Carlos Zingaro

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

Life and work

Zingaro has been formed with five years as a violinist at the Lisbon Conservatory in classical music. Following this instruction, he began in 1967 a two -year degree as a church organist at the School of Sacred Music. He was a member of the Chamber Orchestra of the University of Lisbon during the 1960s. In 1967 he founded the ensemble plexus, then the only group in Portugal and an independent approach developed on the basis of contemporary music, improvisation and rock music, and in 1968 grossed a single for RCA Victor. He graduated in 1975 Bühnenbildnerstudium be on the Lisbon Theatre College, where he was later employed in the Directorate.

From 1974 to 1980 Zingaro was musical director of the theater group Comicos, for which he composed various stage music. In 1981, he received the Portuguese Critics Award for best theater music. In addition, he composed film scores and worked with the dance companies of the Geneva Opera, the Gulbenkian Dance Company as well as with Francis Plisson, Ludger Lamers, Isabelle Schad, Vasco wave Camp, Vera Mantero and Olga Roriz.

Since 1975 Zingaro worked in the ensemble of Kent Carter and dealt intensively with improvised music. In 1979 he was invited by Karl Berger's Creative Music Foundation in Woodstock in workshops and performances in some of improvising musicians and composers such as Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell, George Lewis, Leo Smith, Tom Cora and Richard Teitelbaum, collaborates regularly with the until today. Andrea Centazzo took him into his Central European Orchestra. Subsequently, he worked with such diverse improvisers as Daunik Lazro, Barre Phillips, Derek Bailey, Joëlle Léandre, Jon Rose, Peter Kowald, John Butcher, Mark Dresser, John Zorn, Roger Turner, Hans Reichel, Rüdiger Carl, Dominique Regef, Evan Parker, Dominique Pifarély, Günter Müller, Mats Gustafsson, Agusti Fernandez, Paul Lovens, Tomas Ulrich, Peggy Lee, and Fred Lonberg - Möslang Norbert Holm. Both as a soloist and in ensembles guested on many relevant Zingaro festivals for contemporary music and improvisation in Europe, Asia and America.

As a comic artist and illustrator Zingaro was a founding member of the Art Gallery Comicos in Lisbon; his work has been exhibited widely and won several awards. His drawings he used for his albums, for example, the cover of Musiques de scène.