Entrevista - Carlos Zingaro

You started playing when you were only 4 years old. Was this influence from your parents or did you already know you were going to be a musician?: Supposedly I was very interested in music and, when going to some circus show with live music, I would be more interested in the orchestra than in the clowns or similar activities.
A friend of my father, who was a classical music journalist, advised my parents to get me in a music school.
My father had briefly studies the violin and my mother the mandolin.
When of my first day at the music school, and asked what instrument I would like to play, my answer was: drums and cornet. if not I wanted to be a maestro.
Of course I was given a violin and told to shut up.
Why did you choose to play violin?: See before.
Knowing what I would go through during my academic years I would never take the violin!!!
It was a difficult period to get involved in arts in Portugal.
Each violin teacher I had kind of hated or, at least, despised the previous one, meaning that all teaching approaches / methods would be different if not opposite. Let's imagine that as a sound pedagogic attitude!
Why, very early, I was fascinated by other instruments, double bass first, electric guitar (of course.), bass clarinet, piccolo (!!!), even pipe organ (which I studied for 2 years when I was about 16 and was fascinated by Bach and Jimmy Smith).
All this love and hate with academy, the violin, classical music, in a very early stage - and, supposedly - formative years, were determinant to the aesthetic choices that would make all my life.
Somehow, I was never fitting in any school or genre.
You also became a professional musician at the age of 13 in the University Orchestra of Chamber Music (Orquestra Universitária de Música de Câmara). Can you describe how did you get there and how did this influence your further career?: Of course I was too young to be an university student and, along with another girl the same age, the youngest in that orchestra. Obviously looked upon as "the babies" by the other members, if not the mascots of the lot.
The collective sense was not there, the choices were not very interesting, the direction was weak, to say the least. That's when I was trying my (little) fingers on the d.basses lying around during rehearsals' breaks.
One year later I was listening to John Cage's Prepared Piano pieces and being in shock! Than it was Hendrix and North African music - at 17 I was dropping off academy, orchestras, classical music and the lot.
Here is the influence I got from that early professional experience.
Studying in both in Poland and New York, two very different environments, which inspired you more and how?: Two totally different environments and realities!
In Wroclaw / Poland I was invited (with a Gulbenkian grant) to be at the Instrumental Theatre events / meetings at the local Technical University. I worked with composer Richard Misiek. This was a contemporary music approach that had to do with composers such as Cage, Kagel, Bussotti, etc.. Where the music being composed was thought as a theatric event, where the sounds, the instruments, the performers could eventually have active roles as characters with some sense of drama, in some cases with a strong nonsense way of thinking the whole.
This was back in 1978, Poland was still part of the Soviet world and, Poland and Polish being so beautiful and craving for freedom I must say it was totally crazy and exciting.
Woodstock / new York was 1 year later, at the Creative Music Foundation, created and directed by German composer / musician Karl Berger, in this big ex-motel in the middle of the Woodstock woods. It was paradise and, being there with a Fulbright Grant, I was being pampered and invited to all kinds of events.
I was assistant to (Art Ensemble of Chicago) Roscoe Mitchell - who was running the summer courses back in 1979. I was teaching exactly what I'd learned back at Wroclaw the year before. I was hand writing Anthony Braxton's famous orchestra pieces - before notation software and supposedly because I had a good graphic hand.
That's when I began the duets and collaboration with Richard Teitelbaum. When I met John Zorn (in his downtown beginnings) and Fred Frith. When I was recording with young Marilyn Crispell and playing with Leo Smith and George Lewis and Tom Cora and Gerald Oshita and Tom Buckner and having Mars Williams playing a clarinet solo I had written.
It was all about experimenting, trying new and different solutions. Where contemporary music traditions and techniques were mixed with ethnic approaches with a wild and strong jazz openness and rock pulse. When electronics and (big) analog synths were being pushed beyond its constructors' wildest dreams.
Of course it's obvious where it was my place of choice and where I felt totally integrated, where no one asked what "club" or "school" I belonged to. Where I learned the generosity of sharing and learning together - where the "masters" were learning with / from everybody else!
New York was alive and kicking, everything was exciting, Glass was playing with his ensemble at the Danceteria, Ornette was playing Prime Time at the Hurrah! Cecil Taylor was sharing the bill with James White and the Contortions at the Squat Theatre while Sam Rivers was managing the Studio RivBea. I was invited to stay and I didn't! Big mistake to come back?!
You are considered as a pioneer in using new technologies in composing. What was your biggest influence and inspiration to start exploring different techniques and crossing boundaries of conventional concepts?: I'm sure that it is clear where it all came from by reading my previous comments. In 1977 both Steve Lacy and Kent Carter were telling me that I seemed like a "vacuum cleaner", aspiring all bits of information and experience I could get my hands / ears on.
I was learning Lacy's solos instead of Grapelli's or Ponty's.
I wanted to sound as Hendrix back in the sixties, experimenting with noisy pedals and telephone contact capsules - driving everybody nuts with uncontrolled feed back from an acoustic violin. Always wanting to push its damned sound into other possibilities and realities. Running to buy a Fender electric violin back in 1971 as soon as I heard Ornette using one - when obviously he was not a violin player.
When in Portugal I was not fitting in any of the roles you were supposed to fit back then - I was no classical / serious musician for sure, I was no jazzman because not following the necessary rules, I was not a pop/rock musician because I was thought as too intellectual and not playing the kind of bohemian games thought needed by the milieu.
Live music of some difference was a rarity.
When in South Africa back in 1966, I had witnessed all kinds of live music and, after my stint in the army (Angola) from 1970 till 1972, I was fed up, trapped, revolted, despairing.
1974 brought a glimpse of hope but not long nor solid - and that's when I began going out. and never stopped since.
All this to repeat the - for me now. - evident: even if not totally conscious or thought about, I had been most of my life rebelling against conventions, against the obvious, against expectations.
Not in some kind of "need to be different" snobish attitude but mostly as a kind of (clicheed?!) cry for freedom after all those dark years.
How did your past rock experience influence your current view on music?: The pulse, the beat, the visceral drive, the burning down some conventions, the iconoclast attitude of some of it, the blood and guts. I was not into the Beatles, or the Moody Blues, or the Bee Gees - I was into the Stones, Greatful Dead, the Doors, Hendrix, Cream, Velvet Underground.
Working with artists in theatre, choreography, and other artistic forms interacting with musical expression, which one was your biggest challenge (composing for dance, theatre, movies or other)?: Definitely dance - where, even though some limitations still exist in some concept minds, music has some kind of openness and interactive role, while in theatre it's mostly to serve the action, as a décor, a background illustration or to change acts. Most of my cinema experiences were so traumatic that I don't even want to think about it. needless to say that, 99% of the times, it's to follow rules very similar to the ones previously mentioned for theatre!
Remember what I was saying about conventions before?!
Which project so far was your favorite?: Very difficult to pin point some but I fondly remember the Barberio Corsetti collaboration for the Kafka Trilogy at ACARTE / Gulbenkian back in 1988, one of the very few and rare theatre events where all the conventions and different roles were shifted. Where music (live) was at a par with all the other elements. Not illustrative, nor incidental. Back when Gulbenkian Foundation was still investing in new art and risk. Back when Drª Madalena Perdigão was still alive.
People are not aware that you are a talented caricaturist. Did you ever think that caricaturists might earn more than improvisers?: Let's say, first of all, that I don't consider myself as a caricaturist. I did comics - still some projects lying around. - it's a fact that I did some (very few) caricatures as well as cartoons and illustrations. I got some prizes for those but. mostly I like to draw and paint and (again.) improvise with no clues or ordered thoughts. A kind of therapy for the hours of travel and waiting and sound checking and waiting and meetings and waiting and performing and waiting.
Depending on specific realities, caricaturists might earn more than musicians / improvisors. Mostly Portugal is a kind of dead end where, again and again, these kinds of activities are looked down as minor, not serious enough, if not altogether childish.
It's a fact that some local (very few) caricaturists, cartoonists, illustrators earn more than I do as a musician. But still we cannot compare with some other countries where similar activities are sometimes pushed into stardom.
Lately, thanks to prices being dropped both in hardware and software, I began investing much more into video and computer graphics, using those skills on some recent interactive intermedia performances and developping projects for installations and similar activities.
But of course I'm too old to even be considered as part of the growing VJ world - not that I care much for the club scene. So that I'm pushing my 13 years old son into those techniques as well.
Any advice for youngsters willing to follow the path of improvised music?: To believe in what they are doing - if they don't do it 100% it's difficult to have others believing in it. To be true to oneself, to have wide open ears, to understand that one's freedom stops when the others' begins, that huge egos tend to behave badly with collective collaboration, to experiment a lot and trying to push boundaries, to surprise yourself.
To understand that all this is a gamble and that most of the time you're taking huge risks - with very little (if any) compensation besides helping to achieve something unique and unrepeatable.
To avoid showing off into collages of styles, techniques and verbosity.
To understand that improvisation is not a style but a technique. A difficult technique that you have to work all your life, always willing to learn, to humbly understand and to constantly listen to all sounds that surround you (even if you want to destroy the muzak speakers invading our collective space).

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