Finding the Echoes: An Artist’s Journey From Trauma to Rediscovery (Part 1) /October 28, 2025

After 25 years, I’m returning to public performance. This five-part essay traces the journey from childhood trauma through artistic suppression to rediscovering my voice—and why performing my own music in 2026 represents more than just a concert.

Part 1: Awakenings

Last month, I posted on my social media feeds something that I would never have thought possible even a year or so ago. I announced that, in the spring of 2026, I would be giving a concert of my own music.

In the past, I’ve shared news about upcoming film scores, albums, or events—but this feels entirely different: if I pull it off (and I certainly hope I will), it will be the first time I perform my own music live in more than twenty five years.

The mere act of publicly sharing it is actually only one step in a much longer process, seeds of which were planted in my mind as far back as four years ago. But the reason why it took me so long to consider doing it is the result of two distinct decisions: on one end, to dedicate myself to writing music for pictures (something I’ve wanted to do since I was twelve years old), and, on the other end, to willingly suppress the artist and pianist inside of me to avoid dealing with, and re-living in my head, over and over, years of trauma and failures (some of which I’ve already briefly discussed on this very blog).

And as such, before picking a venue, before choosing the musicians I will be performing with, or even before finalizing the myriad of details related to such a venture, the decision to share this idea with the world is a huge personal milestone. It’s the realization of a profound, inner desire, a flame that was first toyed with in youth, suppressed in the aftermath of trauma, then left dormant for decades — until it was reignited thanks to conversations with colleagues and friends, and, in parallel, a long, painful process of self-discovery.

The First Spark

I’ve been writing music since I was ten. As is often the case when one starts a creative endeavor, the first pieces I wrote were entirely for me, and naturally were written for my instrument: the piano. I wasn’t a very serious piano learner—for many years, playing classical pieces felt like a chore. But I liked the instrument very much, both as a listener and as a performer, and I especially liked the emotional effect its music had on me. So instead of practicing Mozart or Kulhau, I’d spend my practice time playing short doodles, little bits of ideas.

The earliest memory I have of writing a piece was when I placed my hands at both ends of the piano, playing random ideas, clashing or working with each other. I kept imagining an elephant (the low end) and a bird (the high end) battling it out. Other pieces were idiomatic to specific places and cultures (or so I felt). Not unlike the Debussy pieces I had to practice, my music always had to tell a story.

This creative relationship between my inquisitive mind and the instrument stayed tentative for a few years, but as I got better at playing, and as my musical knowledge expanded, I started getting more complex ideas. My first foray into writing a “serious” piece—serious enough that I wrote it down on a piece of paper—must have been around the age of fourteen. Not surprisingly for someone who was slowly discovering the world of Hollywood film music, it was highly chromatic and thematic—made of a sweeping melody played in octaves on the right hand against fast arpeggios anchoring the harmony on the left hand. It was tricky to perform (at least for me) but very personal in its unabashedly romantic vibe.

And it led me to an important realization: there was now, for the first time, on this piece of paper, out in the world, a piece of music that came from me, and felt like me.

An Unlikely Encouragement

I played that piece at home many, many times, but that environment never led to any kind of acknowledgment, let alone validation. My parents were never the demonstrative types (they still aren’t), and they never commented on it. My reality was such that not one person in my household—which included five siblings—seemingly cared at all about my early creative endeavors. No one ever stopped to ask what the piece was, or if I wrote it, or (God forbid) to comment in any way on its quality.

As a matter of fact, the environment I grew up in placed so little importance on the simple act of making music (be it performing it or creating it), that I was actually constantly interrupted by my parents directing me to do various chores or tasks, by my younger siblings running around the room, or by yells from one side of the apartment to the other.

And I would stay there, in front of the instrument, ignored in my naive desire to share a little bit of me with the world.

Still, I kept playing that piece wherever I could find a piano, until one day I played it at my aunt’s and uncle’s apartment. It was peaceful there; they had a beautiful Yamaha ebony upright piano which I was very fond of, and when my beloved uncle Michel heard me playing the piece from afar, he came by and told me, in his gentle voice, “that’s a really beautiful piece you wrote there.” He was, as far as I can remember, the first person in my life to compliment me on something I had created.

But he did so much more than that: he also encouraged me.

As I kept playing it, he offered: “It’s a great tune, but it’s so short—what comes next? You should expand it. Maybe write the next movement! You clearly have a knack for it—so instead of playing it over and over, why not write another one?”

