In the gaming world he’s become known as “Flute Guy”, a woodwind soloist who performs energetically at the Video Game Awards, but there’s much more to Pedro Eustache than that: he’s an internationally renowned flautist and woodwind player, having contributed to soundtracks such as The Passion of the Christ, Dune, & Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, just to name a few. He’s also released multiple solo albums, performed with Yanni for 10 years, and played with multiple orchestras, including the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and the Venezuela Symphony Orchestra. He is incredibly busy and shows no sign of slowing down! But most importantly to Pedro, he is a Christian, and he strives to give the grace he’s been given back to God in his art.
Today we had the privilege of interviewing Pedro. The conversation was as fun and interesting as Pedro’s performances, so we’re very thankful! To watch the interview, click the header image to be taken to the youtube link. An edited transcript of the video is below for those who prefer to read. Thank you for your continued support of CGR, and enjoy!
Lord Father God, Creator of the universe, we give you honor and praise, and we recognize your greatness, your supremacy, your incredible majesty, your grace, your mercy that goes beyond anything we could understand. Lord, help us in this interview, please. Take control of this now. I’m going to say what Matt said before: Make us decrease so you can increase, and your hand can guide us through this. I ask you this, Lord, humbly, respect the different perspectives in our faith, in the beautiful, glorious, holy name of Jesus. Amen, amen, and amen.
Amen. Thank you so much for that, Pedro. For everyone that’s just joining us, hello! This is Catholic Game Reviews. I am Matt Palardy, known to some of you as PBnJustice online, and with me today is Pedro Eustache. Now, real quick, am I pronouncing that correctly?
That’s perfect. You can also call me Flute Guy.
Flute Guy! That’s exactly what I was going to say next. In the gaming world, he’s become known as Flute Guy, a woodwind soloist who performs energetically at the Video Game Awards. But there’s much more to him than that. He’s an internationally renowned flautist and woodwind player, having contributed to soundtracks such as The Passion of the Christ, Dune, and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, just to name a few. He’s also released multiple solo albums, performed with Yanni, and played with multiple orchestras, including the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and the Venezuela Symphony Orchestra. It’s honestly such a task summing up your career, Pedro. You are incredibly busy, and you really show no signs of slowing down. But most importantly to you, and as is evident, you are a Christian and you strive to give the grace that you’ve been given back to God in your art, and that is a beautiful thing.
Thank you, Matt.
Thank you for being here, Pedro. This is the part where I was going to start with a prayer, and I’m very thankful that you started us off. So, God, just give us the grace to keep on going. Amen.
In Jesus’ beautiful name. Absolutely.
Matt, thank you for that beautiful introduction. I was born and raised in Venezuela, South America, of Haitian parents, and I married a wonderful Venezuelan lady of Argentinian descent but Russian-Ukrainian background. So we’re all over the place. I started in France and Switzerland, and now I live in the Los Angeles area. And, not to be controversial, but I just want to make sure people understand: when we use the word “Christian,” for many people that has a connotation of politics that I cannot connect with.
Absolutely.
Because I am a follower of Christ—born again, spirit-filled, deeply convicted follower of Christ – I want to clarify that yes, I am a Christian, but I am not associated with absolutely any political direction. As a follower of Christ, I do not adhere to any of the ideologies of people that use that name for political purposes. I literally believe in the word of God, the Bible, the Christ that died at the cross for me, who literally saved me from committing suicide after we lost our daughter.
What’s most important is that you have those guiding posts of truth and charity. Because you can go too far with the love, and then it’s just like, “You can do whatever you want,” and you can go too far with the truth with no charity, where it’s like, “Okay, you’re banging people over the head with truth,” but there’s no love. So it’s a resounding gong.
Right. And that’s a contradiction because the Jesus we follow has commanded us to love, not to necessarily agree on everything. This is heavy. This is heavy stuff, and we have challenges. We are in the world, but we are not of the world. Yet when Jesus confronted certain people—and we can talk about this later—he didn’t agree with their sinning nature, but he didn’t beat them in the head either. Like the adulterous lady, he said, “Where are the ones that wanted to condemn you?” She said, “They’re not here.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.” He didn’t say, “I don’t condemn you, and it’s okay that you keep sinning.”
So this is the balance. And the same thing happened with the Samaritan woman. When Jesus asked her to drink at the well, he didn’t insult her. He didn’t beat her in the head: “You’re an adulteress, you’ve had five husbands, and now you’re living with a sixth guy. You’re dirty, this and that, you’re trash.” None of that. It simply was a mirror to her reality. Her reaction to see herself reflected in the incredible love of Jesus brought her to deep conviction without Jesus having to condemn her. Just his presence made her recognize her reality as a sinner in need of a savior.
That’s very powerful. So, big tonal shift, but we have a traditional first two questions here at CGR. First: how do you like your eggs?
Well, number one, egg whites all the way. Either I have them boiled and I take the yellow out, or when I’m on tour, I ask them to… Are you ready for this? This is complicated. Take note of this.
I will.
It’s an omelette with at least three egg whites, well done, not too much oil, no salt…and that’s it.
Thank you. Second, pulp or no pulp in your orange juice?
I don’t drink much orange juice because it’s too sweet, so if I would, I’d have it medium-rare.
Thank you. In the gaming community, you’ve become known for your energetic performances. What was the process like finding out you had been dubbed “flute guy” by the internet?
A total surprise, completely unexpected. I’m speaking the truth, I’m not making stuff up. I’m like a New Yorker, I speak my heart really directly, openly, and transparently. I don’t go around dancing. Sometimes I get in trouble because of that.
As a Philadelphian, I completely relate to that.
