Mira Calix

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Mira Calix
Birth nameChantal Passamonte
Born1970
OriginDurban, South Africa
GenresElectronic, classical
Years active1996–present
LabelsWarp
Websitewww.miracalix.com

Mira Calix (/ˈmɪrə ˈkeɪlɪks/ MIRR-ə KAY-liks;[1] is a British-based artist signed to Warp Records. Although her earlier music is almost exclusively electronic, since the 2000s she has incorporated writing for classical instrumentation into her musical works and expanded her practice to include multidisciplinary performance, film and multi- channel installation artworks. She has often stated that she considers sound a sculptural material.

Biography[]

Born in South Africa, Mira Calix (real name Chantal Passamonte) moved to London in 1991.[2] She began to work at a record shop and took up organizing parties and DJing.[2] She worked at the labels 4AD and Warp Records, where she held the position of a publicist from 1994 to 1997.[2]

Mira Calix's earlier music specialized in mixing her intimate vocals with jittering beats and experimental electronic textures and natural sounds.[3] In 2003 she collaborated with the London Sinfonietta for the first time. Nunu premiered at the Royal Festival Hall in London at a concert titled "Warp Works and 20th Century Masters".[4] The piece then toured internationally, performed by live insects, orchestra and Calix on electronics. Since then, Calix has incorporated orchestration and live classical instruments in her performances and recorded work. She has worked with visual artists and musicians from other disciplines to create music for dance, theatre, film, opera and installations. Mira has been commissioned to write new works for the London Sinfonietta, Bang on a Can, the Aldeburgh Festival, The Royal Shakespeare Company, Opera North, Streetwise Opera, the Manchester International Festival, National Arts Festival, Sydney Festival, Royal Northern Sinfonia, and more.

In 2004 she formed Alexander's Annexe – a band/ensemble with pianist Sarah Nicolls and sound designer David Sheppard. Their debut performance was at the Ravello Festival in Italy, followed by performances at the Aldeburgh Festival and Parco della Musica in Rome.[5] Alexander's Annexe released the album, Push Door To Exit, on Warp in November 2006.

Calix consistently titles her works and albums in lower case having rejected capitalisation during her introduction to the work of ee cummings as a child.

As a live performer and DJ, Mira Calix has supported and toured with Radiohead, Boards of Canada, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Autechre, and other artists. She has performed at Sonar, Glastonbury, All Tomorrow's Parties, Coachella,[6] Latitude and other concert halls and festivals.

Commissioned Work[]

Mira Calix has a long history of creating works presented as installation, film, theatre, dance as well as more traditional concerts or musical performance. She has a very collaborative practice, often working with those from other disciplines, in particular the sciences. These projects have been commissioned by some of the worlds leading institutions and are often presented as public artworks.

In early 2008 Mira was commissioned to set Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 to music. The project was curated by composer Gavin Bryars for The Royal Shakespeare Company. During 2007 there were two theatrical works; the first, an opera titled Elephant and Castle, for the Aldeburgh Festival, was a collaboration with composer Tansy Davies, directed by Tim Hopkins, Libretto by author Blake Morrison. The second, Dead Wedding premiered at the first Manchester International Festival. Extracts from these performances appear on the album The Elephant in the Room: 3 Commissions. The album also includes pieces from a video installation work titled Natures, a collaboration with video artist Quayola and cellist Oliver Coates.

In December 2008, My Secret Heart premièred at the Royal Festival Hall in London with 100 members of Streetwise Opera. The installation piece, inspired by Gregorio Allegri's 17th century choral work Miserere, is a collaboration with British video artists Flat-E. In December 2009, Mira Calix won a British Composer Award, for My Secret Heart.[7] It was described by the judges as "transformational, capturing raw humanity and giving voice to the disenfranchised in a sound-world which is original, absorbing and unsettling". My Secret Heart also won a Royal Philharmonic Society Award in 2009 and was nominated for a National Lottery Arts Award in 2010. The installation toured in other countries too, both with The Creators Project and The British Council. In February 2009, she collaborated with United Visual Artists on Chorus for the opening of the Howard Assembly Rooms in Leeds. The installation piece, which was also exhibited at Durham Cathedral and The Wapping Project won an Award of Distinction in the Interactive Category at Prix Ars Electronica in 2010. Calix has continued to work with UVA, most recently in 2019 for an installation at 180 The Strand.

