe my lessons as hilarious, intense and revealing. I am basically a walking mnemonic-device, always singing and making up lyrics for the songs to explain the affect the composer was trying to convey. I focus most of my attention on healthy technique and sound quality, and I explain technique from a physics perspective, so no mysticism when it comes to how to play. I play for and with my students very often and work on theory, singing, composing, as often as possible.
What do you enjoy most about teaching?
Teaching is a privilege I have inherited from having had amazing teachers. I stand on many powerful shoulders of people like Marisa Rosana Lacorte, Arnaldo Cohen, Jean Louis Hagenauer, Nadia Boulanger and so many powerful teachers, and the teachers of my teachers, that worked tirelessly, so music would be available to ALL people. A society without Art is a society without mirrors or any self-awareness, and I truly believe we are the guardians of the human spirit.
We hope you will be able to hold an in-person workshop at the festival in August or an online workshop during your residency. If that happens, what subject would you like to explore with the students?
Some initial suggestions:
1- A group class on Healthy Technique, Velocity, Legato, Pedal and Sightreading
2- A trivia/informal competition on “who can name the composer”
3- A workshop on Toy Piano Music and History
4- An informal sight reading competition
5- Open to the public practicing sections
6- A Toy Piano Improvisation Circle
7- Butoh for pianist beginner workshop
What are you most excited about in your role as Pianist in Residence at FCP/AS?
Firstly, having access to your Catalogue and all this brilliant writing, I am ecstatic to have so many good pieces to pick from! It will be hard not to want to include them all in the program! I love teaching and performing, so I hope to be put to work as much as possible and to learn a lot in the process as well.
Talking about creativity is extremely relevant in a World where copying and simplifying tends to give you immediate but shallow results. I look forward to bringing all that is non-conventional to the surface, and why not, conventional knowledge as well. We don’t have to pick and choose; within tradition there are also many creative processes that have been neglected. So, plenty to talk about: improvisation, transposition, adaptation, timing, performance practices and culture, piano technique.... I can’t wait!
Lastly, could you share a message for the members of the FPC/AS community?
We are so lucky to have this chance to learn music and then to meet each other to exchange our tools. We are all collectively building a beautiful powerful machine that is history, and pianists are major contributors to the development of human thinking and the maturing of the human spirit. I want to invite all students to voice their thoughts, doubts, desires and personalities on and off stage, online and in person in Vermont on August 6th. I am really thankful for the opportunity to share music and spend this year with you.
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