Mira Calix, adventurous electronic musician and sound artist, dies aged 51 | Audio
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Mira Calix, the electronic producer celebrated for her intricate, highly imaginative songs and audio art, has died aged 51.
Her label, Warp Data, announced the news, and did not give a induce of death. A assertion posted to social media explained in element: “Mira was not only a vastly talented artist and composer, she was also a beautiful, caring human who touched the life of all people who had the honour of doing the job with her … she pushed the boundaries between electronic new music, classical audio and artwork in a truly one of a kind way.”
Born Chantal Passamonte in South Africa in 1970, Calix moved to London in 1991 to go after a vocation in songs, first functioning as a publicist for Warp together with promoting club nights and DJing, just before releasing her new music with the label.
As with her labelmates, her operate realised the broad options of electronic output in playful and adventurous songs that experienced roots in club lifestyle but spanned a remarkably broad stylistic array, touching on ambient, sound, neo-classical and a lot more.
She launched music in the standard album structure, commencing in 2000 with Just one on A single and most not long ago with the sample-heavy Absent Origin, released in 2021 and hailed as just one of her best operates. But she also manufactured tunes for installations these as My Solution Coronary heart, staged at London’s Royal Festival Hall in 2008, and the monolithic audio sculpture Very little Is Set In Stone, developed for the Cultural Olympiad together with the London 2012 Olympics, with Boris Johnson, then London mayor, stating: “Mira Calix has managed to wrest not blood, but new music from a stone, putting the tunes into rock and generating a new cultural attraction.” Other community artworks appeared just about everywhere from a community bus in Nanjing, China, to the Tower of London.
She also collaborated with opera and theatre providers, which include Opera North and the Royal Shakespeare Company, creating scores for productions of Julius Caesar and Coriolanus for the latter. Her 2003 do the job Nunu featured the audio of are living insects on stage, while Inside There Falls, a 2015 collaboration with Sydney Dance Corporation, utilized concealed speakers worn by dancers in a mobile, four-dimensional piece.
She the moment stated of her boldly experimental however populist technique, in reaction to aged listeners who beloved one particular of her installations: “The full piece was totally summary, but it made them sense something. They did not say, ‘This is as well weird’ … Individuals like fantasy. We know this. But people also like fairytales. And they like abstractions. Art is not just for arseholes. Folks can take care of it.”
BBC 6 Songs DJ Mary Anne Hobbs was between these spending tribute to Calix, calling her “such an ingenious, revolutionary artist … always questioning, usually pushing.” The musician Gazelle Twin mentioned: “So so intestine-wrenching to hear this news of these kinds of an wonderful, inspirational and unanimously beloved creator.”
