Michael Colina PR Story

Michael Colina entered the Classical music world eight years ago from another planet, following none of the traditional paths, neither an academic or strictly a performer he comes with no intellectual pretension’s, his music is unselfconscious & emotional; after 25 years producing and writing for some of contemporary Jazz’s greats He decided it was time to focus on the
music he’d always dreamed of writing.

He comes from the dirt tracks of drag racing and the tobacco fields of North Carolina, his early years blanketed in the heat of racial unrest and a personal struggle against old family hatreds and prejudice's.
Michael Colina grew up a shy outsider and a quite rebel. Colina thinks of himself as half cultured poet/ musician and half redneck hick.

Traveling between the tropical paradise of his father’s Cuban home, Casilda and the beaches of South Carolina; between the magic of Santeria Drumming, and the R & B of Aretha Franklin, Colina's childhood environment was a swirling caldron of powerful influences. His musical world spanned the gamut of AfroCuban rhythms, the gyrations of James Brown, and the gospel ecstasy of southern Geechie culture.
Colina was exposed to Hill-billy flat pick'n & the strings of Montavani, from Gershwin to Prokofiev, Stavinsky to Pendereki. It was an unusual mix of sensory input, cultural fractalization, intellectual and artistic counter currents.

His Father was the only Cuban in Charlotte, NC in 1941, affectionately dubbed “Spic” by his friends. To the utter horror of most, Gilberto managed to convince Charlotte’s most beautiful woman to marry him. Marguerite Colina was Miss Charlotte, and Miss North Carolina in the Miss America Pageant of 1939.

When Michael Colina graduated from the North Carolina School of the Arts the country boy moved to the sophisticated world of NY City. Struggling for his existence, he found work as a composer of off off Broadway Theater, Modern Dance, Documentary Films, commercials and TV themes; eventually he found himself in the company of some of the most talented Jazz and Classical musicians of his time. Falling as well into the culture of drug abuse, Colina suffered through an addiction to crack cocaine for a number of years. Eventually overcoming his demon’s left him with a clearer sense of purpose and a decidedly passionate grasp of life.
Still vulnerable, after all these years to substance abuse, Colina walks along a dangerous creative tightrope. From ecstasy to depression,
Colina feels that the act of composition must include the sharing and communication with the listener; a completion of the circle of creation.
Colina speaks of writing the music he Love’s, the music he wants to hear.

Colina brought his career in Jazz to a natural conclusion around 2001, when the effects of downloading and the concept that music should be free had made meaningless the idea of earning a living by selling a tangible product, Colina decided if he wasn’t going to earn a substantial living creating Jazz, he might as well write the music he’d been waiting his whole life to, it was time!!!

Since 2002 Colina has written many works for various chamber ensemble as well as three concertos. One for Violin & Orchestra,
A second for Guitar and Orchestra and another for Flute and Orchestra: these works were recorded in Jan. 2010 with the London Symphony Orchestra under the Direction of Ira Levin along with 2 more orchestral works. The recording of the Flute concerto was under the direction of renown Flutist and conductor Ransom Wilson to whom the work was dedicated.