FLOATING SOUND GALLERY

Vienna

Mirtru Escalona-Mijares

Circuit Fantôme Season 6 Episode 13
curated by Anton Iakhontov (Patrick K.-H.) and Daniel Teruggi.

Fr, 09 October, 2026
18:00-22:00
Pay as you wish

︎Vronihof
Veronikag. 24
1170 Wien

Écoute s’il a plu (2005)
Passages (2002)
Échos de Massy (2026)
Murankïnëto’ (2023–2024)
L’ermitage au toit de chaume (2014–2015)

Écoute s’il a plu (2005)
8’30’’ — Electroacoustic work
Finalist at the Sounds Electric ’07 Electroacoustic Music Competition, Dublin, Ireland.

This piece originates from an installation created in collaboration with visual artist Florence Meunier, and from a frozen scenography, suspended in time: the moment after the rain. It is a dreamlike image through which a sense of hope emerges: after any pressure, after any abyss, there is always a light.

Passages (2002)
7’10’’ — Electroacoustic work
Commissioned by Le Pavillon for the sound installation Îles[S], Pantin, France, March 2002.
Premiere: Mirtru Escalona-Mijares, performing on the acousmonium, Le Pavillon – Ateliers d’arts plastiques, Pantin, France, March 2002.

Dedicated to Marie-Claude Mattei.

This piece is a tribute to the now-disbanded Quinteto Contrapunto, a vocal quintet specializing in Venezuelan traditional music, whom I had the joy of listening to throughout my childhood.
Passages evokes cherished memories that return, carrying with them all the sensations and extraordinary sounds I was fortunate enough to experience growing up in that wonderful country: “mi Venezuela.”

Échos de Massy (2026)
10’20’’ — Electroacoustic work
Commissioned by the City of Massy.
Premiere: 17 June 2026, Festival Massyrama, Parc de la Corneille, Massy, France.

Échos de Massy is an electroacoustic work created from sounds collected in different parts of the city through encounters with its inhabitants, as well as with the students and teachers of the Conservatoire de Massy.
Sounds of the city, fragments of voices, instrumental gestures and sonic materials drawn from everyday spaces gradually compose a sensitive cartography of Massy. Transformed, layered and set in motion through electroacoustic composition, these elements bring forth the city’s resonances, presences and living memory.

Murankïnëto’ (2023–2024)
10’30’’
A journey into the heart of a celebration in the Venezuelan Amazon.
Acousmatic work for octophonic fixed media.
Produced at the Musiques & Recherches studios, Belgium.
World premiere: Mirtru Escalona-Mijares, sound projection, Électrobelge, Le Senghor, Brussels, Belgium, 13 March 2024.
Dedicated to Annette Vande Gorne.

The Amazon is one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet, home to a multitude of plant and animal species, as well as numerous human communities. Among them are Indigenous peoples such as the Panare of the Venezuelan Amazon, who have maintained a profound relationship with the forest and its resources for millennia.
Murankïnëto’ is part of a cycle of works paying tribute to the Panare people and to the extensive research of anthropologist and ethnolinguist Marie-Claude Mattei-Müller, who generously shared with me her documentation and the field recordings made with anthropologist Paul Henley.
Murankïnëto’, the celebration of Murajtën, marks the beginning of Katyayïnto’, the celebration of the loincloth and one of the most beautiful and important ceremonies of the Panare people. Murankïnëto’ is an initiation ritual for boys between the ages of seven and nine, marking the moment when they wear their first loincloth. During the celebration, participants wear two-coloured capes woven from white and green palm leaves. They dance, sing and play. Murankïnëto’ is a celebration of many songs and dances.
In the recordings made for Marie-Claude Mattei-Müller, I was particularly struck by the musical instruments. Among them are the are’re’ flute—a type of panpipe—and the chirijko, a rattle with a sound closely resembling that of maracas. Another distinctive instrument is the karamataïme, made from a stalk of the cecropia tree and measuring approximately one to 1.2 metres in length. It is played in pairs, with a “male” instrument and a shorter “female” instrument.
Texts based on:
Marie-Claude Mattei-Müller, Yoroko, confidences d’une Chamane Panare, Armitano Editores, 1992.
Marie-Claude Mattei-Müller, Diccionario ilustrado Panare-Español, Español-Panare, Comisión Nacional Quinto Centenario, 1994.

L’ermitage au toit de chaume (2014–2015)
Electroacoustic work
Commissioned by Ina-GRM
Jury Prize at the 9th Métamorphoses Acousmatic Composition Competition, 2016, Belgium.
Premiere: Mirtru Escalona-Mijares, on the akousmonium, Festival Akousma, Multiphonies season, MPAA – Saint-Germain, Paris, January 2015.

Dedicated to Daniel Teruggi.

This piece is a small tribute to the Buddhist monk Ryokan (1758–1831) and to the impression left on me by reading some of his poems.

For L’ermitage au toit de chaume, the starting point of the work is the poetic image of five tankas — unrhymed Japanese poems of 31 syllables arranged in five lines — written by Ryokan at different periods of his life.

vous me demandez
où se trouve
ma demeure ?
à l’est du pont
au-dessus du fleuve d’étoiles
— — —
si l’on me demande comment
j’ai pu renoncer au désir
sous le ciel
quand la pluie tombe, elle tombe
quand le vent souffle, il souffle
— — —
un long moment
sous le ciel parfumé
d’ivresse affalé
un rêve merveilleux
au pied du cerisier en fleurs
— — —
la rosée s’est déposée
le sentier de la montagne doit être froid
un dernier coup de saké
avant de rentrer
peut-être ?
— — —
comme un mince filet d’eau
se frayant un passage entre des rochers
couverts de mousse
aussi allègrement
j’ai traversé cette vie

RYOKAN
Recueil de l’ermitage au toit de chaume
© Éditions Moundarren
Hervé Collet, 2004/2010

Supported by Stadt Wien Kultur / Bundesministerium für Wohnen, Kunst, Kultur, Medien und Sport