Paloma Carrasco López (Madrid, 1975) is a musician and teacher, dedicated to free improvised music (cello, piano) and movement (dance, space). Her work is focused on interactions in between both disciplines. She is an active and relevant performer in Madrid’s free impro scene, also being programmed in free impro events around Spain and Europe.
She studied classical piano and cello, then focusing her practice on free improvisation since 2003. With a degree in telecommunication engineering, she left this job in 2006 to totally dedicate to music, both as a teacher and as a free improviser. Since 2014 she also trained on contact improvisation and improvised dance, then endowing her performances with a new spatial and moving vision. Her practice has been nurtured by workshops and/or collaborations with improvisers such as Chefa Alonso, Wade Mathews, Eddie Prèvost, Fred Frith, Terry Day, Maggie Nicols, Ilan Volkov, Keith Tippett, William Parker, Olivier Benoit, Agustí Fernández, Llorenç Barber, John Tilbury, Barre Phillips, Lê Quan Ninh, Axel Dörner, Cristiane Boullosa, Shahar Dor, Guillermo Weickert, Emmanuelle Pepin, Manuela Tessi, Katie Duck or Mónica Valenciano, among others.
Since 2016 her researching interests are aiming to exploration of synergies in between sound and movement, in the field of interdisciplinary free improvisation. In 2017 she creates Escucha en Movimiento, a research project to explore and generate improvisation spaces to be horizontally shared among musicians and dancers; it also contemplates the organization of workshops and scenic programming in this context. From then on, and with the same spirit, she has kept on training, researching and sharing this work with musicians and dancers around Europe, attending to events such us "Impro Summer Intensive" (Amsterdam), "Laboratori d'improvisació multidisciplinaria" (Barcelona), "Common Ground: music meets dance" (Berlin), "Soundance" (Berlin), "Conférence Européenne Pour l'Improvisation CEPI" (Valcivières), "Stage 2020" (Puget Ville).
Her projects as a performer include collaborations with:
She studied classical piano and cello, then focusing her practice on free improvisation since 2003. With a degree in telecommunication engineering, she left this job in 2006 to totally dedicate to music, both as a teacher and as a free improviser. Since 2014 she also trained on contact improvisation and improvised dance, then endowing her performances with a new spatial and moving vision. Her practice has been nurtured by workshops and/or collaborations with improvisers such as Chefa Alonso, Wade Mathews, Eddie Prèvost, Fred Frith, Terry Day, Maggie Nicols, Ilan Volkov, Keith Tippett, William Parker, Olivier Benoit, Agustí Fernández, Llorenç Barber, John Tilbury, Barre Phillips, Lê Quan Ninh, Axel Dörner, Cristiane Boullosa, Shahar Dor, Guillermo Weickert, Emmanuelle Pepin, Manuela Tessi, Katie Duck or Mónica Valenciano, among others.
Since 2016 her researching interests are aiming to exploration of synergies in between sound and movement, in the field of interdisciplinary free improvisation. In 2017 she creates Escucha en Movimiento, a research project to explore and generate improvisation spaces to be horizontally shared among musicians and dancers; it also contemplates the organization of workshops and scenic programming in this context. From then on, and with the same spirit, she has kept on training, researching and sharing this work with musicians and dancers around Europe, attending to events such us "Impro Summer Intensive" (Amsterdam), "Laboratori d'improvisació multidisciplinaria" (Barcelona), "Common Ground: music meets dance" (Berlin), "Soundance" (Berlin), "Conférence Européenne Pour l'Improvisation CEPI" (Valcivières), "Stage 2020" (Puget Ville).
Her projects as a performer include collaborations with:
- musicians from the european impro scene: Bruo Dúo (with Ricardo Tejero), HEX Duo (with Samuel Hall), Moon:dos (with Javier Pedreira), Musicians in Space (by David Leahy), Sound Pool y La Criatura (with Ged Barry), Johannes Nastejö, Alessandra Rombola, Wade Matthews, Alejandro Rojas-Marcos, Ángel Faraldo, Pelayo Arrizabalaga, Matthias Müller, Tom Chant, Veryan Weston, …
- composers: Fran M. M. Cabeza de Vaca, Sergio Blardony
- orchestras of free improvised music in Europe: FOCO (Madrid), LIO (Londres), MIO (Liverpool), BerIO (Berlín)
- dancers: Kristin Guttenberg, Concuerdas (with Lucía Sánchez and Sarah Gottlieb), Nunc (with David Leahy), companies OmosUno, The Little Queens, Cía LaClá
Background photo credit: Santi Ruiz