I might be in LA, but I’m not a Hollywood guy. I think it was three years ago, something happened when I was sitting next to Julie Elven, who’s a dear friend. (By the way, she will introduce one of the awards Thursday!). So, she’s coming from Germany. [We met when] we were touring with Hans [Zimmer], and we have invited her to our shows as well.
I played my alto flute there, and somehow people reacted like, “Wow, look at that guy.” That’s the way I play, see, I’m 9, you know? And it’s nothing because I’m the guy, you get a war. I wasn’t making something to attract people’s attention. I don’t do that. I’m not an actor. I might look entertaining, but what I do is I worship the Creator of the universe. I worship with all my heart, with all my soul, literally, wherever I am, whatever the context, that’s my goal. That was the next year. I think that’s when they called me “flute guy” or something like that.
We finished on time in LA at 7:30. I got in my car, and I’m driving home because, you know, I live like 45 minutes away from downtown. I started receiving emails and DMs, Instagrams, like “Check your messages, check your messages!” I checked Twitter. They said, “You are on fire! The internet is going crazy! Check your messages!”
I’m like, “Oh my gosh, what is happening?” That’s amazing. It took me completely by surprise because I just did what I’ve been doing all my life. You see, I just play with all my heart in all my capacity. People don’t understand. There’s something I cannot control. When I hear music, it puts me in a frame of mind, in a frame of soul, in a spiritual frame from which I cannot escape. The level of joy of that thing—it’s a genius thing that Lauren did with that [Game Awards] theme.
It’s incredibly powerful. How else can I play it? It almost feels like it’s a railroad and I’m the train. I just go. Interestingly, the same thing happened when I started working with an incredible superstar called Googoosh. She’s an incredible superstar, a Persian diva. The same thing happened with her when I started. We were in Vancouver, and then I flew to Toronto to record in 2000, 24 years ago. The first song we did was something that, once it connects with me, I just go. The level of joy that I experience is spiritual. I’m not making that up. I’m not acting. I’m not jumping to please people. I would be the worst actor in the world because I cannot act.
That’s a sincere thing. When things are not happening, you can read me like an open book. It’s horrible. People can look at me from two miles away and know that I’m not feeling it. I remember one time, we had a substitute singer in a project, and she was horrible. This lady was absolutely horrible. With the superstar that we normally do it with, I have this duet, playing this Indian flute. We go together like this. But this one was like, “Holy… what a disaster!” So, I’m trying to play, and I’m going, “Okay, let me give her a chance.” And I put my flute down and crossed my fingers in front of thousands of people because it sucked. It was horrible. That’s something very bad that I need to be better at. I need to be more careful. I’m extremely sincere when things do not go well. You’ll see a little bit of the Pedro Hulk come out.
You’re incredibly invested, and I think that’s part of what enraptures people— there’s no sense of shame about it. It’s just pure joy. You are completely okay with it, and I think that surprises people.
Absolutely. And I love the term. That’s the truth. Again, you know the story of my life – I’m just happy to be alive. I’m happy to have a purpose in my life. I’m happy to know that hope is real. And a perspective towards eternity, fulfilling in such a way that not even eternity will exhaust it…It’s something that nurtures my soul and gives me the strength of the joy that I can share when I play.
You know how to play an incredible amount of woodwinds. For your composition Suite Concertante for World Woodwinds and Symphony Orchestra, you played 21 different woodwinds from around the world. Do you find yourself favoring any particular region or instrument?
Yeah, the one that I happen to have in my mouth at that moment. It’s like a father or mother. If you ask them, if I’ve got three, four, five kids, which kid do you love the best? If a parent will say this one over this one, poor family, you know? You can’t have a favorite. This is beautiful. You see, with me, I need you to understand—and whoever is listening to us, I need you to understand—I’m not peddling, I’m not selling ideology, I’m not preaching. I’m speaking the reality of my life. Period. I’m being very, very sincere.
Storytelling, yeah, it’s a lot. Yeah, no, it’s totally fine. You strike me as someone that gives themselves 110% to things. Well, if we had 110, because that’s… exist, man, of course, mathematically. No, exactly, so you’re right, 100%, big time. And, and, and, and, and you know that’s a sword, that’s a double-edged sword, you know, as you can imagine, because it’s like a two-sided coin. There are great things, there are also challenges that come with that. Absolutely. Yeah, no, for sure.
But even though you don’t play any video games, are there any… have you listened to any video game music recently? What games or songs have stuck with you over the years?
Again, I see them connected when I’m exposed to the music of video games, when I’m recording for them. People can Google me and they will see in my social media posts the ones that I have performed for. I get so engaged that it’s the same as film music. You know, I’ve worked for Blizzard for many different things. I’ve worked for League of Legends and other things, man. Some of those melodies are just so beautifully powerful, again.
Anything that’s nominated for Game of the Year, like the last few years, and I got a surprise… I’ve got a surprise for you today. It’s the 9th, three days before the Game Awards. I cannot mention details, but I’ll tell you this: I’ll play stuff that I never played before for the Game Awards, including an instrument that’s not even a flute but is a wind instrument. It’s incredible, and I know people will love it. Then I’ll have to be the flute winds guy, I guess. [Laughter]
Real quick, yeah, that’s that. I’ll play—I don’t want to say the number—but yeah, heck, I will play nine instruments if I remember well, in two different songs. Many of the instruments I’ve never played before in public, so that’s fantastic. A first! I love that. Thanks to you guys and thanks to Jeff, who’s a fantastic friend, the president of the Game Awards, and to Lauren, who breaks me through this thing. It’s Peter Rer, who’s the amazing contractor that calls me every year for this thing. So, I’m very blessed, very blessed.
