Michelle Agnes Magalhaes

Brazilian composer, she places a high premium on the engagement of the musician's body with her performance, as well as new approaches to traditional instruments and instrumentation. She focuses on raw materials, creating complex sounds inside forms that are geometric inspired and structured.

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In 2002, she got a musical composition bachelor at the State University of Campinas, and in 2010, she got a musicology PhD at the University of Sao Paulo. In 2012, she started following the instructions of the composers Salvatore Sciarrino, Stefano Gervasoni and Chaya Czernowin.

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During all this, at age 23, she became the recipient of an artists' prize from Unesco (Ashberg Fellowship) that allowed her to travel extensively in Europe, exposing her to the many different communities of contemporary music on the continent. 

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Her ‘pulsating and living music’ (Anne Montaron, Radio France), of  ‘unique tone’ (Musical America), is part of numerous repertoires of international contemporary ensembles : Ensemble Intercontemporain, Talea Ensemble, Accroche Note, Ensemble Multilatérale, Abstraï, Percorso Ensemble, Quarteto Prometeo, 2e2m, Choeur en Scène, Vertixe Sonora, TaG Neue Musik, 20° dans le noir, Soundinitiative, Lovemusic, Ensemble l’Itinéraire, etc.

She has been awarded fellowships, residences and commissions from Radcliffe Institute (Harvard University), UNESCO, IRCAM, Fapesp, Venice Biennale, Camargo Foundation, Villa Sträuli, Siemens Foundation, European Commission, Brazilian and French Culture Minister, Camargo foundation of Cassis, at the Sträuli Villa in Switzerland and at the French Institut in Morocco, Giorgio Cini foundation of Venezia.

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In 2013 she moved to Paris to work in collaboration with researchers at IRCAM (Pompidou Center). In 2019 she was composer in residence in the same institute and created Constella(c)tions, a collective interactive musical experience with web devices. This project, in collaboration with Frédéric Bevilacqua and ISMM team (IRCAM - Pompidou Center) was supported by the European Commission (Starts residencies). 
 

Michelle Agnes Magalhaes is a Radcliffe (2017-18) fellow in musical composition at Harvard University, USA. 

She lives and works at Paris.