Sonica Glasgow, the biennial festival dedicated to world-class music and audiovisual art for curious minds and adventurous spirits, is back for its 8th edition, presented by Cryptic, who are celebrating 30 years of innovation in 2024. Get ready to be immersed.
On her new album All Above, Grand River – aka musician Aimée Portioli – investigates the known and unknown forces that guide our lives. The piano is a constant element in these pieces, sometimes loud and clear, sometimes subsumed beneath layers of voice, guitar and synthesiser. In this immersive live performance of All Above, long-time collaborator Marco Ciceri uses lighting, video projections and practical effects to alternately veil and reveal Portioli as her music moves from the clear and chiming to gauzy, woozy abstraction.
Aimée Portioli, known as Grand River, is a Dutch-Italian composer and poly-instrumentalist producer based in Berlin. While mainly connected to the fields of electronic music and sound design, her compositions transcend these genres. Influenced by classical minimal music, Grand River’s work integrates a large variety of sound structures and symphonic calculations in which she crafts absorbing experimental and ambient narrations combining traditional composition with contemporary sound research. Since 2016, Aimée has run the record label One Instrument.
Marco Ciceri is an Italian visual and media artist renowned for his innovative use of light and video to craft captivating, immersive experiences in live shows and installations. His artistic vision is marked by a seamless fusion of automated movements—created with cutting-edge generative software—and physical motorized gears, resulting in richly detailed and fluid aesthetics. Ciceri is a key member of Berlin’s influential collective Pfadfinderei, known for pushing the boundaries of visual art and stage design.