What was it like working on The Passion of the Christ? Where were you in your faith life at that point, and did working on it do anything for you in your faith?
How could it not? That is a movie of my life. It’s an incredibly interesting and powerful story. I was not the first choice to play the wind instruments in there. In fact, there are four of us. I have the blessing to be the main guy. I would say that probably 75% of what is in there wind-wise is me. But this is what happened: Mel Gibson had another composer before John Debney. Something happened, and it didn’t go through. He called John Debney, and John didn’t even know me back then, talking about almost 20 years ago or something like that. He called two other colleagues—one of them was not available because he was traveling, and the other one was a great master from Turkey. He didn’t want to play because he saw some of the shooting scenes, and he said, “There’s too much blood in this. I cannot be part of this.” Then somebody mentioned me, and John called me. He said, “But you are the guy that was supposed to be the first choice.” I brought instruments that the other two could have never brought, and it was an amazing experience.
I remember thinking, “Wow, so many years ago, I started making these instruments thinking that I wanted to honor the cultures where these instruments came from.” Little did I know that God was preparing me to have these instruments ready so I could bring them to this soundtrack so it would sound like that with instruments nobody else had. The most precious thing is that when I finished this thing, two things happened: Every time I would start a record—and I did like five recording sessions with this—90% of what I played was improvised. I would pray and say, “Lord God, this is an incredible movie that will stay forever. This will affect millions of lives through history, and I will pray. I ask you to anoint my mind, my breath, my fingers. Give me the music of David, please. Lord, I choose to make myself out of the way so you can do your thing so this endures for the glory of your name.” And I said, “Respecting other beliefs, I pray in the sweet, powerful name of Jesus, Amen.” Then I was ready, and they put the background music on, and I started playing. That’s what did it.
The second thing, real quick, to finish with this, which is incredibly powerful: My mother was having dementia-like symptoms. She was in Venezuela, but I remember I had the incredible blessing, before she went with Jesus, to have a moment of lucidity. She was there, and I had the incredible honor to tell her, “Mom, your son, who you brought to the knowledge of the truth through Jesus, had the blessing of playing in a movie about the life of Christ, the resurrection, and the crucifixion. It will touch many people for the rest of history.” She left, thanking the Lord for allowing this, and my son glorifying God like this is one of the most precious things to me. I’ve already participated in projects that have won several Grammys, Oscars, and other awards. I’ll tell you this—nothing compares to this. Those things pale by comparison to the incredible significance of seeing my mama glorifying God for allowing me the privilege to be part of this soundtrack the way I did.
Now, we’re going to dive in a little bit deeper. What belief system were you raised in? Could you tell us about your faith journey?
Sure, I have the privilege of being in my mother’s side, the sixth generation of born-again Christians. Evangelicals, um, my mother, when she was little in Haiti, was a Methodist. In Venezuela, after she married my father, who was black and my mom was white, that’s why I am cappuccino-like, level. I used to say, I used to say Cafe, no, no P, you’re cappuccino because it’s a little bit darker, cappuccino. But, um, yeah, my, I think some of my family were Lutheran before, and my mother was a Methodist, but those are denominational things in Venezuela. None of those were Baptist. Uh, so now I could say I’m Pentecostal, but again, those labels are not important to me. I don’t see them much in the Bible. I see Jesus in the Bible, um, and as long as anybody confesses Christ as their savior and Lord, and the only way to the Father, I consider the person my brother or my sister, period. That’s it. Um, so I was raised in the Baptist Church in Venezuela, a minority within a minority, because as you can imagine, Venezuela is 95% Catholic or something like that, a great majority. And on top of that, we were the sons of immigrants. My parents, especially my dad, spoke Spanish with a heavy accent. Um, because as I said, they were born and raised in Haiti, uh, and they immigrated to Venezuela. So, I’m an immigrant directly, uh, as well.
I was musically and spiritually affected by my family because I was number six. We were six brothers and one sister. Our second brother already went with Jesus, so there’s five brothers left and one sister, and I’m number six, uh, next to the last one. And, uh, to grow up in a family like that, a household like that, both with the different idiosyncrasy and culture and mindset of my parents, and my older brothers having experienced Haiti, which I didn’t, uh, I was born and raised in Venezuela. I was born and raised in Caracas, the capital, that nurtured this flexibility of thought and different languages. We spoke Haitian Creole besides obviously our native Spanish, and my parents spoke perfect French, of course. But that helped me when I went to Paris later to study because then that facilitated my learning of French. Even though I didn’t speak it at home, still my ears were prepared to get French real quick.
I am a product musically speaking of the musical vision of my older brother, my maestro, my first teacher, Michel Ustach, and I call him Maestro because he is a maestro. Uh, he has—because he’s still alive—this incredibly open, like, Renaissance man, this incredibly multi-directional thing. He had, I don’t know, 22,500 LPs back then. Remember, there’s no computers, there’s no internet, there’s none of that, so it’s only a turntable and this thing in your imagination as you listen in the dark. He put these things on, and I was exposed to classical Western music, you know, with “Peter and the Wolf” by Prokofiev and “Young People’s Guide to the Orchestra” by Benjamin Britten, these masterworks that affect a kid’s mind because it introduces you to the orchestra, you know, to the Western symphonic orchestra. And, uh, going to church, there were the beautiful, beautiful, precious, beloved hymns that now I believe they’re probably a lost treasure because now it’s all contemporary stuff, which I love. Don’t get me wrong. I play my soul out of those contemporary things as well, but the good old traditional hymns are something I treasure profoundly, and I grew up in that too. I grew up in the traditional music of Venezuela, and again, my brother had such an open vision in music. He created a musical association called the Johan Sebastian Bach Musical Association that was made by a choir called the “Group of Vocal B” and, uh, studied antinas, which is a plucked string instrument traditional with guitars. Even they had cello like that, but they also had the quadros from our traditional—again, like I mentioned before—the traditional string instrument and mandolins. It’s a big ensemble, and they called that an antina. And, uh, he also had a recorder quintet, and I played the sopranino, the smallest of the recorders.
