Concert pianist and university professor, Ingrid Carbone talks about her approach to musical interpretation, research and cultural dissemination through her unique “concert-conversations”, Ingrid Carbone has been interviewed by Leonardo Follieri on JamTV Magazine. You can read the full interview (in italian) here>>

Here’s a translated excerpt.

Ingrid Carbone’s career spans music, scientific research, and cultural dissemination. A concert pianist with an international career, she has performed in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East and has recorded for the Japanese label Da Vinci Publishing, garnering recognition and attention from international critics.

Alongside her artistic career, she teaches Mathematical Analysis at the University of Calabria, where she also conducts research and publishes in international journals. This dual training is reflected in her approach to music, combining analytical rigor and expressive sensitivity, developed through studies with prestigious teachers and at international academies.

Musical dissemination plays a central role in her work, particularly through “concert-conversations”: meetings in which performances are intertwined with the narration and analysis of pieces. Over the years, she has collaborated with schools, universities, conservatories, and cultural institutions in Italy and abroad. In 2025, she gave masterclasses and a concert dedicated to Italian composers in Amman, Jordan.

Music and mathematics: on the one hand, you think of something artistic, on the other, something more rigorous, but that’s not the case, or not only that, right?

Exactly. In my experience, music and mathematics are not opposed: music certainly has an artistic side, but it conceals rigorous structures that, if explained well, aren’t perceived as cold calculations. When I work on complex transcriptions or complex pieces, the different musical lines intertwine in ways that require attention and coordination, training the mind without making it think of formulas. For the listener, the result remains musical and immediate: the internal logic of the piece is present, but perceived naturally, as part of the aesthetic experience.

Do you also discuss these issues at university as a professor?

Yes, in part. In my university seminars and musicology meetings, I demonstrate the same type of analysis, but with greater attention to transcription and the internal structure of the pieces. For example, I presented at the University of Siena and the University of Mexico a score of Liszt’s transcription of Schubert’s Ave Maria, which has three staves with notes arranged in complex time signatures: twelve, four, six, and twenty-four bars. Explaining this without making it sound like a mathematical exercise takes time and attention, but it’s precisely what allows us to understand the underlying musical mechanism.

The “Concert-Conversations” are your main live events. What kind of audience comes to listen to you? Are they mainly mathematics or music scholars, or are there also general curious people?

The audience is very diverse. There are students, musicologists, mathematics scholars, but also simply curious people attracted by the idea of ​​understanding music “from the inside.” Generally, no special skills are required: the explanation is designed to convey the logic of music and polyphonic details, such as rhythmic interlocking, in an accessible way. Listeners appreciate the opportunity to understand what happens in the pianist’s hands or how a complex piece is interpreted coherently.