From Barcelona to the Bayou: Marina Albero's Musical MIgration

Music carries memory in its bones. This truth reveals itself peculiarly—sometimes in the flutter of a hammered dulcimer string, other times in the well-worn keys of a master's piano. Marina Albero knows this intimately, her fingers having traced musical lineages across continents, each note a thread connecting past to present, tradition to innovation. Born into the cultural resistance of post-Franco Barcelona, where her family performed Catalan folk music in defiance of linguistic oppression, Albero learned early that music could be both refuge and revolution.

The path of an artist often mirrors water—seeking its level, finding unexpected courses, carrying fragments of every landscape it touches. At fifteen, Albero found herself in Cuba, ostensibly there to study classical piano with the renowned Teresita Junco. But the real education happened after dark, in the pulse of La Habana's streets, where she discovered that rhythm isn't just counted but lived. Those nights of dancing would later inform her approach to American jazz, which she pursued with characteristic intensity after settling in Seattle in 2014. With its gray skies and welcoming creative community, the maritime city became an unexpected home for this Mediterranean spirit and her two children.

As Seattle embraced Albero—through sold-out performances at the Earshot Jazz Festival, collaborations that spanned genres and traditions, and the gradual building of a musical family far from her roots—she never stopped moving, learning, and evolving. With her children grown and pursuing their own artistic paths in Barcelona, Albero has followed the music's call south to New Orleans. In the cradle of jazz, she recorded A Nomad of Sound on Ellis Marsalis's piano at the center that bears his name. The album emerges as document and prophecy—a record of where she's been and a glimpse of what’s to come. Albero reminds us that the most profound journeys are circular, leading us away from home only to show us new ways of returning.

Lawrence Peryer recently interviewed Marina Albero on the Spotlight On podcast. Albero generously shared tales of her upbringing, the inspiration she found in Cuba, the camaraderie she encountered in Seattle, and how the cultural spirit of New Orleans shapes her present and future projects. The entire conversation is captured in the Spotlight On player below. The transcribed interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Like a Mother Tongue

Lawrence Peryer: I've enjoyed listening to the new record. It's wonderful. I'm intrigued by your early life as a musician and the family dynamic you came up in.

Marina Albero: I was on stage with my parents, who had several instruments they weren’t playing. They say I just stood up and started playing the xylophone. I heard the tunes they were performing over and over, and they said, "Okay, we've got a new member." At that time, I always loved dancing, so I alternated dancing to traditional Spanish folk music and playing. I dreamed of being a dancer, but playing music naturally came to me.

Lawrence: Was being a musician always what you would do, or was there ever an alternative path?

Marina: I decided on music when I went to Cuba. I was there from age fifteen until I turned eighteen, and that's when I realized music was a beautiful way to grow and express myself. When I was twelve or thirteen, I wasn't thinking, "Okay, music is what I'm doing." I had a talent for music, but maybe I had a talent for something else. I had this moment of doubt when I was very young, but after I returned from Cuba, that decision was made.

Lawrence: What led you to Cuba?

Marina: I came to Seattle when I was twelve with my parents to rehearse for a theater play we would perform at the Cultural Olympics. I loved it so much here, and I was begging my parents, "I want to live in Seattle. It seems so cool." They suggested, "Your brother just went to Cuba last September; why don't you visit and see if you like it?" I went to Cuba, and after a week. I thought, "Wow, music is everywhere. People are nice. I can dance every night." That changed my path.

It worked for me, and I studied classical piano there. However, the idea of Seattle never abandoned me, and twenty years later, I moved to Seattle.

Lawrence: Among the things that struck me during my visit to Cuba, the culture around music and how music started in the evening and went all night was beautiful. What studies and traditions were you immersed in there?

Marina: I was primarily immersed in classical studies because I was doing that in Spain. I mostly took counterpoint and harmony lessons, classical percussion, and classical piano. I learned all the traditional folk and Afro-Cuban music from hanging out with my friends, dancing, and jamming with them.

I also transcribed a whole album of Cuban music from that time, from the '90s, on piano because I wanted to be prepared. Cubans often joke about people from other places trying to play Cuban music. So I went there ready to show them that I understood it. I remember my brother having a percussion class when I first got there, and I went to visit him. The teacher said, "Marina, where do you think the clave goes?" And he started playing guaguancó, and I just played whatever I felt was right. And he said to my brother, "See, she's got it."

Of course, I feel challenged by other musical traditions the first time I immerse myself in them, but it’s just about paying attention, being respectful, listening, and going for it—doing what you think is right. I got this language, this channeling, from my great-grandmother, and it's also been passed on to my kids. I understand music is a language, and some people are just vessels for it. We understand it's like a mother tongue.

