Today, we’d like to introduce you to Renato Diz.
Hi Renato, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I entered this world through the gorgeous and mysterious city of Porto, Portugal. My arrival came just three months after the Chernobyl disaster, which unfolded approximately 2,000 miles away. My earliest musical memory is running wildly inside the idyllic Monastery of Serra do Pilar with other children at age 3 or 4 on any given Friday evening while my parents rehearsed classical sacred music repertoire with the church choir, accompanied by a pipe organ in preparation for Sunday mass.
At home, during social gatherings, my father would pick up the guitar and accompany my mother, singing fados and intervention songs from the dictatorship times. I also vaguely remember traveling with my parents on short tours, as my father played guitar and sang in an amateur folk music group. Although very vivid images and sounds, these memories now seem detached from any art I have created and participated in in the past twenty years as a professional artist.
At age 6, I was enrolled in the Music Conservatory as a piano major (aside from elementary school), thus beginning my artistic academic journey. Unlike the United States, the Music Conservatory curriculum in Portugal is not centered exclusively around the instrument one chooses; it also includes disciplines such as theory, composition, ensemble, history, acoustics, secondary instrument, and orchestra, spanning the equivalent of a complete school curriculum from elementary to the end of high school.
There, I was introduced to and comprehensively instructed in virtually all aspects of Western art music (commonly known as classical music). Many myths were created, frustration tears shed, performance injuries multiplied, friendships for life cemented, fears fed, and silos of what “real music truly is” were erected… As classes became increasingly challenging, piano competitions and recitals more demanding, and teachers less open to “other possibilities,” I grew disillusioned with music and art.
When I was about to turn 11, my grandfather passed away from pancreatic cancer, and the world as I knew it ended with him. The violence of this event made me question everything around me, from faith to reality, from art to science, from values and ethics to fundamental principles of reality. Every free moment from school, Conservatory, and other activities became a relentless exploration of philosophy, psychology, and contemporary art.
Watching Silence of the Lambs made me believe that my future belonged in Criminal Psychology. I also began frequenting every underground art event in Porto, including performance art, experimental theater, new circus, experimental music, arthouse cinema, and philosophy discussion clubs. The more abstract and experimental, the more engaged I was!
When I turned 16, life once again showed me that long-term plans can be as delicate as paper boats on a river: I began studying with a new piano teacher at the Conservatory who introduced me to Gershwin, unexpectedly witnessed my first jazz concert (from a pianist who would be my first jazz teacher two years later!), and heard Keith Jarrett’s mercurial album The Köln Concert on the radio!
The combination of these factors (and a few dramatic personal ones) cracked my life wide open to fully embrace this “new thing” called improvisation… Suddenly, the puzzle pieces fit! From Chopin to Pink Floyd, Steve Coleman to Messiaen, Black Sabbath to John Zorn, a visible sonic connection made it all possible through improvisation as an underlining principle in several phases of the creative process!
I began private jazz lessons, got accepted into the only jazz bachelor program in the Iberian peninsula at the time (only two open slots per year), began performing, touring, and creating professionally, and started collaborating with every artist from across disciplines/idioms who was open to exploring the edges of what was possible.
In 2011, I moved to New York City to pursue a master’s degree at New York University, where I had the opportunity to study with some of the world’s most well-known artists! Around the same time, I began my recording career as a sideman and leader while balancing a busy touring, academic, and private teaching schedule.
After graduating, I decided it was time to create W&J Productions, a label and production company 100% funded by the artists involved in each project. It was envisioned as a safe, open, and welcoming space to share trans-idiomatic and multidisciplinary works that hadn’t found their audience yet.
Between 2019 and 2020, I performed in Europe (again) and Africa (for the first time), premiered and toured with another multidisciplinary project, recorded seven original projects, married the love of my life (who’s also one of my favorite transdisciplinary auteurs and human being!), and experienced the “most intense honeymoon in history”: nine months in lockdown inside our studio apartment in Harlem!
This incredible experience during the pandemic made us realize we wanted to pursue a doctorate and teach in higher academia as an expansion of our creative activities. Thus, another life reset with a move to Miami, where we are now finishing the second year of our doctorates at Frost School of Music, University of Miami.
Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I believe struggles, obstacles, and challenges are powerful spices in life’s ongoing recipe. However, they can also be another outlook on the “cup’s half full/half empty” nectar. Here are a select few:
Growing up in a relatively small country with centuries of history and deep-rooted traditions provides solid ground for a nostalgia-driven education filled with sayings, myths, beliefs, and gorgeous poetries. It can also suffocate new ideas when pushed against what is comfortable, accepted, and understood.
These dichotomies and the visible distance between them birthed many of my artistic concepts and life-changing events. From lack of family support (besides my incredible mother!) to the absence of supportive institutional structures (academic and cultural), my decision to move to New York presented itself as a “need to come up for air.”
Using piano as my first professional creative tool was a decision that arose from a crippling back condition that prevented me from touching the keys between the ages of 17 and 18. It still fascinates me how I decided to embrace the keyboard after years of a love-hate relationship (I loved to hear it and dreaded to practice it!). Moving to New York by myself in 2011 meant dealing with the complex immigration processes in the post-9/11 United States and adapting to an entirely different culture, language, and unavoidable life nuances.
When one creates based on personal and brutally honest, ever-evolving beliefs, one might unearth powerful pushbacks that appear to arise from the aether. Ever since deciding to place art at the center of a transdisciplinary life, that has been my experience. Ultimately, I am immensely grateful for every struggle, obstacle, and hurdle, as they continue to provide endless flavor to my life and challenge me to transcend whatever self-imposed limitation arises.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar with what you do, what can you tell them about what you do?
I am a transdisciplinary auteur, founder, CEO, and recording artist at W&J Productions (NYC). My work is as broad as my interests. In other words, I specialize in everything I am interested in. Until now, these disciplines include composition, arrangement, improvisation, experimental theater, performance, painting, drawing, photography, poetry, essay, film, sound design, sound engineering, soundtrack, video editing, gastronomy, light design, graphic design, psychology, pedagogy, western and eastern philosophy… I am probably forgetting something!
I have participated in over 30 recordings as a pianist/keyboardist, arranger, and producer. I have also released six projects as a leader/co-leader, ranging in a broad spectrum of styles and genres: QaraBag with Zulfugar Baghirov, Distance Chemistry with Maria Alejandra Quintanilla, EARPRINTS with Louis de Mieulle and Raphaël Pannier, Poetics of Sight with Sérgio Tavares and Jorge Queijo, Breathing Taiwan with Maria Alejandra Quintanilla and Sayun Chang, and DESCRIPTIONS OF USELESS SUBTITLES AND MEANINGFUL SUBLIMATIONS with Pedro Marnoto and Peter Traunmueller.
Throughout the years, I’ve had the privilege of creating and collaborating in unique settings, such as film scoring (Vozes na Névoa by Pedro Marnoto, Tuttodunpezzo by André da Loba, LAKE by Sigrun Hreins), dance scoring (A Nation of Strangers and The Beat of Life for I Kada company), multidisciplinary projects (at a volume only you can hear with Pedro Marnoto, IALASPI with José Alberto Gomes, I Will Play Your Soul solo with audience participation, Virginia Wolff’s LAKE with Sérgio Tavares and Dária Salgado), live soundtrack (Pessoa in New York, Piano Paintings), film (EVRY, Conversation II with Pedro Marnoto and Maria Alejandra Quintanilla), among others.
As a transdisciplinary auteur, I take immense pride in every project I am involved with, including all eight new projects I am currently preparing for release. I treat each project as an immersive obsession that itches relentlessly until it sees the light of day. After that, I let it live its life by relinquishing control over the results. In other words, I share my very best attempt at materializing a specific vision with the world and then let the world answer at its pace.
Growing up, I always worked painfully hard to set myself apart from everyone else (only child syndrome, perhaps?). After I started collaborating with other beings, I realized that my art’s expressive capabilities had increased dramatically because I found common ground with my colleagues! We are stronger together. To be different, one only needs to be born; after that, community might be the best way forward…
Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
Hmmm… great question! I speak Portuguese, French, Spanish, and English; I have a double black belt in martial arts (30 years of training); my diet is 100% plant-based (I love to cook!); I am a cinema aficionado; a few years ago, I did the 23andMe DNA test, and it reported I am 99.7% Portuguese.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.renatodiz.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/therenatodiz/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/therenatodiz
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@wjproductionsllc
- Other: https://wjproductionsllc.bandcamp.com
