Carlos Cipa

Carlos Cipa is a composer and pianist who has built bridges between different musical worlds. Having received classical training as a child, in his teenage years he took a seat behind the drum kit of hardcore bands instead of sitting in front of the piano. When he returned to his main instrument and started releasing his first albums in the early 2010s, his compositional approach as well as his unique playing were marked by the impressions that his musical detours had left on him. After studying contemporary classical composition at the conservatory in Munich, he used his entire studio as an instrument on his electro-acoustic 2019 album »Retronyms,« and started focussing on his main instrument again—or more precisely instruments, plural. As a composer-performer, he firmly integrates the different qualities of various pianos into his practice. For 2020’s »Correlations (on 11 pianos)« and 2023’s »Ourselves, as we are« as well as his interpretation of Hans Otte’s »The Book of Sounds,« Cipa worked with different instruments to write and perform his pieces in ways that were directly inspired by their acoustic specificities. Cipa has undergone several transformations in his artistic life, but his creative driving force has remained the same: boundless curiosity. To hear Cipa’s music is to listen to an artist looking for the previously unheard-of between the notes that he plays, the acoustic idiosyncrasies of his instruments, and his environment.