My uncle wasn’t wrong. But what he didn’t know was that, around the same time, my relationship with music and the piano was taking a conflicting turn, where I was trying to reconcile the devastating effects of the sexual assault I was repeatedly being subjected to by my piano teacher while playing my instrument during private lessons (which was gradually getting worse), and a desire to not let that trauma overshadow my deepening love for the art and craft of writing and playing music.

Later that year, driven first from a desire to attend my local conservatory to study piano seriously, and second to escape my aggressor, I switched piano teacher. I had just turned fifteen.

Learning to Be Heard

Lycée Claude Monet (Paris), where music became my passion.

By that point, my desire to make a life in music had come into focus and Lycée Claude Monet, with its dedicated music minor program, was the perfect step in that direction. Strongly wanting to put the past and its multiple traumas behind me, and supported by a music teacher who gave me a creative environment to imagine new possibilities in music, writing my own music soon became a significant part of my high school experience. (It didn’t lend itself to good grades, though, as I would spend many of my general education classes scribbling notes on score paper instead of following the course at hand.)

The piano was my instrument, but it wasn’t enough: I wanted to expand my possibilities. I fondly remember writing my first piece for cello and piano, titled “Optimism 2017”, which was a neo-romantic, melancholic re-imagination of what could happen if the world of Blade Runner actually came to fruition. (The movie-freak in me was already alive and well.) My classmate Veronique, who played the cello beautifully, suggested I write the piece during a spring 1999 school trip to Ireland, in a pub (of all places) where she concurrently introduced me to mixing Baileys with Coca-Cola.

On that day, writing music took another, deeper meaning: I could write for others, too!

In my senior year, my music teacher agreed to let me play a few pieces of mine at the end-of-year senior student concert. Eager to follow my uncle Michel’s advice, I decided to expand the world of “Optimism 2017” and make it a diptych. The second piece I wrote, titled “Persistence 2017”, was in the same minimalist vibe, but this time for two cellos and piano. I enlisted another classmate to join Veronique and I, and we performed the pieces back to back.

This was the first time I played my own music in any kind of public setting; the audience was, give or take, around 200 people—parents, students and teachers. I was even complimented by the school principal, who insisted on buying the scores (I had printed multiple copies just in case). I had entered the business of selling my music!

Hiding the Voice Within

Writing and performing my own pieces had been a rewarding experience, which should have tuned me into doing more. But the lingering effects of traumas which I was shamefully and secretly carrying, as well as a continuing lack of demonstrated interest from my parents in my artistic explorations, had started making a serious dent in my self-confidence. I was unsure of who I was—a victim, a survivor, a liar, a coward? What was the extent of my responsibility in my own traumas? Were they my own failings, or someone else’s?

Looking inside was not just confusing, it was physically and emotionally painful. As a consequence, like most victims of trauma, I put on a protective shell around my truth. Past it, there was nothing to be seen—not even for me. Devoid of external validation regarding my budding musical endeavors, and constantly in search of acknowledgment and my own identity, exploring the artist inside of me was impossible.

But I still dreamed of writing music for film. And to that end, the uncertainty of looking inward gave way to the safety of emulating others.

As I was getting deeper and deeper in the exploration and discovery of film music—music written by such esteemed composers as Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, or Joe Hisaishi—studying them and writing like them started to feel like the path to success. The equation was naively simple, but, I thought, a sure bet: “If I can be as good as the masters, I’ll be as successful as they are,” I would tell myself.

“Then, surely, the world will appreciate my music—and, in turn, my parents will finally be proud of me.”

* * *

This was my state of mind when, at the age of eighteen, I graduated high school and took the decision to move to Boston to attend Berklee College of Music: I would study the masters so thoroughly that I would understand the intricacies of how they did what they did, then go out in the world, apply these learnings to my compositions, work harder than anyone else, and have as successful of a career as they have had.

I was quite convinced that this perfect plan would give me the revenge over my traumas (proving to myself that I wasn’t a victim after all), as well as the interest and validation from my parents I had been missing all my life.

Of course, it was ill-fated. I didn’t find what I was looking for—because it was an illusion. And while what I did find allowed me to experience tremendous moments of joy creating music, gave me a successful career, and brought me financial stability… it would always feel incomplete.

It took me two decades to figure out why.

And it didn’t help that performing piano in public would soon become a traumatic experience as well.

This is Part 1 of a five-part series. To read Part 2, click here.

If this resonates with you—or if you have thoughts to share about finding (or losing) your creative voice—I’d welcome hearing from you in the comments below.