Carlos Sánchez Leonardo is a recorder and Renaissance cornetto player specialising in the performance of music up to the 17th century. Initially trained in Madrid, he continued his higher education at ESMAE in Porto, where he obtained a bachelor’s and master’s degree in recorder performance, and furthered his studies with a master’s in historical musicology from the University of La Rioja. His artistic approach combines historical rigour with interpretative sensitivity, exploring early music as a living material open to reinterpretation and improvisation, always respecting original sources. He has developed his career mainly between Portugal and Spain, with performances also in Italy, France, and Finland.

.

[Altea Guevara & Carlos Sánchez - October 25th 2025, Madrid]

How did you begin studying the recorder, and how did your professionalisation in the world of early music come about?

I actually started studying music at six or seven years old, due to family pressure. I lived in a small village in the Madrid mountains where there was nothing much, but there was a music school. The music theory teacher was a clarinetist, but he also played the recorder. One day, my parents took me to a concert he gave in a nearby village, and I found it more appealing than the violin, which I was learning at the time. In the end, three of us students got together and studied with him for a few years. Through him, I met the teacher who would later become my professor at the El Escorial conservatory.

I started out completely unaware of what early music was, without knowing anything about it. I think this is quite common among recorder players: we start with the instrument as children without realising what it entails, and the instrument’s trajectory leads us towards a specific repertoire and path. Although there are other worlds for the recorder, access to contemporary repertoire often comes later.

So, it was a somewhat inevitable path, and it didn’t take long. Once I started studying at the conservatory, I was quite clear that this world interested me. I didn’t know how to do it, but I knew I was going to commit to it. After finishing my intermediate degree, there were years of doubt, but I ended up studying in Porto, at ESMAE. Over time, I realised that your network of contacts depends a lot on where you studied, who you met, when you studied, and who supported you. This happens here, but also elsewhere.

I don’t know if I know many people outside the Iberian sphere—Spanish and Portuguese—who have followed a similar path. Many people who studied in The Hague work a lot there or anywhere in the world. I think it’s more about the circles you create while studying than anything else. That’s why, although I live in Madrid, my relationship with Portugal is very close. I travel to Portugal several times a month; in the end, I’ve spent ten years living there or, if not, travelling there very frequently. But generally, I work with few groups, though with great continuity.

In Spain, as a performer, I’m gradually gaining more activity, though it’s not very large, to be honest. My main activity is still in Portugal. In fact, in recent years, when I’ve performed in Spain, it’s often been with Portuguese groups or French groups with a strong Portuguese base. My professional activity in Spain is more sporadic.

In what spaces do you usually develop your musical activity?

For a long time, I combined my work as a performer with teaching. About three years ago, I stopped teaching—not because I wanted to be a freelancer, but because I had accumulated many projects and concert dates. I couldn’t do quality work at the school, and the volume of work as a performer allowed me to dedicate myself solely to playing. So, I took a leave of absence from the school where I was teaching.

For a few years, my only activity was basically performance. This work is very flexible and variable; sometimes there’s a lot, sometimes there’s little. This year, I’ve returned to teaching, trying to find a balance more oriented towards performance. I love teaching, but I want it to complement my main activity.

As for the spaces where I develop my activity, almost all my teaching work has been in non-regulated education, that is, outside the conservatory system, in music schools. One of the big difficulties of studying abroad is validating degrees and dealing with all the administrative and bureaucratic aspects, so until this year, I hadn’t been able to access conservatory circuits or official institutions. Therefore, all the teaching I’ve done has been in schools. I haven’t given many private lessons or more formal courses; it’s always been in centres.

What are the biggest challenges for the sustainability of a recorder player’s career?

It might be a bit depressing to say this as a recorder player, but I think there’s a certain overproduction of recorder players, and artistically, they’re not all necessary in such numbers. There isn’t enough music written for the recorder, nor is there sufficient demand to justify the number of students graduating each year from conservatories. Artistically, it doesn’t match reality. There are many centres offering this instrument, and they started doing so even before other early instruments. For a long time, almost any wind instrument needed was a recorder, or it was replaced by one.

