Carlos Zingaro

Carlos Zíngaro Alves (born December 15, 1948 in Lisbon ) is a Portuguese musician (violin, laptop) of the new improvisational music as well as a composer and cartoonist.

Carlos Zingaro with BACH.Bogen

Live and act

Zíngaro was trained as a violinist at the Lisbon Conservatory in classical music at the age of five. Following these lessons, in 1967 he began a two-year course as a church organist at the College of Spiritual Music. He was also a member of the Lisbon University Chamber Orchestra during the 1960s . In 1967 he founded the Ensemble Plexus , at that time the only group in Portugal that developed an independent approach based on contemporary music, improvisation and rock music and recorded a single for RCA Victor in 1968 . In 1975 he completed his studies in set design at the Lisbon Theater School, where he later also worked in the management.

From 1974 to 1980 Zíngaro was musical director of the Comicos theater group , for which he composed various stage music. In 1981 he received the Portuguese Critics' Prize for the best theater music. He also composed film music and worked with the dance companies of the Geneva Opera, the Gulbenkian Dance Company and with Francis Plisson, Ludger Lamers, Isabelle Schad , Vasco Wellencamp, Vera Mantero and Olga Roriz.

From 1975 Zíngaro worked in Kent Carter's ensemble and was intensively involved with improvised music. In 1979, at the invitation of Karl Berger's Creative Music Foundation in Woodstock, he took part in workshops and performances by improvisation musicians and composers such as Anthony Braxton , Roscoe Mitchell , George Lewis , Leo Smith , Tom Cora and Richard Teitelbaum , with whom he still works regularly to this day. Andrea Centazzo brought him to his Central Europe Orchestra. He then worked with improvisers as diverse as Daunik Lazro , Barre Phillips , Derek Bailey , Joëlle Léandre , Jon Rose , Peter Kowald , John Butcher , Mark Dresser , John Zorn , François Cotinaud , Roger Turner , Hans Reichel , Rüdiger Carl , Dominique Regef , Evan Parker , Dominique Pifarély , Günter Müller , Mats Gustafsson , Agustí Fernández , Paul Lovens , Tomas Ulrich , Peggy Lee , Norbert Möslang and Fred Lonberg-Holm . Both as a soloist and in ensembles, Zingaro has made guest appearances at many relevant festivals for new music and improvisation in Europe, Asia and America.

As a comic artist and illustrator, Zíngaro was a founding member of the Comicos art gallery in Lisbon; his work has been exhibited many times and has been awarded various prizes. He also uses his drawings for his albums, for example the cover of Musiques de scène .

Web links

• Biography with extensive discography (English)
• Carlos Zingaro in the Internet Movie Database (English)