Dr. Patricio Molina Releases First Album of Original Music

By Steve Sears

Yamaha artist and Riverdale resident, Dr. Patricio Molina, had written the music, but the songs sat unrecorded, some for as long as 10 years.

“I had been working on this music for a long time,” Molina says. “There are some pieces that I wrote in 2012, there are some pieces that I wrote almost two months before the release, and there are some pieces I wrote when I was very young when I came to this country. I was trying to see what I could do with it, because now there was enough music to create a concert or an album.”

It is an album, and D.N.A. is the title. Molina, who has released albums featuring the music of various composers, now presents 11 of his original, self-performed compositions for solo piano. The offering pays tribute to his early life in Chile and beyond, his musical journey, and with two tunes he portrays his love for his wife and son. “They (the songs) are all part of me in a way,” Molina says. “These pieces were written at specific times in my life, and they were really written for myself. I did not write them for performance; I just wrote them because I had the urge to express something in music.”

“Cueca,” representing musical styles from his Chilean homeland, Molina wrote in 2012, and “Taqsim for Piano” comes from embracing his mother’s Syrian heritage.

“In the last couple of years, I’ve started embracing more of my culture and heritage,” Molina says. “A lot of the newer music includes Arabic touches and flavors. ‘Taqsim’ is an Arabic improvisation, so that was one of the latest ones I wrote.” “A Musical Portrait” is a gorgeous 2:45 piece that Molina wrote for his wife of three years, Mallory, when he proposed to her, and “Light” represents the first time he looked into and “met” the light in young son Patricio Jr.’s eyes. “Imagining a life with him, now being a part of my life, I could see the beautiful light through his eyes,” he adds. Also, an additional piece of music initially destined for D.N.A. will find a home on pianist Lara Downes’s upcoming April album release.

For Molina, there is a deep fondness for the piano, an instrument he first embraced at age three, and he has always found it extraordinary how so much can be expressed and said through just one instrument. “That’s always fascinated me,” he says. “I can imitate the Arabic sounds, Chilean sounds, inner feelings, dances - all of that and just with one instrument.”

When asked how those unfamiliar with him and his music, and with the piano especially, can best listen to and even understand the music presented on D.N.A., Molina offers this. “With art, the more you listen to it, the more you appreciate it. There is a difference between listening and hearing. I encourage people to listen to it attentively, maybe with a cup of tea or by a fireplace without any distractions, and really, really listen to it as a meditation almost. All the pieces tell a story. The “Cueca,” the Chilean dance, goes places. It’s not just a dance. There’s a theme, a melody, and I convert the melody. I bring the melody to the bottom, to the top, and sometimes I make the melody longer, sometimes shorter. If you’re able to pick up on all those little things I do with the music, I think that’s where the magic happens.”

Molina, who is Music Director at Saint Thomas the Apostle Parish in Bloomfield, is currently working on a collaborative project with opera soprano, Christine Moore Vassallo. D.N.A. is available on Apple Music, You Tube, and Spotify. For more information about Molina and his album, visit www. patriciofmolina.com.