In 2009, she contributed a cover of a Boards of Canada song; In A Beautiful Place Out in the Country, featuring cellist Oliver Coates to the Warp20 compilation. Later in the year she worked with Malcolm Middleton of Arab Strap on a session for BBC Radio 3's Late Junction.

In 2010, Calix worked with poet Alice Oswald on another commission for Opera North and collaborated for the first time with the ensemble Bang on a Can. Mira Calix and the ensemble premiered Spring Falls Back at the World Financial Center Winter Garden in New York. Mira also spent the year working on a R&D project to develop her skills in orchestration with composers Tansy Davies and Larry Goves. Exchange and Return an 18-month-long collaborative project was awarded a Grant for the Arts by Arts Council England.

In 2011, Mira wrote a choral score for Fables – A Film Opera working once more with visual artists Flat-e and Streetwise Opera. The film soundtrack, based on the fable of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" was nominated for a British Composers Award that year.[8]

In 2012, Calix created an interactive site specific sound sculpture for the cultural Olympiad. Nothing Is Set In Stone was presented by the Mayor Of London and Oxford Contemporary Music in partnership with the Natural History Museum and was situated at Fairlop Waters. The sonic aspects of this multichannel work combined her score for a South African choir and field recordings.

In 2013, Calix collaborated with United Visual Artists to create a permanent sound and light installation in the city of Bath, Uk by the Two Tunnels Group.

In 2015, Calix created a large scale mixed media installation, Inside There Falls – mixed media installation at Carriageworks, during the Sydney Festival. Her multi-sensory artwork consisted of 180 channel orchestral score and spoken word diffused through custom made speakers incorporated into 1.5km of hand crushed paper. Calix invited Rafael Bonachela, choreographer and director of the Sydney Dance Company to collaborate with her. Dancers wore hidden speakers and performed intermittently throughout the durational installation work. The audience was invited to immerse themselves in the work and don paper suits. It was on this project that Calix initiated her practice of creating what she termed ‘human diffusion’ incorporating small speakers into costumes of performers to create sound installations that are mobile.

In 2016, Calix presented Moving Museum35 a multichannel mixed media sound artwork installed in a commuter bus in Nanjing, China. The installation ran for three months and was the first public artwork presented in the city, was supported by the British Council, JCDecaux, Amnua Museum of Contemporary Art and Nanjing University of The Arts as part of UKinChina2015.

In 2017, Mira wrote the scores for two productions in the Royal Shakespeare Companies Rome Season directed by Angus Jackson. Julius Caesar for brass and electronics and Coriolanus for string quartet and soprano. The plays ran for the entire year between the RSC theatre in Stratford-Upon Avon and the Barbican in London.

In 2018, Calix created viccissitude of the divided and united a score for choir presented as a large scale multichannel sound and light installation in collaboration with Tom Piper. The work Beyond the Deepening Shadow was commissioned by Historic Palaces London and presented at the Tower of London, to mark the centenary of the end of the Great War. She chose to use the text of the remarkable but forgotten poet Mary Borden to connect the geopolitical turbulence of that period and the divisiveness of the current climate.

In 2019, Mira presented a multidisciplinary performance and installation artwork at Bozar in Brussels in response to artist Michelangelo Pistoletto Third Paradise project.

In 2020, Calix created a new digital-instrument that re-voices John Cage’s music in response to the percussiveness of Cage’s sounds, extending the scope of the Sonatas using her own, idiomatic sound-world, and making connections between Cage’s music and contemporary, electronics. She brings body into the work, transcribing and reciting recordings of Cage’s life- partner, Merce Cunningham, leading dance rehearsals for the release and project title John Cage remixed.