Lawrence: Do you feel like maybe it's something genetic? Is it cultural?

Marina: I've seen all cases around me, including professional musicians with no musical history in their families. They sat at the piano when they were seven and already knew what was happening. I think it's some sort of a language. It's like other people have this brain for math or science—they just see it. We all have some sort of talent. It could be cooking, speaking, or being a good listener for a therapist. If you're lucky, that talent is spotted and supported depending on the environment. But even when it's there, I've seen people with no support and their family saying, "Oh, you're not going to be a musician. This is not a business. This is not a real job." And they end up being successful musicians.

Testimony on Paper

Lawrence Peryer: In your time here in Seattle, you've built and become such a part of a community. I always see your name in other people's ensembles, and you bring people into your various projects and teach at Cornish. Beyond that initial impulse to come here as a young person, what makes this city so fertile and productive for you?

Marina Albero: It's a bit of a mystery to me, too, because I don't see my music or myself as so extraordinary. I have a lot to work on. Music is always ahead of what I am as a musician.

It all started because Hans Teuber trusted me as a musician. I got here not feeling that secure about my playing or music. I thought I was messing up a lot, and Hans would look at me and say, "Keep doing what you do. You have a lot of music within you. I just want you to feel comfortable and go for it."

I was very insecure about jazz and playing jazz initially. I'd never really gone so much into the jazz language. I did take three or four years of piano jazz to understand the chords and be able to compose and name what I was composing, but I didn't devote my life to jazz language.

Hans would say to me, "Marina, don't try to play bebop the way the language of bebop is. We like your freshness. We like your take on it. We need that. We are craving some other improvisational language, and you have it." So he encouraged me to be myself and not try too hard to fit in or change because of the dogma or the history.

That kind of support was key for me in Seattle to believe I was worthy of being part of that community. So I call Hans my mentor, although he gets mad. He's like, "I'm not that old." I say, "I don't know. You're my mentor in Seattle.” He gave me a lot of credibility, both for myself and from others.

Lawrence Peryer: I've talked to many artists who have come up either through conservatory or classical training, and they were very actively discouraged from improvising or even listening to jazz. I’m curious how your teachers and mentors felt about your interest in other kinds of music early on. Were you encouraged to take a holistic approach?

Marina Albero: No. (laughter) The problem with classical music is that you have to write it down. You have to leave that testimony on paper. We don't have recordings of Chopin playing his music. I am convinced that Chopin was a great improviser. I doubt that he would play the same nocturne the same way. Just looking at the scales up and down, the ornamentations are so much of an improvisation.

All these themes and variations from Mozart and Beethoven were improvisations on a theme, and that's what we do in jazz. I don't think jazz invented improvisation. Jazz is the first improvised music we have records of, and it's a style of its own. We can see the birth of jazz because we have the first recordings of King Oliver with Louis Armstrong on trumpet.

We humans think we know everything when we have a piece of paper that tells us something, and we don't question how many other stories were not told or what was left out. So, I never really enjoyed the way classical teachers, especially in Spain, would hold on to the dogma and tell you, "This is how it's played." I was very skeptical. I'm still very skeptical. I would ask myself, "How do you know?"

Improvisation has always been part of my expression. I have always needed to improvise and compose. While being a purist about certain music is okay, nobody should think that's the only truth.

Lawrence: Is there a particular classical composer that you return to often?

Marina: Bach. I also go back a lot to Debussy. These two are probably my go-to when I have a little time to play. What Bach can do with the same scale and just modulating neighbor keys—he doesn't go to any far-away keys. It's almost like bebop or Brazilian music, all these choros. It's very diatonic, but they can improvise and tell these stories with the same notes and with such creativity, and it's astonishing to me.

Another composer I love and is all over my compositions is Frederic Mompou. He was a composer from Barcelona for the whole 20th century because he passed away in the '80s when he was eighty-three. He went to France and studied there with Fauré and with other people. So, he was really in touch with Expressionism. He also took all the Catalan and other melodies from the Iberian Peninsula. He put them in a very delicate and intellectual way, as well as a very sentimental one. So, I love Mompou because I feel that I identify with him.

Let New Orleans Tell You

Lawrence Peryer: Tell me about New Orleans. If Cuba's one source, New Orleans is certainly the other.

Marina Albero: New Orleans, along with cities in Brazil, West Africa, and India, has always been on my musical bucket list. These places have always called me in a powerful way because of their music. India has been making music the same way for at least five thousand years. Africa is where all the rhythms come from. The basic rhythmic cells are from Africa when we talk about Cuba, New Orleans, and even Europe. When I came to the U.S. and wanted to learn more about jazz, rock, blues, and soul, I knew New Orleans was always a place I would go.

