Singing empowers you.
Singing together
transforms you.

✕ close

Carolina Araoz.

If you want to know more.

Lima, 1979.

Carolina grew up in a Lima where music didn't exist in her social world — not because there wasn't talent, but because the circles she was born into simply didn't make space for it. Her first contact came through church, through composing alone in her room, through her grandmother's guitar that she taught herself to play at 12. Composing was how she survived the world.

At 16, she sang in her school choir and discovered something she couldn't name yet. When she graduated, the choir was gone. So she built one herself.

She co-founded Coro Arpegio with Mónica Gastelumendi — a women's vocal ensemble that would go on to win a Gold Record, perform at the Presidency of Peru, and tour Washington D.C. and New York. Thirty years later, Coro Arpegio is still active.

At 17, she placed an ad in a Lima newspaper looking for musicians. Musicians arrived from every corner of the city — from neighborhoods and backgrounds she had never encountered. The best saxophonist was the son of her aunt's housekeeper. In that room, her understanding of the world shifted permanently. She stopped seeing through her eyes. She started listening.

That same year she founded Jazz Jaus — a youth music project bringing together young musicians from across Lima, united by music as a message of integration. She was 17.

From 1997 to 2001 she studied psychology at university in Lima — while running Jazz Jaus, directing Coro Arpegio, and teaching. In 2001 she picked up the saxophone for the first time.

Less than a year later, she left for the University of North Texas (UNT, USA). People told her she was crazy. She arrived with less than a year of saxophone. She practiced eight hours a day. There were days her mouth bled. More than once, a professor told her: "Carolina, go back to psychology. Go back to Peru."

She didn't.

"Every time they told me to go back, I practiced more."

She completed the degree in three years. From Texas she went to New York — two more years immersed in the city's musical world.

Then came Susana Baca — three Grammy Latinos, the defining voice of Afro-Peruvian music. Under her mentorship, Carolina immersed herself in the music of Peru's central coast and the Valle del Mantaro. She worked with Baca for nine years. She also worked with the BID and the Prince Claus Fund, bringing music to nearly 800 children across four provinces of Peru.

In 2014 she released Bloom — what began as an instrumental record became songs. Her essence in soul.

In 2019 she completed her Master's degree at Berklee College of Music and performed at BBC London, the Valencia Jazz Festival and EXIB Festival in Portugal. She moved to Madrid. She built Casa Corah.

And then, after eight years away from directing, she came back. Not because she had to. Because she was finally ready.

AIRA is what happens when 30 years of music, psychology, community and craft come together in one intimate room.

Three things Carolina believes.

Timeline.