Carmen Alfaro méndez

Aka Löwenthal | Costarrican percussionist and composer

Curriculum Vitae

loewenthal.carmen@gmail.com

+506 87518738

First ever Costarrican percussionist to obtain her masters degree in Europe. Alumnus of the State University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart, studying under internationally acclaimed soloist Marta Klimasara’s tutelage. Specialised in soloist interpretation of the percussive arts with the distinguished professor Dr. Alexandr Skliutovsky in Costa Rica.

Winner of the 2011 Carnegie Hall International American Talent Competition in New York, the Igor Lesnik prize and Originality Prize for interpretation at the 2017 Universal Marimba Competition, Belgium, and the Adkins Chiti Foundation’s Donne in Musica international composing competition in 2018, Rome, Italy. Likewise winner of the National Music Institute’s Medalla de Oro in the year 2000 as well as the National Symphony Orchestra’s 2001 Jovenes Solistas competition. 

Carmen is internationally known for her vast curriculum in diverse artistic and musical subjects, which include soloist, chamber and orchestral interpretation, as well as musical and percussive pedagogy.

She initiated her initial professional studies at the Costa Rica’s National Institute of Music  with classical percussion, along with latin percussion and drums at the National University of Costa Rica. Carmen subsequently transferred to the Swiss Conservatoire of Music La Chaux de Fonds.

In 2005, through an international selection of students, and with the aid of the KAAD, Carmen received a scholarship that would send her to Germany, where she would complete her masters degree both in orchestral percussion and in the pedagogy of percussion.

Carmen has partaken in numerous international festivals, e.g. Interlochen Arts Camp, U.S.A, 2000; The International Federation of the Eurochestries, Spain, 2000; Americarts Festival, U.S.A, 2001; Les Flâneries Musicaux y Les Jardins Musicaux, Switzerland, 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004; Percupassion Festival, France, 2004; NJZ and the marimba masters, Germany, 2004; Percussion Festival, Uhingen, Germany, 2004; Percumania Festival, Ribaroja del Turia, Spain, 2006; Days of Percussion Festival, Fermo, Italy, 2006; and the international “Artisti in Dialogo”, Rome, Italy, 2009.

She has been invited to various international art festivals both as a performer and as an educator, some of those festivals include the International Musical Education Festival in Monterrey, Mexico, 2011; the International Genfest “Youth for a United World” Gathering in Budapest, Hungary, 2012; the Latinamerican FLADEM Gathering, Costa Rica, 2014; the Costa Rican Piano Festival  in 2016; the Eterna Primavera Festival, Guatemala; the international percussion festival, Puerto Rico; the international women in music festival “FIMA”, Mexico; The International Costarrican Marimba Competition; ad the Percussion Ensemble Week, Croatia, 2018.

While completing her studies in Switzerland, Carmen was part of several musical ensembles such as the Nouvel Ensemble Contemporain “NEC” and the Neuchatel Symphony Orchestra from 2001 to 2005. In her time there, Carmen also obtained the position of conductor of the “Les Armourins” Fanfare, where she began composing her own music.

She is the founder and director of the Repercusiones percussion festival in 2007 and 2009, Costa Rica, as well as the MUENPE “Mujeres en Percusion” Festival (2018 and 2019) and percussion ensemble. 

Carmen has been invited on various occasions to play with the Costa Rican National Symphony Orchestra as timpanist and percussionist.

Has been a professor of percussion at the National University of Costa Rica’s Music Department since 2007 as well as at the Costarrican National Music Institute  since May, 2018 till December 2020. She is also the director of the ACUA Music Academy’s percussion and drums department.

Her students have won international competitions in places such as the Carnegie Hall, New York, U.S.A., along with several others in Costa Rica.

Carmen is currently one of the most active percussionists from her generation. She is known to promote and bring to the public soloist and chamber percussion repertoire by costarrican and latinamerican composers. In the year 2011, the university of Nuevo Leon, Mexico, invited Carmen to play as a soloist with the university’s orchestra, debuting Costarrican composer Mario Alfagüell’s Opus. 239 for Marimba, piano, and orchestra. Later in 2016, Carmen played during another one of Alfagüell’s composition debuts, playing his new concerto for marimba and orchestra, opus. 347, alongside the Humanidades Orchestra from the University of Costa Rica.

She has also been invited to play in marimba as a soloist for the TEDx Pura Vida event, along with the first Women in Music symposium that took place in San Jose Costa Rica, here she performed a series of original compositions for not only marimba, but also for other percussion instruments.

Carmen is presently involved in an assortment of musical projects: Dúo Teclados- marimba and piano- , Dúo Nebú -marimba and piano- ,Porschehaus band -alternative electronic ensemble- , an drummer in the band Nou Red alongside Costarrican artist Valeria Atkeys. Her soloist marimba album is currently in the works. Concerning her career in visual arts, her piece Liberatio was selected to be presented in See.me art exhibition, New York, U.S.A., 2019.