I think all this is very influenced by the history of the recovery of early music and its development from the 1960s and 1970s to the present. The recorder was one of the first wind instruments to gain visibility, almost as the spearhead of the movement in many aspects.

There’s so much repertoire for traverso, oboe, and cornetto, for which recordings were made by recorder players... However, today we have specialists: very competent musicians dedicated to other early wind instruments. With this, all the space that the recorder occupied has been reduced, and it’s natural that the market has shrunk, because I think it was somewhat distorted and not entirely faithful to reality.

We thus find younger generations of musicians—like mine—who studied this instrument but later realised that the market doesn’t need us to that extent. That’s why it’s very common for recorder players who want to dedicate themselves to performance, to freelancing, and to make interpretation their main activity, but who discover that with the recorder alone, they won’t be able to. Making this decision is always complicated, and it’s a bet that should be faced with a lot of awareness, a cool head, and clarity. This happens in any speciality of early music, but in the specific case of the recorder, I think it’s especially difficult because there isn’t enough work. It’s not an instrument in sufficient demand—except for a few figures—for it to be sustainable in the long term. In the end, in this sector, the more niche profiles are forced to diversify more than the more in-demand profiles or those with more opportunities.

I generally consider myself a very lucky person, because I’ve been able to dedicate myself exclusively to it for a few years, but I don’t think it’s the norm. I think that, as a recorder player, it’s a reality that isn’t easy. In the world of music in general, it’s already difficult, but in the case of early music, it’s even more complicated: in other types of music, I think this kind of activity is allowed for instrumentalists who can participate in orchestras, for example, or for singers. Certainly, for wind instruments, it’s always difficult, but the demand for recorder players isn’t varied nor does it match the number of recorder players there are.

And when it comes to managing your career, beyond the fundamental challenge of having enough work and all that it entails, what are the main aspects?

One of the main aspects is the economic one. In many tax systems, moreover, the activity is hindered. In my case, as a self-employed worker registered in Spain, I can say that being self-employed until reaching a certain billing threshold is quite uncomfortable. Once that level is exceeded, everything works more or less well. However, moving in the lower billing brackets, in such unstable work, is always difficult and anxiety-inducing. Added to this is the need to generate sufficient work volume and to constantly deal with bureaucracy: advancing money for taxes, for travel, or for many other expenses. It’s not always like this, but it’s a frequent situation.

To this, one should add a dynamic that is very shocking, that wears you down, that makes everything more difficult, and that is very entrenched—not only in music, but I think any self-employed worker will agree: always having to chase providers or insist that someone pays you, working without knowing exactly when you’ll be paid. That’s a very specific point that affects many of us, as you can be having incredible activity, working a lot, with a great and prestigious career, and still face the same old problems in this regard, simply because you don’t know when the fees and per diems will arrive. It’s something very entrenched that makes things very difficult. I’m not saying that, in my case, it’s been a limiting factor or a breaking point, but it’s a constant and very significant discomfort. It also puts you in an uncomfortable, almost unpleasant position, having to insist that people pay for something you’ve already worked on and that should be resolved.

What strategies exist to overcome these difficulties?

The option of studying a second instrument, probably once recorder studies are finished, can be fundamental, although if you have foresight, you start doing this earlier. The choice depends on each person’s interests and strategy, but the most common is that they are other early wind instruments. If you look at the profiles of specialised musicians who play oboe, traverso—perhaps to a lesser extent—, cornetto, or dulcian, many of them are, originally, recorder players: an instrument with which they began their training and which they later relegated to the background, or which they now combine with other instruments that have become their main path.

Beyond this, I ultimately think that one must learn to deal with all the uncertainty surrounding the activity, more than with the challenges of the activity itself, because the activity itself is usually always rewarding.

What do you identify as the greatest virtues of the early music sector in Portugal?

I would say that the first thing is that there’s a very strong willingness to do things. I notice much more of that predisposition to take the plunge and fight for projects, even if that sometimes means taking alternative paths to avoid difficulties. I like that restlessness of saying: let’s make this happen, despite the fact that, later, in a contradictory way, I also see a certain conformity with the result, even if there was strong enthusiasm.

Yes, there’s a contradiction there. But I think it’s not only in music; it’s something I also see in Portuguese culture, as a Spaniard who went to live there. I see a bit of that dynamic: a desire to do things, to change things, and at the same time, everything ends up being left a bit halfway. Generalising a lot, I think it’s a very good starting point, but it could be taken a bit further.

On the other hand, I think Portugal and the Portuguese are very internationally connected. There’s an active concern for integration and participation in Europe, and that’s noticeable in music, in projects, in mobilisation, and in the diaspora. In comparison, I get the feeling that we Spaniards aren’t as much: we tend to be more focused on ourselves in many things, or to take for granted things that the Portuguese, on the other hand, seek more actively.

In your opinion, what are the main future challenges to consolidate this artistic and professional circuit?

Regarding challenges, I probably focus a lot on the reality of the average worker, not the big figures, who will have their problems and so on, but who seem less representative to me. For me, the ideal would be to achieve stable and good working conditions for everyone, and that we feel and see it as viable to fight for them.

I don’t know, compared to other sectors, like theatre or other cultural jobs, we don’t associate at all. That is, we’re self-employed individuals who meet occasionally on projects and that’s it, without a sense of sector or community, without an associative drive towards general interests. I have the feeling that in early music, except for large or very professionalised groups, it’s relevant to note that there’s a cloud of groups that are created and destroyed almost every season: those quick encounters that are made for an ad hoc project, where suddenly there’s a Facebook page and an Instagram page for the group, which in time reflects how it ended up being abandoned. It can be too volatile.

This flexibility allows many things to be done, yes, but it also leaves you a bit defenceless, I think.

Perhaps the great challenge is to really consider how to establish some minimums for workers, for specialised musicians. Because many times—although fortunately it’s not usually my case—we’ve all found ourselves in situations where we’ve had to endure things that I don’t think should be accepted, but we have no choice because we’re made to understand that if we don’t go along with it, someone else will come along and take this opportunity. That if you don’t accept certain conditions, someone else will. And that fear, well... it’s a feeling that we normalise as intrinsic to work, but which in other areas is more regulated and is being overcome. I don’t know how to solve it, I don’t have an answer for that, but I think it would be important to evolve in this sense. And perhaps that would happen if we all, to some extent, became aware that we are a collective: a collective that should even include those who don’t dedicate 100% of their time to performance—often because it’s not viable in all cases, which perhaps reflects that we should problematise whether there are too many professionals for the market that exists, and whether there’s infrastructure to create a market much faster—. Be that as it may, regardless of the partiality and combination with other jobs of many people, the fact is that we are a collective, we do the same thing, and we are all affected by the conditions and quality of employment.

On the other hand, I think it’s important to talk about the Iberian context in general. This is a personal view, but I think cultural exchanges in general are beautiful, enriching, and very positive. And in this regard, Portugal and Spain often behave as closed realities, as if they were turning their backs on each other, when politically it has probably always been that way. But in day-to-day practice, it shouldn’t be like that.

I think it’s a shame that these two realities are so divided, so stagnant in many aspects. Although, well, lately I see more people collaborating, I see more exchange. I don’t know if that’s a reality or if it’s an echo chamber that leads me to meet more people in situations similar to mine; it could well be.

In any case, everything that promotes activities on both sides of the border, collaborations, or recovery projects, I think should be encouraged much more. As I told you earlier, the Portuguese look towards Europe, and I think it’s a bit sad that there’s often that direct leap over the Pyrenees... But the reality, the infrastructure, the organisation, and the work dynamics don’t facilitate these relationships, especially from Spain to Portugal. This makes it so that, although there’s interest, that more natural and direct connection between both sides of the border often doesn’t happen, and perhaps this is an obstacle.