Opening for Max Richter and premiering compositions: meet musician Carolina Cury

A charity concert commemorating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the London Coliseum. An experimental pop single that conjures a mysterious yet delicate sound-world. A recital featuring J.S. Bach’s Fugue in A-Flat Major for voice and live looping. A version of Bjork’s All is full of love. Performances in Teatro La Fenice, Carnegie Hall, Megaron Theatre, and Southwark Cathedral. Classical-contemporary pianist and singer-songwriter Carolina Cury has accomplished all this, and her musical journey continues to evolve every day. Having finished her master’s degree at Trinity Laban in 2020, Carolina completed the Artist Diploma programme under the guidance of Deniz Gelenbe. In 2021, she went on to win Trinity Laban’s Gold Medal Competition Prize, with judges remarking on “what a versatile and confident artist she is; how much originality she has in her voice, her musicianship”. A year later, she claimed first prize at the John Halford Competition for the performance of Sofia Gubaidulina’s Chaconne and for a new work for piano, voice and electronics, in collaboration with composer Jan Stevuliak. Carolina is also interested in performance art, exploring relations with dancers and choreographers, with projects such as Witching with Iris Athanassidi and Feel Soft with Franziska Boehm. We talked to the multi-talented artist about her recent projects and experience as a student and Junior Fellow at Trinity Laban.

In December 2023, you performed at the London Coliseum alongside Konstantinos Damianakis, opening for Max Richter with Free&Equal Vol. 2 – an album you recorded at Studio Richter Mahr. Tell us all about it.

Performing at the London Coliseum was an amazing experience. It was an honour to open for Max Richter – who discovered me through my Trinity Laban Gold Medal video – and to be part of a project that donated profits to Doctors Without Borders, a charity that I admire.

I shared this experience with my collaborator, Konstantinos Damianakis, a fantastic electronic musician. In the concert, we wore jewels that we made from emergency thermal blankets, a material often provided to refugees for warmth, when they arrive by boat on European coasts after their odysseys.

The repertoire consisted of six diverse pieces by composers KMRU, Rakhi Singh, Sarah Nicolls, Hinako Omori, Laura Cannell and Robin Richards, selected by BBC Radio 3’s Elizabeth Alker. Konstantinos and I arranged these pieces for piano, voice, and electronics, and recorded everything at Studio Richter Mahr last April. Spending several days immersed in the creative process while staying in a hut surrounded by nature added a serene and reflective quality to our work. We’re excited for the Free&Equal Vol. 2 album to be released at the end of 2024. I’m deeply grateful to Max Richter and Yulia Mahr for this opportunity.

You recently participated in this year’s New Lights Festival, where you curated a concert showcasing the results of workshops you led since January and premiered your new composition, Mater Larum. What was that like?

Starting in January, Konstantinos and I have led a series of workshops focusing initially on piano and electronics, eventually expanding to include other instruments and voice. We wanted to share some of the things we have learned over the past years through working together.

For the final concert, showcasing the outcome of these workshops, we curated Glitchandos (an assemblage of electroacoustic experiments) as part of the New Lights Festival. The concert featured a range of compositions by the students, highlighting their creativity and growth over the months. It was wonderful to see the students’ creativity as composers and performers, and our collaborative efforts come to life on stage.

Premiering my new composition, Mater Larum, was a particularly special moment. The “mother of the lares” is a minor Ancient Roman deity, with a very tragic story that made me think a lot about the treatment of women over several millennia of human history to the present day. I performed the piece alongside Yiolanda Loizou and Mahtab Ghamsari (voices) and Konstantinos Damianakis (electronics). Mater Larum will be featured on my next solo album, set to be released in 2025.

You also performed the single ‘Butterfly’ by hypereyess, your duo with Konstantinos Damianakis, at the New Lights Festival. What’s the story and inspiration behind this song?

Hypereyess, the electronic avant-garde duo I founded in 2020 with Konstantinos Damianakis, is a place of experimentation and freedom for me.

‘Butterfly’, performed at the New Lights Festival, is a song about love and vulnerability, about the idea that everything is fragile, constantly surrounded by danger and destruction, yet there are moments of beauty that somehow last forever. A repeated phrase begins in the middle of the piece and continues to the end: “Their beauty in the blink of an eye”. At the very end of this performance, we changed it into “The beauty of a free Palestine”. I was trying hard not to cry.

How did it feel to premiere ‘Paisajes Imaginados’ by Helen Ottaway at the Paisajes Piano Festival last year?

The Paisajes Piano Festival takes place in Hoyos, Extremadura in Spain: an enchanting rural landscape adorned with little natural pools. Helen wrote ‘Paisajes Imaginados’ specifically for me and for the unique context in which it was premiered. It’s inspired by the sound of cicadas at the festival venue and by a bell foundry in nearby Caceres. With the stage set outdoors, the performance was serenaded by the sounds of nature, giving the music a whole new dimension. It was an enchanting experience.

The piece was specifically written for this unique context, and performing it amid such a picturesque landscape truly brought it to life. The natural beauty of the surroundings enhanced the composition’s themes, creating a seamless blend of music and nature. The experience was deeply moving, and the landscape’s ethereal quality made the premiere feel incredibly special and intimate.

It was wonderful to collaborate with and get to know Helen. I’m grateful to Simone Tavoni, founder and artistic director, and Robert Buckley, trustee of the festival, for inviting me.

How has your Master’s and Artist Diploma at Trinity Laban helped you in your professional career?

Throughout my years at Trinity Laban, I have felt seen, trusted, and understood. I have been supported when I had some crazy ideas, such as presenting – for my Artist Diploma final exam – a one-hour new work, the Cosmicomic Suite, for piano, voice, electronics, and lights, curated by me and composed in collaboration with five dear composer friends.

Deniz Gelenbe, my piano teacher, has taught me so much in terms of technique, phrasing, and musicality, and also helped me feel confident about myself as an artist. Douglas Finch taught me improvisation and composition, shaking the musical world that I knew when I first arrived at Trinity Laban from Italy. The collective performance classes with Martino Tirimo have been very inspiring; it’s a pleasure to hear Martino talk about music. Sergio de Simone, former head of department, nominated me for the Gold Medal in 2021, which opened important opportunities. In 2023, I started a fellowship and led the aforementioned workshops for students, thanks to the generous support of Havilland Willshire, the former Director of Music.

I really want to thank all these mentors and many others at Trinity Laban who have believed in me.