Carmen Rubino

[newage]

Carmen was born and raised in Buffalo, New York, and has had a strong love of music all his life. His mother told stories of him as an infant crawling closer to the stereo speakers to better hear the music. “When my father was born, his father bought a player baby grand piano for him, ironically, He never played the piano. My siblings took some piano lessons on it, but it did not get played much until I was ten and I started learning". At 16 he began to compose original pieces and explore creatively.
As a teenager, Carmen became entranced with progressive-rock, including Emerson Lake & Palmer, Yes, Genesis, the Moody Blues and Kansas. Two of the primary musical influences in his life were Jethro Tull and the band Renaissance.
“Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull was a huge inspiration and gave me a real love for the sound of a flute. Ian has been inspirational in developing me as a song writer and composer.”
While still in high school, Carmen would hitchhike several times a week to the University of Buffalo, which had a distinguished music school and a group of practice rooms with a Steinway piano in each one. Whenever one of the rooms was free, Carmen would immediately jump in and practice his original music.
After further broadening to include a variety of jazz-rock-fusion artists such as Chick Corea, Stanley Clark, Jean-Luc Ponty and Al DiMeola, Carmen has, more recently, been exploring the world of new age music and found Yanni and Secret Garden to be the most influential. He listens to a wide range of artists from Jim Brickman to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and styles from Celtic to modern-classical.