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Karen Schlimp
Karen Schlimp teaches improvisation at Mozarteum University Salzburg. Alongside her teaching, she is an internationally active pianist, improviser and performance artist whose work brings together music, visual arts, dance and film. Her artistic practice spans concert performance, interdisciplinary collaborations and innovative projects in public space.
Schlimp studied piano pedagogy in Vienna, piano performance in London and improvisation in Leipzig, and has pursued further training in TaKeTiNa rhythm pedagogy, Gestalt pedagogy, composition, bodywork, communication and coaching. She has performed in Austria, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Japan and India, and has developed longstanding collaborations with composers and artists working in painting, dance and video art.
Her performance projects include pianomobile and Bahno-pianomobile, which bring live music into public spaces through a bicycle-powered mobile piano. For more than a decade, she has specialised in live improvisation for silent films, creating original soundtracks for more than 30 productions. She also leads workshops on improvisation, the visual arts and music constellations for schools and adult education.
In addition to her work at the Mozarteum, Schlimp teaches Ensemble Music Communication at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna and has taught at the Anton Bruckner Private University since 1996, where she qualified as a professor of improvisation in 2009.