I set foot in a professional recording studio at age 12 to record. Wow, that’s more than 50 years ago. Oh my goodness, so I never forget that. Anyways, why I mention this is because I started playing the recorder when I was nine because my brother saw I had an interest in the experience of listening to polyphony in the middle of my other brothers playing the bass recorder, the tenor, the soprano, the alto, and I’m playing the sopranino, like, wow. I’m playing these beautiful hymns and you hear these harmonies, and these things were something that affected me at the same time that I, in Bible school, summer Bible school, understood the concept of needing Jesus in my life. So, exactly at the same age—nine—my spiritual walk and my musical walk started together. So, they go side by side, and I remember experiencing, if you do not transcend, is something similar to that by the fact of expressing, I’m hearing. I didn’t want to play for people to see me. In fact, I had horrible stage fright because I was always thinking, what are they going to say if I make a mistake? That’s stupid, you know, the classical music thing that people many times worry more about what people will say if you make a mistake playing, instead of concentrating on making beautiful music to elevate souls, you know? And so, that’s how I grew up, and I grew up being exposed to all these kinds of music: Renaissance music, Medieval music, which what they called, you know, early music. My brother made me listen to jazz, from super corny stuff to super advanced stuff like Eric Dolphy, John Coltrane, you know, and because, again, choirs, chorals, they have an incredibly open repertoire. They cover a lot of things with the tradition of Venezuelan music, of course. He put me to learn the cuatro, that’s when I started too. So, I started playing the recorder and the cuatro at the same time. Later on, I picked up the drums, and I started playing drums. That’s why I can play some drums, uh, you know, the traditional Venezuelan drums, as I said, and in a way, I’m a frustrated drummer. That’s why I play my instruments with such a rhythmic impetus when I do accompaniment. The drummer side of me manifests through that, and so I grew up, you know, in this family that went to church every Sunday. You know, and, uh, my parents were followers of the Lord. My grandfather, the side of my dad, was a pastor, was a reverend. Uh, one of my brothers became the first THD, and THD, because it’s a Doctor in Theology, the THD in the history of the Evangelical Church in Venezuela, which I love. And like that, and you know, growing up in a family that admires… something very rare nowadays because now we admire who is successful financially or who has a lot of money, or who has a lot of success, or who is extremely famous. It’s completely irrelevant to us. What’s relevant was to develop to a very high level a sense of excellence in whatever we did. That’s why many of my brothers are PhDs and doctors, like that. And, uh, it’s kind of a family disease, so to speak, this thing of searching for the highest level of excellence possible in whatever we do. Not that we’re overachievers, but almost going there.
Yeah, well, something that marked my life that I mentioned at the beginning of this thing was the loss of our daughter. To have your only daughter and then for her to get diagnosed with brain cancer and to fight over that almost a year when a horrible doctor simply saying, “No, she has three weeks to live. We can have other kids,” and the doctor told us that. It’s one of those things, and I asked God, I asked God, “Lord, please take her if you want, but please do not do it in three weeks. Just close this guy’s mouth. Show him who you are.”
We had her with us for more than a year, and we went through so many things. The most important of them is we arrived in the States, and she was in complete remission with the promise of science that she would have a long life, but that is not the case. What was our surprise is that 26 days after we set foot in the United States, after I got a full scholarship from the California Institute of the Arts to pursue a master’s in jazz, after all my studies of Western classical music in Paris and Switzerland and being first flute in the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra, we come from the same musical institution, the LA Children and Youth Orchestras in Venezuela. He’s a third-generation member of that, and I’m first generation.
Anyways, after that, I felt from God that I needed to pursue other directions in my musical journey. That entitled coming to the States, and cards granted us a full scholarship. Arriving here in LA, a few days after that, we saw she started developing symptoms again. Sadly, without getting into details, which would be too depressing, she went with Jesus 26 days after we set foot in the States.
What is incredibly relevant to this is that my wife is a PK, a pastor’s kid. She accepted Jesus when she was 11. I mentioned before, I accepted Jesus when I was 9. We’ve been growing up and living our life to the best of our abilities in the path of the word of God and under the fear of the Lord, and this happens to us. Your first reaction as a human being is like, “What is this?” As a human being, you go like, “Lord, I really don’t understand. Is this a reward for having waited?”
You need to understand that as a musician, I was a weird musician. I never did any drugs, ever. Not only for the fear of the Lord but also because of the fear of my mother, because mama knows her kids. The Lord gave me the mom I needed, so yeah, no kidding about that. Never, none of that. My wife is the only person I’ve been with intimately, and it’s like, “So, Lord, I’ve been guarding myself and walking all this stuff so that we receive this as a reward?” What? Weird things go through your mind when you go through something like this, to the point where we didn’t want to live anymore.
We went to visit a beautiful place, but it was basically a abyss. It’s called San Pedro here, like my name, Pedro. We were standing there, and without even mentioning it, my wife and I both had the same thought: “One step ahead and we are in eternity with our daughter.” Listen, man, I don’t know if anybody listening to me can understand. When you’re a father or a mother, there are no words. There are no words I can explain the pain that you go through when you lose a kid. There are no words for that.
