CARROLL, Marie

Marie Eleanor Carroll is an American composer-improviser, electroacoustic musician, cellist and koto player. Her work brings together contemporary composition, free improvisation, acoustic instruments and electronic sound processing. She frequently works with analogue synthesizers, effects pedals and MAX/MSP, and draws inspiration from natural phenomena and ideas of transience, transformation and states of transition.

In 2019, Carroll composed and performed a score for solo cello and electronics for a production of Sophocles’ Electra. The production toured Boston, Berlin, London and Istanbul. In 2020, she co-founded a student record label through the New England Conservatory’s NOVA Fellowship and established Plugged In, the conservatory’s first festival devoted to electroacoustic music. She later participated in Longy’s Divergent Studio and the International Contemporary Ensemble’s Ensemble Evolution programme.
Carroll’s compositions include Equinox Flower for solo flute, Dust and Cloud Breaks for string quartet, Liminal and An Exercise in Change for electroacoustic media, There Is Stardust in Your Veins for koto, electronics and analogue synthesizer, 222 for koto, viola and electronics, In Flux for flute, clarinet, violin and cello, and Bone Moon for wind ensemble. In The Stone on Top of My Heart Is Shaking, she combines koto and electronics with double bass.
She is also the founder of Paulownia, an experimental zither trio. Her performances and collaborations place particular emphasis on improvisation, electronically transformed instrumental sound and the meeting of Western experimental music with the sonic possibilities of the Japanese koto