The last forty years of European and American art, imprecisely defined in its limits, might provide a framework in which to set Carbonell’s work – a field defined by an approach to sound art that deviates from the aims and parameters of the 1960s avant-gardes, channelled by authors from a variety of scenes and generations that transfigured the universe of recent music. Although Carbonell belonged to this multi-generational, aesthetic setting, and despite being so close to other artists’ paths, such as Morton Feldman, Giacinto Scelsi, or Gérard Grisey, his compositional corpus reads as a unicum, both locally and within the Hispanic context, and left a profound mark on an entire generation.
Trained as a performer and composer in Barcelona, his apprenticeship with Joan Guinjoan, Corium Aharonian and Luigi Nono takes place with an in-depth study of historical sources and musical iconography, from pre-Hispanic peoples to the present, as well as music of oral tradition of the western Mediterranean area. Strongly involved in the libertarian struggles of the Spanish Transition, in a decisive vital turn he decided to settle in Majorca island in 1981, looking for a fertile desert, a point of inner seclusion, radically removed from the establishment: a place to be able to transcend and struggle, to work and explore in a unique quest from the precise awareness of the limits.
Carbonell created a singular, unique universe, identifiable and palpable as one listens. Erected upon consistent cruxes, his music reads as a means for contemplation, as a risk-filled journey to the landscapes of the soul, and as a central focus towards transcendence. Time suspended in organic sound, ever moving and ever-changing, weaves an austere fabric that oscillates between presence and absence – a gesture of sound, creating resounding spaces and connecting sites, times, beats, and traces of life.
