Primary Instrument: Guitar
Eric Carbonara is a Philadelphia based guitarist, whose search for raw aural expression has led him far and wide--from noise & electro-acoustic music to taking deep root in the bounty of the wooden guitar.
Carbonara’s playing draws on the rich musical styles from Andalusian Roma-Flamenco to Hindustani & North African folk to form a kind of exalted pidgin style of playing that covers a wide emotional terrain from meditative calm to restless unease. He has developed a unique idiom of gypsy music for non-existent cultures by combining rogue self-taught, free-form classical and flamenco techniques with those learned from formal studies in India.
His live solo performances range from contemplative acoustic meditations to aggressively loud electric sets; both encompassing Carbonara’s ability to draw the listener in to his world, where his lyrical playing doesn’t just entertain but triggers a myriad of emotional responses.
Carbonara has toured extensively throughout the United States and Europe promoting his releases on Locust Music, Majumua Music and New American Folk Hero as well as various self-releases for solo guitar and solo upright-chaturangui music.
The Paradise Abyss is Eric Carbonara’s newest album. Told in the form of solo instrumental guitar, Carbonara’s lyrical playing offers the listener seven personal autobiographical narratives. Written over two years on a friction peg flamenco guitar, Carbonara employs techniques borrowed from Andalusian Romany, Hindustani, North African, and Western Classical guitar music to carefully shape his thematic song poems.
“Carbonara has the songwriting and arranging chops to back up his rich, resonant sound. His tunes run from the unabashedly beautiful and mournful to the ecstatic and knotty….he knits the major to the minor, the modern to the ancient, and makes it seem absolutely natural…” --Matthew Wuethrich, Dusted Magazine
“His playing, though improvisational in nature, is held together by an underlying sense of structure and expert knowledge of the influences he references while showing strict allegiance to none. [He] displays quite a mastery over his instrument” --Cory Card, Foxy Digitalis
“His compositions ruminate rather than dominate…and flourish with patience” --Bill Meyer, Signal To Noise
“He nonchalantly embellishes the gorgeous, gently propulsive melody with epigrammatic curlicues and zigzags, as though he were stringing pearls, and on the more vigorous pieces he can navigate a percussive tangle of high velocity phrases to find a masterfully graceful denouement.” --Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader
