ZARM ENSEMBLE is an award-winning string quartet started by Carlos "Zíngaro” (violin), David Magalhães Alves (Violin), Ulrich Mitzlaff (Cello) and Alvaro Rosso (Double bass).
From an almost compulsive fascination with sound, the overwhelming resonance of large acoustic spaces, and the subtleties of false emptiness. We are left with the collective exploration of strings and wood, in constant vibrations within their reflected silences.
A different string quartet, which sacralizes the profane. Or profanes the sacred.
Initially founded as StringChamberPot, later renamed ZARM Ensemble, the Lisbon based quartet has performed throughout Portugal, in such venues as Galeria Monumental, Lisboa (2018); the MIA festival, Atouguia da Baleia (2019); Faroeste EMCII, Caldas da Rainha (2021); Culturgest - Caixa Geral de Depósitos, Lisboa (2022); Ciclo de Polinização, Paredes de Coura (2022), and Casa do Comum, Lisboa (2024)...
Most recently the Ensemble has colaborated with Reinhold Friedl in 2024 and with the Catalan Duo "DUOT" in 2021, performing at Grémio Caldense in Caldas da Rainha, Portugal, with the corresponding recordings registered in the Album "Duot with Strings", published by Fundacja Słuchaj.
In 2021 the quartet was awarded the Renova Art Commissions (RAC), by being a part of the “Renova” project led by Musician Carlos Zíngaro and acclaimed Choreographer Paula Pinto, curated by Maestro Martim Sousa Tavares, which premiered in LUX-Frágil, Lisbon in 2022, and was broadcast in RTP2 national television network.
You can listen to some of our work here:
Our latest colaboration with DUOT, the catalan duo with Albert Cirera and Ramon Prats can be heard in the album Duot with strings, published by Fundacja Słuchaj:
Some of the things critics have said about our performances and published work:
- "Cleanly connected in all facets of a performance,the established quartet’s balance meant that sonorous double bass notes were as prominent throughout as trebly sweeps from the others.
By midpoint, blazing staccato upsurges were bursting from “Zíngaro”’s and Mitzlaff’s string sets, while Rosso prepared his strings with clothespins placed just above the bridge to create thumping strokes that were then decorated with rococo pulses from the violins.
Later with Alves’ output more tonal and “Zingaro”’s more dissonant, the two fiddlers tossed the theme back and forth without losing its lilt, with all four contributing to a savory pitch-sliding finale".
KEN WAXMAN - (2019 - Jazz World)
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- "In a careful interaction with the acoustics of the space,the string quartet transported the legacy of chamber music into a territory without linguistic constraints, in a strange yet beautiful equation between the secular and the sacred.
With a music composed of spaces, resonances, economy of notes, and that sense of collective that allows the expression of individualities, the group amazed the audience on the late afternoon of June 1st."
RUI EDUARDO PAES - (2019 - Jazz.Pt)"
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- "Not a standard “with strings” session, instead DUOT and the Zam Ensemble stay away from the expected idea of softening soloists improvisations with string harmonies. Instead DUOT, which consists of Catalan players tenor/soprano saxophonist Albert Cirera and drummer Ramon Prats, institute a more original paradigm; rather than accompanying Cirera and Prats, the string players are fully interactive participants.
In this case however instituting the program is less difficult than it would seem. That’s because the Lisbon-based ensemble consists of string players fully cognizant with creative music’s demands. It’s members – violinists Carlos Zingaro and David Alves, cellist Ulrich Mitzlaf and bassist Alvaro Rosso – have probably been part of as many improv situations as the duo. There are points in fact, as on “Crunchy Trails” where the jagged and squeezed stops from the higher pitched fiddles and the sul taso pulses and bow digs from the lower-pitched strings operate at such a level of intensity that Cirera and Prats’ contribution are almost lost in the resulting sound articulation.
(...)
Positing an uncommon and cooperative use of a string quartet in an improvised setting with reeds and percussion the disc should generate widespread interest."
KEN WAXMAN - (2024 - Jazz World)
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- "The sixth album of DUOT is a meeting with the Portuguese groundbreaking string quartet ZARM Ensemble.
(...).
The six pieces of DUOT with Strings stress the immediate and adventurous dynamics as well as the common language of DUOT and the ZARM ensemble. The music sounds as if made by a highly empathic, brotherly union, and suggests unpredictable urgent, but poetic, nuanced and layered dramatic narratives.
It clearly follows the ethos of ZARM Ensemble that sacralizes the profane or profane the sacred. This kind of bold, powerful and uncompromising dynamics highlights even the slow-burning and more subtle pieces of this meeting like «Sky Skating» and «Roaring Jellyfish», but even these pieces affirm that DUOT and ZARM Ensemble can not but gravitate eventually into ecstatic and wild dynamics.
It ends in an even wilder, raw and chaotic mode with «Crumbled Time» that already justifies a second meeting of DUOT and ZARM Ensemble.
EYAL HAREUVENI - (2024 - SALT PEANUTS*)
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For inquiries, please reach out to us at zarmensemble (at) gmail.com
Download our presentation document here:
