Mira Calix, adventurous electronic musician and audio artist, dies aged 51 | Songs

Mira Calix, the digital producer celebrated for her sophisticated, remarkably imaginative songs and audio artwork, has died aged 51.

Her label, Warp Records, introduced the information, and did not give a lead to of loss of life. A statement posted to social media stated in component: “Mira was not only a vastly proficient artist and composer, she was also a attractive, caring human who touched the life of absolutely everyone who had the honour of doing the job with her … she pushed the boundaries among electronic audio, classical music and artwork in a truly exceptional way.”

Born Chantal Passamonte in South Africa in 1970, Calix moved to London in 1991 to pursue a occupation in audio, initially working as a publicist for Warp together with marketing club nights and DJing, just before releasing her tunes with the label.

As with her labelmates, her operate realised the broad possibilities of digital creation in playful and adventurous audio that had roots in club society but spanned a remarkably broad stylistic vary, touching on ambient, sounds, neo-classical and additional.

She introduced tunes in the standard album structure, starting in 2000 with Just one on A person and most a short while ago with the sample-large Absent Origin, unveiled in 2021 and hailed as 1 of her biggest performs. But she also made tunes for installations these kinds of as My Magic formula Heart, staged at London’s Royal Pageant Hall in 2008, and the monolithic audio sculpture Almost nothing Is Established In Stone, designed 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 tunes from a stone, putting the music into rock and generating a new cultural attraction.” Other general public artworks appeared almost everywhere from a public bus in Nanjing, China, to the Tower of London.

She also collaborated with opera and theatre corporations, together with Opera North and the Royal Shakespeare Firm, composing scores for productions of Julius Caesar and Coriolanus for the latter. Her 2003 operate Nunu showcased the seem of are living insects on phase, though Inside of There Falls, a 2015 collaboration with Sydney Dance Firm, utilized hidden speakers worn by dancers in a cell, four-dimensional piece.

She the moment said of her boldly experimental however populist strategy, in response to aged listeners who liked one particular of her installations: “The whole piece was wholly abstract, but it built them really feel something. They did not say, ‘This is way too weird’ … People today like fantasy. We know this. But individuals also like fairytales. And they like abstractions. Art is not just for arseholes. Men and women can handle it.”

BBC 6 Songs DJ Mary Anne Hobbs was among the people paying out tribute to Calix, contacting her “such an ingenious, revolutionary artist … constantly questioning, constantly pushing.” The musician Gazelle Twin reported: “So so intestine-wrenching to listen to this news of these an incredible, inspirational and unanimously beloved creator.”

By Indana