Virgile Abela

Bio

Self-taught composer and musician. Virgile Abela graduated from Marseille’s School of Fine and Music conservatory in electroacoustics. He began his career alongside Lucien Bertolina at the Euphonia sound creation studio at the Friche de la Belle de Mai, where he worked with Luc Ferrari, Pierre-Yves Macé, Jon Rose, Brian Anson, Pakito Bolino and Alan Douglas amongst others.

Since 2009, he has been developing a transdisciplinary work in which sound is offered to the spectator as an experience, in a poetic landscape. In search of a form of immateriality through the generation of vibratory flows from ecosystemic devices in feedback with the living, he integrates into his work an interest in sound ecology.

With the Quebecer Jean-François Laporte, they founded the duo “Inner Island” and composed several pieces playing with the acoustics of places coproduced by RIAM and GMEM, or created immersive sound spaces for Jean-Michel Bruyère (LFKs). These experiments were performed solo as well as in improvised duets with Nicolas Dick or David Merlo, with whom he founded the hoaxhoax trio alongside Damien Ravnich, whose album “Shot Re Volver” was released in France, Italy, England and Canada.

He has received prizes from SCAM, SACD and Phonurgia Nova for works in the fields of music, digital art, theatre and radio art and has been awarded numerous calls for projects. He teaches sound art at the Master of Musicology and Acoustics at the Aix-Marseille University, which is part of the PRISM Laboratory. Both his solo and collaborative works is broadcasted in Europe and North America.

Current projects

Since 2017, he has been immersed in computer programming with Julien Bayle on max/msp and has been developing his own electronic and real-time sound devices, between visual and digital art, such as “Acoustic Pendulum”.

Associate artist of the MAS platform of the CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research) Mechanics and Acoustics Laboratory, he is developing for the Zeitgeist project, a prototype of an aeolian harp with unprecedented dimensions, listening to the vibrations of the air on the water. He collaborates with the violin maker Olivier Villefranche for the creation of the “Bassdroner”, a vibrating stringed instrument, and also with the biologist Yvan Perez for “Expérience Protéodique”, an action in reasearch conducted in 2020-2021 with Aix-Marseille University and “Cultures-Permanentes”.

He is currently composing the music for Animal, a new creation by the Théâtre du Centaure under the direction of Manolo Bez, alongside the Indian musician Anwar Khan and the Japanese choreographer Kaori Ito.