To the point that I told God in all sincerity, “Lord, you say in your word that you will never allow us to challenge a problem bigger than we can deal with, and with the challenge, you will give us the answer. But I’m sorry, Lord, with me, you made a mistake. I’m sorry. I can’t. I think I’m the weakest one of all my brothers and sisters.” And I felt my heart. God told me, “Son, you’re right. You cannot on your own, but with the presence of the Holy Spirit, my Holy Spirit in you, you will be able to surmount this.”
And here I am, 36 years later, you guys see how I play. God rescued us from that very dark place that we didn’t want to leave anymore, and he didn’t even return us. He made us thrive. Why? Because the reality of his grace takes precedence over any temporary pain that we can face in this reality—the hope and an eternity fulfilling beyond description.
In hard-to-describe interaction with the creator of the universe in the presence of our beloved departed before us, will make whatever suffering my wife and I have gone through here pale. Again, I use that expression because it’s the truth. So we have the beautiful, powerful gift of perspective. Very painful, absolutely, but very precious, very precious as well. And this, I can’t fake. Nobody can tell me that God doesn’t exist. I’m here to prove that God exists.
And what people do not understand—and I’ll finish this real quick—is they might tell me, “Pedro, how can you have the arrogance to state that the cross of Christ is the only way to connect with a father, with the creator? How about other convictions? How about other philosophies? How about other religions? How can you be so arrogant to establish only your point of view?”
I’ll tell them one second. One second. I didn’t invent the cross. I didn’t. God did. Number two: the fact of our loss proves to me that Christ, the cross, is the only way. Listen to me for a second. If this is my kid, and at the beginning of time, there are three—there’s the Son, the Father, and the Holy Ghost—and God created us but gave us the choice to decide if we obey or not, we decided wrong. We disobeyed. The consequence of that contract is death, period. Many times, people do not understand. They go, “Oh, if there’s a God, there’s no justice.” One second. You don’t know what you’re asking for. If we only want justice from God, all we deserve is hell. Period. That would be just.
But since God is God, he’s the only one who can be 100% just and 100% loving, and that is conjoined in the cross. Because in the beginning, when we literally sinned by disobeying God’s command and deserving only death, Jesus said, “Father, I’ll go. I’ll pay for them.” When Jesus, in that scene of The Passion of the Christ in the garden of Gethsemane, asks God, “Father, if it’s possible for me not to drink of this cup, if there’s another way, please, please. But not my will, but Be my will done but yours. The fact that God couldn’t respond to His son’s question but with suffering and silence tells me there’s no other way.
Why a father or a mother will do anything and pay any price to save our kids from harm. Anything. I remember telling God, “Lord, I’ve already lived 28 years. Please take my life. Let my daughter live. Please, please take me. I offer you my life. Let her live.”
I would not think for a second to offer my life to give a chance to my daughter to live. I remember when, in Venezuela, our building was next to an electric service station. The transformers would blow up and huge flames would rise. We’d be running down the stairs, we were on the 12th floor, and I’m carrying my beautiful little baby. I thought, “What would I do if this building catches fire from underneath?” And I said, “I know exactly what I would do. It’s wrong, but I know God is God and in His mercy He will understand me and forgive me. I would jump, with my daughter on top of me, looking down, waiting before the thing hits. And as I would hit the floor, I would just throw her up in the expectation of giving her a chance to live.”
I would become soup. I remember people saying, “What is the most terrifying thing you can find in a forest?” “A mama bear with cubs.” Absolutely. She will tear apart a male that is twice her size because you will not mess with her cubs. You will not mess with my daughter. Anybody is willing to kill to defend their kid. You put me in jail, I’ll ruin my life, but you don’t touch my kid. I will do anything to spare them from suffering and harm.
So do people pretend to tell me that God, the Father, who is the perfect Father, would have allowed His Son to go through the horrible things we saw in The Passion of the Christ, knowing that other systems would allow humanity to get back connected with Him? I can imagine God saying, “Son, they sinned, what can we do? Reincarnation? Self-realization? With all respect, Islam, submission to God in our ways? Tantric Buddhism, like my amazing genius supermaster Ravi Shankar, who believed that by playing music he could attain salvation?”
And I’m imagining God talking to His Son and the Holy Spirit, and then the Son says, “Father, I will offer myself on their behalf.” Why? Because all those systems I mentioned are human-based attempts to try to reach the perfection of the Creator. We cannot have success because our nature is imperfect. Only the perfection of God Himself could offer Himself and complete the bridge allowing us to reconnect with God.
If God had allowed His Son to go through the cross, knowing that there were other systems, He would be the most cruel, the most horrible, and the most cynical Father ever. I don’t believe that the God we believe in and worship is anything else but love and justice. That’s why I believe that the cross is the only way. If there was another way, God the Father would not have allowed His Son to go through the cross.
Absolutely. I mean, I was reading in the catechism just a few weeks ago about how it talked about the problem of evil, the problem of suffering. Why is there suffering in the world? And they said, in reality, the entirety of Christianity is an answer to this question. There is no part of Christianity that is not an answer to why there is suffering. But it also does more than just answer why there is suffering; it also answers, “What does God do about it?”
God enters into the world as Jesus. He comes and takes part in our own suffering and transforms it. That’s it. We cannot blame God. We cannot blame God and say, “Oh, if there’s a God, how come He allows so much suffering in the world?” No, no, one second. We live in a broken, fallen, corrupt creation due to our mistake of sin. Absolutely. I cannot blame God for something we did. In fact, again, He went beyond by offering His Son for us. So I agree with you.
