Oscar Carmona is a restless artist, trained as a musician and composer, interested in exploring beyond disciplinary boundaries and in connecting his practice with what happens to humanity in our time.
With a Master of Arts degree in Composition from the Universidad de Chile and completion of the prestigious professional program Cursus at IRCAM (Paris), Carmona has cultivated a diverse artistic career that spans a broad spectrum of creative endeavors. From experimental music theater pieces such as «Insomnia,» «Autómata,» and «Microteatro Psicopático,» to immersive audiovisual installations and collaborative performances like «Cubonicación» and «REC,» Carmona’s work traverses various mediums and forms of expression. His compositions range from works for ensembles and orchestra such as «En Dehors II» and «Nebula VII bis,» to ventures into non-idiomatic improvisation with projects like «3 Pianos» and «Silent Movies«. Additionally, he has explored the realms of solo piano music with or without electronic elements in pieces like «Mechanical Obsessions,» «Tríptico,» and «Art of Improvisation,» as well as creating music for dance and video art.
While music and sound serve as his primary mediums of expression, Carmona has also ventured into Live Cinema, performance art («Anamorfosis,» «Anatomía de lo invisible«), and literature.
As a composer, his music has been performed internationally in countries such as Spain, France, the Netherlands, Argentina, Slovenia, Chile, Japan, Croatia, the USA, Switzerland, Brazil, and Lithuania by esteemed ensembles, orchestras, and musicians including the Orchestre National de Lorraine, the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra, Irvine Arditti, Les Percussions de Strasbourg and Vertixe Sonora Ensemble, among others.
As a pianist, Carmona primarily focuses on interpreting his own compositions, both with and without electronic elements, and engages in improvisational duets and trios across classical, jazz, and experimental music genres.
As an interdisciplinary artist, Carmona’s current artistic inquiry revolves around the impact of technology on the construction of reality, examining its isolating, mechanizing, and dehumanizing effects on human connections while also exploring its potential for transformative change and questioning the boundaries of human existence.
His latest creations address various problems arising from our relationship with technologies and artificial intelligence (Automata, 2017; Artificial, 2022; Insomnia, 2023). His most recent creation, Insomnia, is a musical spectacle, a contemporary opera or music theater about our condition of being subjected to algorithms that lock us up in fictional worlds and keep us from any connection to reality. In this work, the composer created not only the music (acoustic and electronics), but also the texts and the interactive programming.
Over the past few years, mainly since de pandemic, Oscar has developed an exceptionally personal and distinctive musical language, rooted in the intersection of contemporary classical music and experimental electronics. His style elegantly and creatively blends influences from minimalist and experimental genres, presenting a stimulating proposal of unique authenticity.