Ekho Group

GRUP EKHO
AI, electronics, soundscape and philosophy
Concept and direction: Composers and performers: Magda Polo Pujadas, Adrien Faure, Toni Costa and Nerea Martínez.

THE GRUP EKHO OF THE UNIVERSITAT DE BARCELONA
Grup Ekho was born at the Universitat de Barcelona with the organization, in 2023, of an International Symposium on soundscape, advanced music and AI, and as a project of sound (and/or musical) research. The group is directed by Dr. Magda Polo Pujadas, Professor of Music and Aesthetics at UB, who created a new term for her compositions based on research into artistic interdisciplinarity and philosophy: the concept of “Hybrid Conceptual Music”. Hybrid Conceptual Music (HCM) is a logical consequence of “programmatic music”, as it uses extramusical elements that inspire its content, condition its form and give it a narrative character, that is, it has the ability to tell something. This music aims to bring us closer to a type of aural knowledge, for the creator as well as for the performer and the audience. It is conceptual because it stems from a whole series of studies and reflections that serve to conceive the musical structure, and it is hybrid because it mixes different creative resources and is open to new technologies.

THE “SONIC PORTRAITS” PROJECT
The “Sonic Portraits” project, by Grup Ekho, explores the symbiosis between different types of creative musical processes and other disciplines, focusing specifically on the creation of “sound portraits”, as its name suggests. These sound portraits involve months of philosophical-musical immersion that shape the structure and essence of all the elements of the work. The sound projection of characters, places (site specific) and events are its objectives. Through interdisciplinary studies, with a philosophical approach, coming from the fields of aesthetics, history, anthropology or sociology, the Grup Ekho team creates an aesthetic experience or an experimental performance in which the audience plays an active role, making each work unique and unrepeatable. In their projects, artificial intelligence, electronic music and soundscape come together and interact with the audience. The aim of the “Sonic Portraits” research project is to provide new knowledge about the characters, places and events addressed, and to offer the audience a new and rich aural experience. Among its most relevant objectives is the creation of pure aural music, incidental music, operatic, cinematic…

THE COMPOSITIONS OF “SONIC PORTRAITS”
The compositions created from 2022 to the present, within “Sonic Portraits”, are: The right way and Yoko Ono’s Suite, both premiered at SÓNAR +D, in June 2023 and June 2024 respectively, and Schweigen and Miraculum, premiered in 2025 at the Festival Actual de La Rioja in a live concert. The right way is inspired by the Catalan-Senegalese trap singer Leïti Sène, Yoko Ono’s Suite was born as a tribute to the Japanese artist based on the study of her conceptual and performative works. Schweigen focuses on the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by the Viennese philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Miraculum is a piece based on the figure of Gonzalo de Berceo and his book Los Milagros de Nuestra Señora. In all the pieces, the audience intervenes and makes each work an unrepeatable experience: in The right way, the audience experiences acousmatic listening with blindfolds; in Yoko Ono’s Suite, the women attending the performance record their screams, which are processed by AI and incorporated into the work for a future listening; in Schweigen, the audience, prior to the performance, sends in a photo of themselves following specific instructions, photos that are projected on a large screen while the pianist improvises with them; and finally, in Miraculum, a white voices choir sings a cantiga to welcome the Miracles of the Virgin Mary.