With Volver, Vienna-based vocalist Patricia Moreno turns inward, crafting a deeply personal statement rooted in identity, heritage, and the expressive potential of the human voice. Recorded in an intimate, stripped-back setting alongside her father Arnoldo Moreno and guitarist Ignacio Giovanetti, the album moves away from polished production toward something more immediate and unguarded, where breath, phrasing, and emotion remain fully exposed.
In this conversation, Moreno reflects on the organic origins of the project, the influence of her Austrian and Venezuelan background, and the creative freedom that comes from embracing vulnerability in performance. She also discusses the role of collaboration, particularly with producer David Chesky, and the balance between honoring musical traditions and speaking in her own voice. What emerges is an artist deeply attuned to authenticity, offering music that is as much about connection and presence as it is about sound.
Volver centers around the idea of “returning.” When you began this project, did it feel like a conscious decision to reconnect with your roots, or something that emerged more organically?
This project actually began very simply with making music with my father Arnoldo Moreno – just voice and guitar. We recorded a living room video for YouTube of one of David Chesky’s New York Chorinhos, a piece I love very much. My father and I have always played music together, especially Latin American music. After many years of me touring with different bands and experimenting between jazz and fusion, we decided to start sharing some music together again online. That’s how David Chesky discovered us. He reached out and asked if we would be interested in recording more of his Chorinhos for a whole album. For the rest of the repertoire he gave me complete artistic freedom. We agreed that the album should have a strong Latin focus, because that’s where my musical curiosity has been pulling me again in recent years.
So I would say this project and this renewed connection to my roots was something that evolved very naturally and organically.
You grew up between Austrian and Venezuelan musical cultures. How have those dual influences shaped the way you approach sound, phrasing, and storytelling today?
I grew up surrounded by many different kinds of music. Both of my parents are guitarists who are equally at home in classical and popular music. My mother is Austrian and my father is Venezuelan. So my childhood soundtrack included Bach, Mozart and Vivaldi, the Concierto de Aranjuez and the waltzes of Antonio Lauro, but also artists like Djavan, Gloria Estefan and Pat Metheny. All of that shaped my musical DNA.
I started playing the violin at the age of five and originally planned to become a classical violinist. I studied at the conservatory in Vienna until I was seventeen, when I decided to leave and pursue jazz singing instead. The classical tradition, especially its attention to phrasing, agogics, and nuance , deeply influences the way I interpret ballads today.
At the same time, the rhythmic language of Venezuelan and Brazilian music, of Salsa and Afro-Latin grooves, shaped how I think about rhythm and movement in music, how I phrase in Latin contexts, and also how I improvise vocally. My jazz studies in Vienna and at Berklee College of Music strongly influenced my approach to improvisation. And storytelling has been deeply shaped by another part of my life: for about ten years I’ve been teaching actors at Mozarteum University in Salzburg. Working with them taught me a lot about text, rhetoric, expression, and emotional delivery, which now informs my own interpretations as a singer.
So in many ways my influences go far beyond Austria and Venezuela. But Austria, where I grew up, obviously shaped me deeply. And even though I rarely get to spend time in Venezuela and see my family there, I try to stay connected to those roots through music and language.
The album moves away from more produced settings into a very stripped-down, almost chamber-like format. What drew you to that level of intimacy?
I love the transparency of this kind of music making. It gives the voice a lot of space and freedom for expression. At the same time, that transparency is also a challenge, because everything becomes audible: every breath, every emotional shift, every small imperfection that happens in the moment. But that’s exactly what makes live music so exciting to me! Of course, it also means that every potential inaccuracy can be heard , but I find that incredibly compelling. The voice is a profoundly human instrument. It reflects the state I’m in at any given moment. It’s the most personal instrument there is.
In a time when so many productions are highly polished, where everything is corrected with Melodyne and every breath is edited out, choosing to present the voice in its raw form almost feels like an act of liberation. Just showing yourself as an artist, unfiltered – because why not? What interests me most is authenticity. I’m interested in the emotion that emerges in a moment and maybe makes a note slightly tremble because vulnerability is present. I’m interested in allowing space for contemplation. And I want to invite the audience into that space.
Recording alongside your father must have added a deeply personal dimension to the music. How did that relationship influence the emotional tone of the sessions?
