CALIX, Mira

Mira Calix was the artistic name of Chantal Passamonte, a South African-born, UK-based composer, producer, sound artist and multidisciplinary artist. She became known through Warp Records, where she was one of the label’s first female artists, and developed a highly individual language that connected experimental electronic music with contemporary classical writing, installation, sculpture, theatre, film and performance.

Her early work was rooted in electronic sound, but her practice gradually expanded far beyond the album format. Calix treated sound as a physical and sculptural material, creating works in which music interacted with space, movement, objects, light and the body. She worked with classical ensembles, found sounds, field recordings and unusual sound sources, including amplified insects, and often blurred the boundaries between concert music, sound art and visual installation.
Her works and commissions included projects for the London Sinfonietta, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Opera North, the Royal Festival Hall, the Cultural Olympiad for the London 2012 Olympics, the Barbican, Lincoln Center, Manchester International Festival and other major international institutions. Important works include Nunu, My Secret Heart, Nothing Is Set in Stone, Inside There Falls, Chorus, and the album absent origin. Mira Calix remains an important figure in experimental music and contemporary sound art, remembered for expanding what composition could mean in the twenty-first century.