Artistic Idols | Student Blog

“Find what you like, take what you need, and become yourself.”

I am very proud of my influences of the variety of artists I truly admire, and I believe that the reasons they have become important to me have been a key part of developing my artistic soul.

The most elemental of my musical idols, and the reason I became a musician, are the Beatles. I wasn’t raised to be a musician at all; I was born into a family of science but my parents had good taste and one of the CDs that they played for my sister and I the most in the car was a remix of entire works by the Beatles entitled Love, which was made for a Beatles-themed Cirque de Soleil show in 2006. I remember being fascinated by the amazing range of their songwriting abilities and the fact that there was almost no silence between each track, accomplishing the amazing artistic feat of having genres blend into each other effortlessly. This was something that I would later notice I always do in my own music, and it is something that I hope to perfect. The album begins with a gorgeous a cappella rendition of the song “Because,” followed by the groovy blues rock of “Get Back,” then by a very short and strange rock song called “Glass Onion” which is used purely as a transition, then the neoclassical art song brilliance of “Eleanor Rigby,” then psychedelic experience of “I Am the Walrus,” and then the classic early tune “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” All of this done within 10 minutes and all composed during the Beatles’ very brief 10-year career. I listened to this disc back in the day until I broke it.

In 2009, my dad killed his dream of me becoming a scientist by getting me the video game that would turn me into a musician: The Beatles Rock Band. For those of you too young to remember or too old to care, those games (like the more popular Guitar Hero) basically allowed you to feel like you were performing your favorite tunes with plastic instrument-shaped controllers. Needless to say, I mastered the game in no time, and when I found out that the Beatles were pop artists who wrote and performed their own music, I knew that I had to become a composer myself.

Among other musicians that I admire a lot are:

• Leonard Bernstein, who I consider to be the most complete musician of the past century and whose eloquence and swagger I dream of coming close to successfully imitating one day
• Maurice Ravel, whose superb mastery of orchestration, color, and perfection in structure I am constantly trying to steal
• George Gershwin, who became one of the few composers to have made real contributions to both the popular and classical traditions by combining them like no one before and whom I hope to be the Latin American equivalent of
• Astor Piazzolla, who conquered the hearts of the world by writing music based on the music of his native Argentina and gave up trying to become a second-rate Stravinsky in favor of becoming a first-rate Piazzolla
• Arturo Márquez, who did the same for Mexico, has become my mentor and I plan to expand upon his ideas
• And finally, Bach, whose mastery of mathematical counterpoint excites my brain and reminds me of one the first loves of my life: science.

Two artists outside of music who have had a huge impact on the way I value hard work and the actual creative process are:

• Quentin Tarantino, whose obsession and passion for cinema, habit of paying homage to everything he loves in his own work, and perfection of the “creative stealing” approach to artistic creation are most important guidelines my creative process
• Woody Allen, whose constant devotion to hard work and production of high quality content from an early age and an appreciation for both the intellectualism and absurd of life has shown me that hard work, passion and, as he puts it, “just showing up” are the only things that will make you really successful in this crazy profession that I have chosen

All of these combined will give you Horacio Fernandez, and I will work every day acknowledging them in my art and hope to someday be able to inspire young artists like these amazing people have inspired me.