Camille Balleza is the new staff collaborative pianist in the music department this year. On any given day, she can be found in the Jenson-Noble Hall of Music playing piano in collaboration with student and faculty performances. Balleza comes to Luther from previous positions at Wartburg College and in Washington, D.C. Balleza is looking forward to working with Luther musicians and filling the Nobel Recital Hall with music.
Responses have been edited for clarity and length.
Q: When did you start playing piano, and how did you get interested in playing piano?
Camille Balleza: I remember seeing my older brothers start lessons. I have two older brothers who began piano lessons. My dad had just gotten this old upright piano from a neighbor, so they started lessons. I kept asking my mom when I could start taking lessons, and she thought I was too young. She eventually relented, and I started with lessons at four years old.
Q: Did you have a moment when you realized that you were interested in music as a career, or did you stumble into it?
A: I didn’t start [to think of music as a career] until after I had started college. Music has always been a part of my life, my entire life, really. Once I started lessons at four years old, I never stopped, even throughout summers. It was just a staple of my life up until college. All of a sudden, I wasn’t taking lessons for the first time and realized how much I missed it. Then, I fully decided that I wanted to make music a main part of my life.
Q: Can you speak to your journey from undergraduate studies to Luther?
A: I studied piano performance, and early on, my classmates started asking me to accompany them for juries and for recitals. It started out with just friends and classmates, and I loved it. I had already done some accompaniment in high school, and honestly, as a child, my first collaborators were my parents when I was about seven years old. In college, I started playing for classmates and word eventually spread that I love collaborating with people. It took off from there. That solidified my decision to go into collaborative piano. I started attending summer music festivals, and the main festival that pointed me in the direction of collaborative piano was the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado where my mentor Rita Sloan helped nurture and develop that skill. It was a really incredible opportunity to collaborate with highly skilled musicians who are also passionate about music. At the time, I was working as a private piano teacher at a music school out in [Washington, D.C.] and was also playing for the National Children’s Chorus [and] doing some freelance work. When the pandemic hit, I lost all my collaborative work. I kept my teaching work and very fortunately taught [a couple dozen students] through Zoom. We moved out to Waverly, [Iowa,] two years ago for [my husband’s] job, and I once again found work as [an adjunct] collaborative pianist at Wartburg College. This [staff collaborative pianist] opportunity came up this past spring, so I decided to apply.
Q: What is a life event that you initially saw as a massive hurdle, failure, or challenge, but ended up being beneficial to you and your life?
A: The nature of being a musician is experiencing small failures all the time, learning and improving and growing, failing again and continuing that cycle. One hurdle that I have had to overcome is the [COVID-19] pandemic. As a collaborative pianist, it was pretty much impossible for me to continue my career in 2020, and it was a real question of whether or not I would be able to return to that long-term. While that was really difficult for me, it did open up time in my li
fe to pursue other things. In the midst of continuing to teach and learning new techniques of teaching through Zoom, I was also finally able to sign up for a pottery class. I found a new community there, and another bright spot in that time was taking those classes and joining a woman-owned pottery co-op that has been around since 1967. I was able to learn how to make wheel-thrown pottery and connect with these incredible women in California, and upon moving to Waverly, I also had the opportunity to work at the Hearst Center for the Arts, running the small ceramic studio there. I was able to pass it forward and teach pottery classes there and fire the kiln. I don’t think I would have had time if I had kept up with my [collaborative pianist work]. Somehow I’ve been very, very fortunate to be able to do both music and pottery and make a return to more of a performing, collaborative career. I feel very, very fortunate coming through [the pandemic].
Q: What do you enjoy about working as a collaborative pianist?
A: I love that the nature of being a collaborative pianist means working with so many different people, so many different types of musicians and so many different types of music. It keeps it fresh. I love learning new music, and I think I love learning new music on my own, but there’s also something really special about putting things together with another musician that is more than the sum of individual parts and then being able to work together towards a performance.
Q: Do you have a particular style or instrumentation combination that is your favorite to work with?
A: I mean, I do love it all. If I had to pick, I especially love doing chamber music — piano trios and quartets. If we’re talking just working with one other person, then I especially love collaborating on string sonatas because it especially feels like a real conversation and partnership between the instruments and musicians.
Q: What are you looking forward to this year, music and performance-wise?
A: I am really looking forward to performing with musicians in the [Noble Recital Hall]. There are gorgeous instruments, and it’s a gorgeous recital hall. Having that as the performance goal for both the students I work with and for me is really exciting. To be able to do that on a regular basis, I think, is a real privilege.
Q: What have you been enjoying about Decorah so far?
A: It’s really charming. I love the hiking trails, especially now that the leaves are changing. I love the landscape, and I love that there are so many well-maintained trails to choose from. I really love finding new trails to walk on, [finding] a moment of peace amidst all the sounds that normally saturate my life.