Thank you so much for sharing that. I know that’s incredibly intimate, incredibly tough, but I think it’s incredibly important to talk about those things too. I mean, I think suffering is so critical to understand. It’s a very important thing to understand. Yes, it is, yes it is, and is it, is it, sorry to say, it’s biblical. It is absolutely. I cannot pretend to identify with Christ and not also identify with His suffering because it’s literally that. That is part of the deal. The beautiful thing though is, we mentioned this before, is this is a suffering that is to shape us to become more like Jesus. Exactly, and it’s a process that goes to a place where when we are in heaven, there will be no more tears, no more sadness, none of that, just the incredible fulfillment.
Pedro, if you want to hear two etymology fun facts that are related to this, if you’ll bear with me. Yes, so two things: First, patience. A lot of people talk about patience being a virtue and all that. If you look at the word origin for patience, it comes from Passion, it comes from The Passion of Christ. So the virtue of patience is learning how to suffer well. Wow. The second thing related to that is, obviously, the etymology for compassion is a bit more obvious because it’s got passion in it and then it’s about learning to be able to suffer with people, you know, how to relate to others’ suffering as well. And what Christ does for us, He is the ultimate, I mean, He’s the apotheosis of compassion because He was outside of suffering and He came into it. Correct.
So, and Matt, to even reinforce what you’re saying, the thing almost makes me want to cry when the word says, “putting our eyes on Christ who by the joy presented before Him, the joy, He saw the horrible thing He went through.” We can see in The Passion of the Christ so well depicted there. He saw the joy presented in front of Him; He assumed the horror of the Cross and disdain, His humiliation, and that’s why God sat Him at their right hand. And every later says, “for every tongue shall confess and every knee shall bow and recognize that Christ is literally in the name of Christ we will glorify God.” You know, Jesus Christ is Lord, basically. And the power of this is He was perfect; He never sinned. Just imagining my horrible things, my mistakes, it’s embarrassing for Him to bear that. Imagine the horror of every single human being from the beginning of time until the last one that upsets His gift before He returns. Come soon, Lord Jesus, come soon again, please.
It’s something my mind cannot comprehend. He saw that as a joy, the joy set before Him. It blows my mind. That’s beyond my comprehension, way beyond my comprehension. I think it both is and I think there’s a mysterious aspect to it, right? A mystery being something you can always learn something more about but you can never fully grasp. And I think what’s funny is you were saying you can’t comprehend it, but at the same time you were saying just earlier you would do anything for your daughter. You would suffer for your daughter; like you would pick any suffering for your daughter, and that’s the relation to it.
Absolutely, no, and this is the only system, by the way, in which the Creator paid. In every other single system, we pay and we pay and we pay. Here, God paid for us. Absolutely, thanks be to God.
So, we’re going to be jumping back to some music questions real quick. But thank you again so much for sharing that with me, lovely. I’m going to open a whole can of worms with this: what is music to you? Oh, is it not a kind of worm? Because I’ve worked so much about this that I know exactly what to answer. People might not agree with me; that’s a different thing. But music is transcending through sound, period. If there’s no transcendence, there’s no music. There may be a manifestation of sounds which are beautiful, that might make me cry, that might make me move my booty, that might affect me beautifully. Music is when literally, by the nature of whatever piece of music we are experiencing, I’m able to, through my conscience, my soul, my spirit, living the material realm in which I go to this place that is temporal, out of time, literally out of the physical aspect of thinking. That is music for me.
I’m a deep student of a discipline called musical phenomenology, which is the discipline that searches to objectivize the laws that rule the evolution of sound in function of our consciousness. In other words, it’s the discipline that searches to objectivize laws that when sound goes, or our spirit or consciousness are exposed to these rules, we have no other option but to transcend. That’s deep, you see, not easy. Obviously, we cannot do that every single time I play music, but that’s what I would like to aim for. So, that’s my answer to you right there. That’s perfect, and it’s like you’re peeking at my script because my next question was going to be about objectivity and aesthetics. Like some…
Fantastic, I can answer that too, and I can answer that with a very powerful example. Okay, again, I’m extremely controversial with this, people might not agree with me. Go right ahead. But I mean, I’m deeply convicted, deeply convinced of this. I’ve really put years studying this art: music are objective experiences, and I will prove it. There’s a great philosopher called whoer who came up with a term called transcendental intersubjectivity.
When my wife and I got stuck in London for a whole week because we were in a situation where we were traveling with an artist, who the band required a visa to go somewhere and they took a week to get the visa. We stayed in London beautifully. One day, we went to the National Gallery and we sat, my wife and I, we sat across this place looking at a sketch, not even a finished piece, by the super genius Leonardo Da Vinci. It was the Madonna and Baby Jesus in the National Gallery in London, and there’s nobody there because it’s a Tuesday. So we’re sitting there, holding our arms together, and it’s quiet, and it’s a perfect perspective, the perfect distance, the perfect light.
So all these are conditions that can help transcend, and all of a sudden, she and I transcended the limitation of our individual subjectivities. We left our beings and we met at another higher level, a temporal, outside of the physical objective. That is called transcendental intersubjectivity, and that proves to me that it’s not a subjective pedal thing. If I’m intellectual, I can understand the music or I am well-prepared, and I went to school and I can understand the harmony or whatever the composer. Forget all of that stuff. This is something that goes beyond intellect. It goes beyond how we were educated. It goes beyond chronology. It goes beyond culture. It goes beyond geography. It’s something that is innate in us. That’s why art is universal. Bach is universal, Michael Jackson is universal.
