The lack of female instrumentalists in jazz has been a phenomenon that also occurred in Chile for a long time until soloists like saxophonist Amelia Wenborne and double bassist Alejandra Santa Cruz came along. The pianist Carmen Paz Kuki González was one of the first women to occupy positions in groups led by men. As an independent composer, her work has focused on the creation of chamber music, with certain approaches to the so-called “third current”, which links jazz with classical music. By the way, a large part of her music blog was written in Barcelona, where she recorded a trilogy of albums with music mainly for quartets.

She was a schoolgirl when she joined Mauricio Redolés’ band to replace Alejandra Jadresic on the keyboards for three years. Jazz occupied her first active years of the ’90s. In 1994, she sat down at the piano of the Los Andes Big Band, the orchestra that was perhaps the biggest training school in the swing language not only for González, but also for an important group of musicians during that decade.

In 1998, she settled in Barcelona and it was in that city where she not only reached maturity as a jazz pianist and side woman in European projects: she also consolidated the leadership of her own quartets and above all the composition of jazz pieces that can be found in her albums Petites històries (2005, with those “Ausencias” and “En secreto”, as well as “Blues al Matí” or “Bud”) and Sur (2009, with “Órbita Evans”, “Con-sonancias con-sonantes” or “Blanc i negre”).

Mixing tradition and vanguard with Latin American folk music, Carmen Paz and Ensemble Sudaca have had countless concerts and participations in different national festivals. The artist has recorded 3 albums, among them “Colores” which was nominated for the Pulsar Awards in the category of Best Jazz Artist in 2017.

(edition and adaptation of original biography published in musicapopular.cl)