So, in May and July 2023, I went to New Orleans and L.A. to decide where to spend the next winter. New Orleans won by a hundred to zero. Getting into the community and finding the right spots was so much easier. Music was happening everywhere, all the time.

I saved up some money for the recording and went to New Orleans for four months in 2024 to write music. I booked the recording studio without knowing who would be the musicians. I was like, “Let New Orleans tell you.” And it was a big success. I didn't expect to have a full-length album or my dream musicians.

Amina Scott was always in my head. She's a great musician, composer, and beautiful soul. One day, I was playing with my friend Yusa at the Snug Harbor. Then I crossed the street, and at The Spotted Cat, they saw me with my keytar and said, "Are you not going in? Sit in." When I took a break and went back out, Amina was there on the street and said, "Who are you? I love your music. What are you doing here?" And I said, "Well, I'm trying to make a little recording. I'm making a self-made residency here." She said, "I want to be on your record." I almost cried. It was pretty magical.

Lawrence: Tell me about playing Ellis Marsalis's piano, and what does that mean?

Marina: The Ellis Marsalis Center is a fairly new project, a music school mostly for underprivileged kids. It provides them with instruments and the best teachers and has a nice-sized concert hall where Ellis Marsalis’s piano lives. They told me nobody had yet recorded an album with Ellis Marsalis’s piano, and I was the first one.

The person who took me there, Justin Armstrong, is a top-notch sound engineer. He teaches the kids sound and production at the Center and showed me around. I saw the hall and said, "That's where I want to do it. I want everybody on stage recording at the same time in the same space."

Playing that piano, which is in perfect shape—they have it super well-balanced and sounding beautiful—was very inspiring. It feels like driving a Porsche after you’ve been in your little Prius. You play a C major there, and it sounds like heaven.

At the end of the session, the people who were listening came to me and thanked me for playing such beautiful music on the maestro’s piano. I want to approach them to see if we can present the album there, as I think it would be the perfect spot for us to premiere it in New Orleans.

Include the Wurli

Lawrence Peryer: Tell me about your daughter and her place on the record.

Marina Albero: My daughter is one of the best musicians I've ever met, although she's only twenty-five. (laughter) Right now, she's doing great in Spain. She sings at big festivals and has a beautiful jazz project with Xavier Lecouturier, Dylan Hayes, and Martin Budde. They just recorded an album in Spain at my old studio, where my son is an engineer. Whenever she sings or plays guitar, she's instantly respected.

When I saw that I had the record coming up in New Orleans, I called her and said, "Serena, I need you. There are at least two of the tunes—one of them, you already put lyrics on, and I want you to sing a few more." She only had five days available, so she flew from Spain for five days.

We made the record and premiered a new band that instantly got a residency. We will start in January in New Orleans. I’m very lucky we can share a stage and studio at her age. She gives me the moral support I didn't have in New Orleans. She's family. She knew I was stressed. She would come and calm me down and then take the mic.

Lawrence: I appreciate your embrace of the electric instruments and how you integrate them naturally, bringing in the tones and colors in the palette without them dominating.

Marina: On the new record, the only songs not recorded at the Ellis Marsalis Center are the brass band ones because the acoustics are so much of a concert hall that the brass band would have been hard to mix. So we went to Marigny Studios. The piano wasn't good there, and I thought, "No, wait a second. They have a beautiful Wurlitzer." My friend Charlie, who worked at the Rhodes factory when he was sixteen, came from Pensacola and put the Wurli in perfect shape.

In New Orleans, I was known for playing the keytar. I played the keytar with the New Breed Brass Band twice. They loved it. They said, "You're taking the brass band to a new level."

I'm also known for not playing digital pianos—I don’t even own one. When there is a concert, and they don’t have an actual piano, I bring my Wurlitzer. I’ve been playing the Wurlitzer even with big bands; they love it. So I thought, perfect, I need to include the Wurli. And, of course, the keytar, which has been my New Orleans staple.

Lawrence: Well, buy a round-trip ticket when you return to New Orleans because we want you back in Seattle. (laughter)

Marina: Actually, my flight is round-trip. I bought it from Seattle, and I’m coming back on May 8 because I’m playing with the Federal Way Big Band on May 10. I’m already scheduling all my concerts—at North City Bistro with the Island Jazz Quintet, at The Gallery, and at the Fellowship—which will all happen in May and June. I’m going to be here for two months, for sure.

Visit Marina Albero at marinaalbero.net and follow her on Instagram, Facebook, Bandcamp, and YouTube. Purchase Marina Albero's A Nomad of Sound from Qobuz and listen on your streaming platform of choice.