Universal and Jazz is dance or, or, or played by Chinese people, or you know the pygmies music in Africa affects us because it is something that goes beyond. It is something that is in God. God made us this way with the capacity to transcend if we are in the right conditions, and in the case of music, the piece, or in the case of a piece of visual art like this sketch, it can affect us into transcendence. Then we can experience art or music. It’s objective. It’s something that is beyond my opinion, beyond my limitations, beyond my knowledge, beyond my level of education or sophistication as a human being. It’s something that is so much deeper than all of that, and that’s a blessing from God. How about this for an answer? That’s perfect. No, that’s absolutely perfect.
On that note as well, do you think the modern audience has a proper understanding of what beautiful music is? That’s a hard question to answer because we live, I don’t want to be critical, we live in an era where—I’m being very, very sincere here—and this is not only, this is interdisciplinary, this happens at every level—we live in an era where people do not necessarily have a high capacity of awareness for certain things. This might sound bad, but I’m going to make my point real quick. It is hard now to distinguish what is good from what is not good. Then you’re going to say, “But Pedro, you’re contradicting yourself because people react to the strength of your delivery.” I go like, actually, that might be—maybe sounds extremely arrogant—but that may be one of the extremes of a situation that, in a way, gives me hope that it’s not all lost yet. Not because I’m good, it’s in spite of my limitations, whatever God does for me gets to people, and people react. Because if I see other things and I see in the art design, if I see people do not know how to differentiate what is good from what is not good… Listen, my tech in the world of Vana is this wonderful composer from England. He lives in Kuala Lumpur. He married a lady from there, they got this beautiful genius two-year-old kid. Matt, this little kid, he’s an incredible painter, visual artist. When I saw the first of her—this is abstract—two-year-old. Like my pro Alex, your kid is a genius. This thing spoke to me in such a way that you see God allowed me the blessing of having a high level of awareness. Of course, that makes me suffer too. Remember that passage in Ecclesiastes 11:17-18 that says, “The more knowledge, the more suffering, and the more wisdom, the more sorrow.” Well, there, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. And I realize that many other people don’t hear things, they don’t see things. They cannot distinguish what is good from what is not good, and that happens even at moral levels. You can see that in the world now. You can see that in food. You can see that in the way they edit videos now. Check this out. I have a dear friend, genius guy, Andralis Johnson. He is a researcher, PhD at Cambridge University. He’s a neuroscientist. He’s the one that did the studies of my brain—my brain behavior while I’m playing something that is fixed compared to when my brain is improvising, and it’s a fascinating thing. What he did. Anyways, we’re very, very, very good friends, and we’ve been friends for years now. And he told me, “Pedro, it is a biological thing. Check this out, man. For our brains to be able to process stuff, we need a minimum time for things to be processed so we can absorb them. If you see the videos that are now edited, it’s impossible to process anything because it goes so fast.” You know what? I have to do many times. I have to put the thing slow and put it in slow motion in order to see what the heck is happening because we are in a generation where we have to be hit all the time with impulses, with information, with things so that we react. You know, to the place in which we have been pushed to a level of numbness. Now, for people to feel anything, you have to hit them real hard with a 2×4 in the head. Not cool, not cool. So, that is very hard for me. There are exceptions to great music now. There are examples of not good music, which I would not call music as well now. There are things that are so repetitive that are completely robotic. You know, there’s no melody. The music doesn’t go anywhere. There are a few exceptions to that, obviously. Thank God for that. But again, I think that we live in an era where what is not normal has become normal, where abnormality has become normal because, again, it may be somebody does a video with more time and doing things. There might be people who feel, “Oh, that’s too slow, I don’t want to see that,” because we got accustomed to the wrongness of being bombarded with information all the time. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s like—this is completely anecdotal—but, you know, I’ll put on YouTube, I’ll watch YouTube shorts or things like that. It’s less than a minute long, and then I’ll put on, like, Bob Ross painting, and it’s like the pacing of it, it’s completely different, and it’s a different thing, but like, you need to sit back and you need to just let that pace. We’re not accustomed to that, but we’re not accustomed to that. The norm, what has become normal, is—and at the end we haven’t processed anything.
Absolutely. Some of the advertisements, they go so fast. You go like, “What the heck were they selling in that?” There’s no time for the message to come across. Or my wife is an incredible graphic designer, you know, you’ve got to see people going so deeply into the art of that, they don’t realize that they need to communicate. We’re communicators at the end. That’s why I study musical phenomenology. I want to be a better communicator. That’s who I am as a musician, artist. It’s like, don’t you understand that you have to communicate? You have to put things that either relate or are in the proportion and the color and the context that you can read and people can receive the information. That is beyond your supposed mod thing that, “Oh, we don’t care about it, it’s just the expression.” No, art is functional. People are going to kill me for this. What is the function of art? To make us transcend. It’s a blessing, it’s a blessing from God that allows us for an instant in this otherwise physical, temporal reality to experience the ephemeral, the incredibly powerful reality of eternity, even if for a little moment. Now, I’m going to give you a thing that is a first for you. Can I share this? I’ve never shared this before. Go ahead.This is really heavy. People will say, but Pedro, one second, if art makes us transcend, then if people are not of your same persuasion or conviction, they transcend too. So if you’re saying that art makes us transcend, then what is the difference between a follower of Christ transcending and a non-follower of Christ transcending? I go like, that’s beautiful. I love this question because I have an answer. My transcendence allows me a snapshot of what I will experience for the rest of eternity. The nonbeliever’s transcendence points toward what they could experience if they accept the gift of God.
