Michelle Agnes Magalhaes is a French-Brazilian composer, improviser, and researcher. Her work deeply reflects her multicultural heritage. Born in Campo Grande, Brazil, she carries within her artistic vision a profound reverence for Indigenous Peoples' wisdom, embracing diverse worldviews in her artistic practice. This vision manifests in her quest for the essential aspects of a fundamental musical experience. Her musical language moves beyond stylistic boundaries, seeking to express a universal cognitive space.
Her writing incorporates sonic, timbral, and spatial dimensions, as well as playful elements that invite new forms of listening and musical interaction. Her work, which encompasses instrumental, orchestral, vocal, chamber, and electronic music, emphasizes the relational aspects of musical experience and its continuity with alive processes.
Her formative encounter with pedagogue and composer H. J. Koellreutter (1915, Freiburg - 2005, São Paulo) during her adolescence was pivotal. Koellreutter's teaching methods challenged traditional hierarchies and emphasized the importance of constant inquiry. His critique of Western-centric thinking and emphasis on holistic understanding deeply influenced her artistic development. With him, she began her foundational studies in composition, harmony, and analysis.
She obtained her bachelor's and master's degrees in composition from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), studying under distinguished composers Almeida Prado and José Eduardo Mannis. After Livio Tragtenberg's lessons at the same university, her compositional activity became a dance between precision, openness, and experimentation.
She holds a doctorate in Music from the University of São Paulo (USP), with a thesis proposing an interpretation of the compositional aspects of Luigi Nono's late works.
She completed her formation with Chaya Czernowin during her Harvard University residency (2018) and with Salvatore Sciarrino (2016) at both the Conservatory of Latina and the Accademia Chigiana in Italy. These interactions deepened her compositional approach, focusing on perceptual aspects and metaphorical musical imagery, while exploring synaesthetic unfoldings.
Artistic Research and Residencies
Between 2013 and 2017, she worked as researcher at IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique) in Paris, where she was also awarded an artistic research residency fellowship (2018), and invited composer position (2019). During this period, she collaborated closely with the Sound, Music, and Movement Interaction team (ISMM) and his director of Frédéric Bevilacqua. Together they conceived Constella(c)tions, a project about interactive musical forms based on recombination processes controlled by motion capture. They also developed an interactive structure S-cordatura that works as a spatial framework, drawing plans in space and sonifying them. This work was originally developed for the IRCAM Manifeste Festival and CND Camping in a musical and choreographic context in collaboration with Hervé Robbe.
As a Musical Composition Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute of Harvard University (2017-2018), she spent a year in residence at the university engaging in dialogues with the scientific community. This stay culminated in the composition of the chamber music cycle Herbarium, premiered by the Talea Ensemble. This cycle for piano, percussion, double bass, and electronics rethinks the imagery surrounding the piano and botanical activity as clichés of femininity in the late 19th century, seeking a subversive path through Emily Dickinson's poetry.
Her work Mobile (2012) represents a synthesis of her experience as a composer and improviser. Acclaimed as a work that renewed writing for the instrument, the interest of the piece goes beyond innovations in instrument preparation. According to Pascale Critton:
“The listener experiences an internal transformation, a ‘molting’ that starts from distinct, identifiable elements and projects them towards a multiplying expansion: an exit towards the cosmos”.
As a pianist and improviser, her trajectory includes significant collaborations with artists such as Luca Piovesan in their duo RAI(Z)E, Thomas Rohrer, Panda Gianfratti, and Abaetetuba ensemble. She has also recorded three albums in duo with bassist Célio Barros.
As a composer, she has received international recognition through grants, residencies, and commissions from prestigious institutions including Siemens Foundation, UNESCO-Ashberg, IRCAM, FAPESP, Venice Biennale, Camargo Foundation, Institut Français, EMPAC, Villa Sträuli, Royaumont Abbey, Diaphonique, IMPULS Neue Musik, European Commission, Contemporary Music Biennial Rio, FUNARTE, STARTS, CAPES, and the Ministries of Culture of Brazil, France, and Norway.
Her work has been performed by renowned ensembles, orchestras, and artists in the Americas and Europe. Among the contemporary ensembles are L'Itinéraire, Soundinitiative, 2e2M, Lovemusic, Talea Ensemble, Accroche Note, Multilatéral, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Abstraït, Percorso Ensemble, Quarteto Prometeo, Zaide Quartet, Promenade Sauvage, Der/Gelbe/Klang, Choeur en Scène, Vertixe Sonora, TaG Neue Musik, Linea, Duo Xamp, PHACE, Zafraan... Her works have also been performed by major orchestras including the Goiás Philharmonic Orchestra, São Paulo Municipal Symphony Orchestra, Croatian Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra, Inhotim Orchestra, and OSB Rio de Janeiro Youth Orchestra, University of Sao Paulo Chamber Orchestra.
A significant ongoing collaboration with visual artist Clarissa Tossin has resulted in one sound installation and a video work - Before the volcanoes sing, in the intersection of sound, space, and visual arts.
Currently, she is researching about creative orchestra writting focus on multi-group orchestration Symphonia Botanica at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, where she serves as a visiting professor in artistic research.
Her pedagogical activity is intense and diverse, focusing on democratizing access to musical composition through her educational role in the OpusOne academy (Ensemble L'Itinéraire), Manama Master in Contemporary Music program (Ensemble Ictus), the Computer Music Creation Course at the Francis Poulenc Conservatory (Paris), and Sound Art workshops in Brazil, notably at the Tatuí Conservatory - with Ajítẹnà Marco Scarassatti (UFMG) and Marcos Balter (Columbia University) and the Federal University of Southern Bahia - with Daniel Pui (UFSB), Maarten Stragier (Royal Conservatory Brussels) and Jessie Cox (Harvard University).
Music, for me, is the art of dreamed embodied abstractions. Music is a laboratory forged between listening, motor experience, nature, and the symbolic.
The seeds of abstraction grow in the soil of physical experience. Composition is above all an expression of life.
My pieces embody principles of interconnectedness, integrating a diverse array of musical practices. Openness and listening becomes a form of knowledge, taking residence in bodies to enliven beings.
My scores that includes a dimension of orality and spontaneous experimentation. I'm not seeking total control but interconnections. Interpretation is a dialogue.
The dance of flows unfolds in constella(c)tions.