In 2021, Calix exhibited 16 weeks - an audio visual artwork part of a series of works based on the signification of data, at Mimosa House, London.

Recording history[]

Mira Calix's debut album, One on One, was released by Warp on 6 March 2000. Followed by another studio album, Skimskitta in 2003 and Eyes Set Against the Sun[9] in 2007. Two albums of commissioned works: 3 Commissions (2004) and The Elephant In The Room: 3 Commissions (2008) were also released on Warp Records. Lost Foundling, a collaboration with Mark Clifford of the band Seefeel, was released on Aperture Records in 2010. Her Utopia EP, was released on Warp Records in 2019. The record shares it’s title with the short film written and directed by Adam Thirlwell for which she wrote the original score. There have also been numerous remixes and contributions to compilations and two installation related releases on the The Vinyl Factory. Her original scores for Julius Caesar and Coriolanus are available through the Royal Shakespeare Company imprint. Calix runs a bespoke Calix Portal through Bleep records on which many of her classical works can be found.

Discography[]

Albums[]

EPs and singles[]

Soundtracks[]

  • Transparent Roads (2008)
  • Onibus (2009)
  • Khala – Shot List (2009)
  • The Orestei – Directed by Adele Thomas for Shakespeare's Globe (2017)

Awards[]

  • Royal Philharmonic Society Award – My Secret Heart – winner (2009)
  • British Composers Award – My Secret Heart – winner – Community Category (2009)
  • Rencontres Audiovisuelles – Strata No. 2 – Best Original Soundtrack – winner (2010)
  • Grant for the Arts – the Arts Council of England/Escalator Music (2010)
  • National Lottery Arts Award – My Secret Heart – nominee (2010)
  • Award of Distinction – Prix Ars Electronica – Chorus with United Visual Artists (2010)
  • British Composers Award – Fables – A Film Opera – nominee – Outreach Category (2011)
  • Lovie Award - Ode To The Future - Gold & People's Award (Internet Video: Music & Entertainment, 2019)
  • London International Awards: Finalist (Music & Sound: Music Original – Score) - Ode To the Future (2019)
  • Golden Award of Montreux: Gold Medal (Music) Ode to the Future

References[]

  1. ^ "The sun is the queen of torches: Mira Calix at TEDxAlbertopolisSalon". www.youtube.com. Retrieved 4 October 2020.
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b c Rodgers, Tara (2 March 2010). Pink Noises: Women on Electronic Music and Sound. ISBN 978-0822394150. Chantal Passamonte was born in South Africa and moved to London in 1991. [...] she landed a job at a record shop and began organizing parties and DJing; she soon found work at the labels 4AD and Warp Records, where she was a publicist from 1994 to 1997.
  3. ^ "Mira Calix | The Creators Project". The Creators Project. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 25 October 2015.
  4. ^ "indielondon.co.uk - music - Warp Works and 20th Century Masters". www.indielondon.co.uk. Retrieved 25 October 2015.
  5. ^ CTM, club transmediale. "CTM Festival: 1". archive.ctm-festival.de. Retrieved 25 October 2015.
  6. ^ "WARP | News | Mira Calix and UVA Transform the Main Stage at Coachella". WARP | News | Mira Calix and UVA Transform the Main Stage at Coachella. Retrieved 25 October 2015.
  7. ^ Olszanowski, Magdalena (2012). "What to Ask Women Composers: Feminist Fieldwork in Electronic Dance Music". Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music: 3–26. Retrieved 24 October 2015.
  8. ^ "Mira Calix nominated for British Composer Award - The Wire". www.thewire.co.uk. Retrieved 25 October 2015.
  9. ^ Mira Calix, Eyes Set Against the Sun, The Guardian. Accessed 14 May 2014.

External links[]

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