Pedro, how do you infuse your work with your faith? I don’t separate them. Easy. That’s an easy answer. Listen, because I am who I am, I will not stop being a follower of Christ when I pick up my instruments to practice. For me, practicing, for me, performing, for me, recording is an act of faith. It’s what Paul says: whatever we do, in word or in act, do it as unto the Lord. That is my life. If I’m playing The Lion King with Hans Zimmer on tour, I will not stop being a follower of Christ. I raise my hand, play to Jesus with my left hand, and with his hand, I’m giving him glory. That’s who I am. I’m not perfect, mind you. Of course, beyond perfect, beyond imperfect, God has, as I mentioned before, a lot to do, but again, that’s an easy thing. I cannot stop being who I am because separating them would entitle me to exercising something where the Lord and the Holy Spirit who live in me would not be present. That’s a no-no. That’s your answer. Easy.
Thank you. And then my last question for you, Pedro, thank you so much, but how have you seen God work in your life? We’ve obviously covered this a little bit, but I just want to give you a final coda for it. Listen, I’m going to tell you something incredibly powerful. Today, I was working on a flute that I needed to prepare for Thursday, and I literally lost it in all the things I have here. I remember something I learned two weeks ago from the sermon from Pastor. He said, even when you’re in trouble, you need something by faith. Start saying thanks to God because by faith you need to understand you have received the answer to what you’re asking. And I’m going like, thank you, Lord. I know you will give me that flute. I’ll find it because I wasted like 15, 20 minutes, precious minutes that I don’t have. I know you revealed to me. Thank you because you’re doing that already, even over details like these. Matt, I believe God is working in strengthening my walk in him. Five minutes later, he revealed to me that I left it in the pocket of the sweater that I took off because it was too hot and I took my sweater out, and I had put it temporarily there in the pocket. God keeps surprising me. Listen, man, God is the ultimate New Yorker. I explain. There’s nothing that would surprise him, and there’s nothing that he would do that will not surprise me. Every single day of the rest of my life, there’s nothing I can do to surprise God. He’s the ultimate New Yorker. But at the same time, only God can keep surprising me every single day with things. I wish I could show you things I’m going to play on Thursday. I cannot. I’m down by an NDA. I will really get in trouble. You are totally fine. I’m gonna see it then regardless. You will see things that people cannot imagine because of God’s incredible creativity, even over the small things. Even facing crises, how the hand of God, we are going through stuff, and then Sunday, we are listening to a sermon, and we start crying because we go like, that’s God talking to us. Listen, Matt, God knows us. He created us. I would invite somebody who’s not a believer to give God, give Jesus a chance. They will not let you down. Absolutely. I mean, that’s just it right there, Pedro. Thank you so much for joining me and talking about Christ with me. I really appreciate it. I can’t wait. Pleasure. My privilege. I hope this reaches many people. I hope it does as well. I mean, if it reaches one person and touches their heart, that’s enough for me. If it was, it was worth it. It was worth it. It was worth it, AB, because listen, listen, the platform God allowed through the game of words and me becoming the flute guy and the platform I have because of playing in all these movies, Moana just came out, Gladiator 2 just came out, I played all these things, last year we won an Oscar with D, the main melody, the most important melody in Dune 2, the biggest movie of the year is my duduk, that melody, incredible melody that Hans came up with, and all these things that give me a platform that I don’t see any other explanation for but to be able to convey to an interview, for example, like this, or through social media, what is truly important and transcendent, which is to share God’s incredible love. And I’ll finish with this, Matt. Something, all these things I’m giving you, my beautiful little jewels here, I would, and I’m going to put these things in my stories and stuff in social media as time comes up. I said I know how controversial it is to speak about Jesus and God in a world that is adamantly opposed to this. Okay, to speak with you like this is a rarity. I’ll tell you. I live in California. This is not something like this, okay? I’d rather face rejection than the heartbreak of someone, when facing God in eternity, would say, someone saying, but Pedro didn’t tell me. Absolutely. I’d rather face the rejection here than the heartbreak that I would feel if someone would tell God, Pedro didn’t mention this to me. That is more important to me than any suffering that I can go through, rejection in this world.
Now Pedro, that was lovely. For all of us, all of those of you watching, the Game Awards will be December 12th.
Pedro what time is it I cannot see that on the website I apologize I believe it’s at 400 PM okay great and but that’s
but that’s La time because we’re going 4 to 7:30 that’s our time okay no that’s if anybody goes believe me it’s it’s in social media all over the place it’s all over uhuh uhuh he’s gonna be he’s gonna be streamed live uhuh but you guys will all get the chance to see Pedro perform there um oh bless you and Pedro thank you so much and God bless you my pleasure thank you for the wonderful questions you’re deep my man God bless you you’re deep as well I listen I love being able to talk to anyone uh you know anyone of Faith anyone not of Faith just being able to talk about these things that people rarely don’t dig into it’s it’s always such a pleasure again God sent us to love even though we don’t agree at everything with everyone but we need to be able to share that God loves us so much that he allowed his son to go on the cross so that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life amen Pedro thank you God bless you bro,bless my pleasure I’m going to go I need to eat Matt I’m starving I’m so sorry oh my gosh no no no this listen listen this is worth it I I’ll finish with this I saw this vet we coming back I I was traveling somewhere with Hans and and we got in this plane and I saw him lining up I said are you a vet and he said yes and I said I told him thank you for your service you know what he taught me man he said you were worth it that’s perfect I love when he came aboard I took a picture as he was coming and and I posted a story and said this is what happened with this V this time with you Matt to be able to to connect with people and share even if it’s one person it was worth it it was worth it thank you Pedro God bless you bro I’m gonna go eat now God bless you bro go eat I’ll talk to you later thank you excellent be good thank you bye bye bye bye God bless you all guys!
