Artist Statement
When people ask me why I chose music as my career, my answer is always simple: Because I love it!
I love listening to it, I love feeling it, and I love creating it.
I also make music for the purpose of making people feel something; happiness, sadness, relaxation or my favorite one, nostalgia.
In my career path, which is Film Music, I always use nostalgia as a tool. It is my way of making people feel comfortable while watching a scene that needs an element of calmness to be portrayed – that is my way of connecting with them, by using that universal feeling.
I am from an Island, my roots are in Puerto Rico. I am always looking for inspiration in nature, for example, in the beauty of a lush, deep forest or a gorgeous moonlit night. I feel like those images offer the best canvas and they bring the best melodies out of me. There is a connection that I feel with nature that is very personal and I compose my music with that idea in mind, to get people to feel that connection too.
When creating a song, I like to emulate certain sounds that might make people think about trees moving in the wind, or waves crashing in the ocean; something subtle. These familiar tones connect people to something universal in a very discrete way. I like to manipulate those sounds by using the power of emotions and the feeling of nostalgia to bring people closer to my music and make them feel at home when listening to it.
It is all about making people feel something familiar and the best way to do that is by using instruments or soundscapes that remind the audience of an emotion or a memory.
Biography
Christian Alfonso has, for many years, crafted a unique style of soft and memorable melodies for the visual arts, specifically for short-films and full-length features. He blends familiar sounds like bossa-nova with the style of musical minimalism to create soundscapes that make people feel at home and in complete serenity. Born in the tropical Island of Puerto Rico, Alfonso’s love for music started from a very young age. His first inspirational moment happened when he came across the music of video game composer Nobuo Uematsu. This subsequently made him start looking for more artists like Uematsu, who composed for fantasy video games that used the power of chords and melody to create beautiful and captivating melodies.
With the wish and drive to find his own sound, Christian Alfonso has continued to explore the music from Japanese composers, like Joe Hisaishi, and western composers like John Williams. Blending the two, and with his own Puerto Rican heritage, developing a sound that is both unique in flavor and familiar. He has worked in many short-films and is sought after by many because of his distinctive sound and ability to enhance a scene by making the audience cry with laughter, smile with happiness, and fall in love all over again. He has been the recipient of many honorable mentions and the award for “Best Original Score’’ in the 2011 CineArs Puerto Rican Film Festival for his work on the short-film Eugenio. His love for music also transcends to other areas like songwriting. Apart from being a singer-songwriter himself, he has also provided lyrics, helped produce, arrange, and compose songs for other artists and a handful of film projects, both in Puerto Rico and in the U.S.