Today we’d like to introduce you to Jessica Muñiz-Collado (NIZCO).
Jessica, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
As a first-generation American and South Florida native most of my life, my culture, and surrounding environment greatly influenced my musical choices growing up. The majority of music I listened to was driven by its rhythm. This led me to want to study percussion. At age 12, I began learning how to play the drums and wanted to pursue percussion studies at the undergraduate level. I was then blessed to get a degree in percussion performance from the University of Miami. While at UM, I became more intrigued with composition and realized that being a composer was the career path that I really wanted to go. By the time I was a senior at UM, I was blessed to already have three compositions published with a major percussion publisher. It was truly humbling. I then pursued an MFA in Music Composition from the Vermont College of Fine Arts where my areas of concentration were scoring for media and jazz composition. I was also able to deeply explore the area of music production. Today, most of my compositional work-for-hire is in film/media scoring, music production, and sound design.
Can you give our readers some background on your art?
When I create music, I still go back to my roots and keep rhythm as the foundation in my work. I don’t always have to use percussion instruments in my music, but most of the time it is my foundation. I guess you can say it’s my “voice” as a composer, so the listener can distinguish me from other composers/producers. When I create music for media, dance, art or theater, I remember that my music should complement the imagery. My music needs to further enhance the story being told, with the goal of giving the viewer a more enjoyable experience. Whether I am composing music for fun or for hire, the message I hope that people can take away from it is that music is essential and our world would be very different without it.
How do you think about success, as an artist, and what do quality do you feel is most helpful?
In my opinion, success is subjective. If every morning I can wake up and know that I am making a living as a music composer, I am happy and have found success. If I am able to enhance someone’s artistic vision with the help of an original score, I am happy and have found success. If I am able to motivate the next generation of composers and encourage them to keep writing music even when they think it’s not very good, I am happy and have found success. As an artist, it truly is essential to exercise patience, stay driven, stay humble, and remember that every opportunity (even failed ones) are gifts that you can learn from. Last but not least, it is important to be of good character and have integrity. People will usually remember these traits about you, sometimes even more than your music.
What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
I encourage people to please visit my website: www.nizcomusic.com and to follow me on Soundcloud (artist name: NIZCO) and Instagram (@nizco_music). My Spotify page is recently up so people can go there too (artist name: NIZCO). People can support my work by sharing it with others or hiring me for projects. I enjoy collaborating with other artists (musicians, dancers, theatre, etc.) because it’s always interesting to me to see what two artists with different styles can create.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.nizcomusic.com/
- Email: jessicamunizcollado@gmail.com
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