In many ways it made everything easier, simply because we’ve been making music together my whole life. We understand each other musically so intuitively that very few words are needed. My father – as well as my mother – have always supported me in every musical direction I chose.
He also did something truly remarkable for this project: David Chesky’s New York Chorinhos were originally written for piano, and my father transcribed and arranged them for guitar. That was an enormous and incredible work, and on top of that he played it so brilliantly and made it very easy for me to sing over. The album could not have happened in this way without his dedication, I’m very lucky!
The voice sits completely exposed in this setting. How do you approach vulnerability as a performer when there’s nowhere to “hide” sonically?
Honestly, I love it haha. I really do. This setting gives me enormous freedom to explore my voice. I don’t have to compete with other instruments in terms of volume, so every nuance, every color and every texture becomes audible. As a vocalist, that’s incredibly fulfilling. The idea that there might be something to hide has actually never really affected me. I think that’s because I started performing in a duo with my father when I was about thirteen or fourteen. For me, that kind of transparency was always normal. And when you grow up playing violin, it’s the same: every small inaccuracy is audible. That balance between risk and expression becomes part of how you navigate through music very early on.
Your background includes classical training, jazz studies, and vocal improvisation traditions. At this stage, do you still think in terms of those disciplines, or have they merged into a more instinctive language?
They have definitely merged into my own musical language. When I talk about it analytically, I can identify the different influences. But in everyday musical life I rarely think in those categories anymore. I simply follow my instincts and make music.
The repertoire draws from Venezuelan folk, tango, and Brazilian-influenced forms like chorinhos. How did you navigate honoring those traditions while still making the music your own?
For me it’s always important not to imitate something I’m not. I’m not Brazilian, and I will never sound like one. I’m also not purely Venezuelan, and you can hear that in my voice as well. And I’m not strictly a straight-ahead jazz singer either, even though I love scatting and grew up listening to a lot of jazz.
I’m Patricia Moreno – that’s my category. Whenever I work with a musical tradition, whether it’s Brazilian choro, salsa, or jazz standards from the Great American Songbook, I try to learn as much as possible about the tradition, honor it, understand its language, and respect its core elements. And after that, I allow myself to interpret it in the way that feels most authentic to me.
In some ways this mirrors my identity. When I was younger, I sometimes felt that I didn’t fully belong anywhere – not completely Austrian, not completely Venezuelan either. Back then I saw that as something I had to overcome. Today I see it differently. I simply do things in the way that feels true to me. I no longer question who I should be according to my background. I simply am – and that’s enough.
Working with producer David Chesky across continents suggests a process built on trust and communication. How did that collaboration shape the final sound of the album?
What I admire most about David as a producer is the level of trust he showed us. He heard just one Chorinho that I recorded with my father on YouTube, and based on that he gave us so much artistic freedom for the album. That level of trust is something I never took for granted. He said yes to all the additional songs I suggested, and we actually never met in person during the process, because he was in the U.S. and I was in Austria. In a way, he trusted a complete stranger on another continent to go into the studio and do justice to his music.
He was incredibly supportive, relaxed, and genuinely appreciative of what we were doing. That openness made the recording of this demanding repertoire so much easier and allowed the album to become something very personal for me.
The entire recording process with my father and with the wonderful Uruguayan guitarist Ignacio Giovanetti was intense and beautiful. I truly feel that it pushed me to a new level as a vocalist.
There’s a strong sense of space, breath, and phrasing throughout Volver. How much of that was consciously shaped, and how much came from simply letting the music unfold?
I think it was a combination of both. As experienced musicians, we always try to listen to what the music itself is asking for. In many cases the compositions already suggest where space is needed, where the phrasing naturally wants to go, or how the dynamic arc of a piece should develop. When you spend enough time with the music, those things become intuitive. You simply feel what the piece needs.
In a musical landscape that often prioritizes polish and production, Volver feels deliberately human and unfiltered. What do you hope listeners take away from that choice?
At a time when artificial intelligence is becoming a major topic in music and creating new challenges for artists, I think there is also a growing desire for music made by real, tangible, imperfect human beings.
Whenever the pendulum swings strongly in one direction – toward hyper polished productions or even AI generated artists – it eventually swings back toward something raw, human, and authentic. What only human beings can offer is real connection: the fragile, vulnerable, truthful space that opens between people through art.
With Volver, I hope listeners can reconnect with that sense of authenticity – with me, with themselves and with one another.
