Spanish Young Music Talents: Pilar Miralles in Atlanta

Spanish sound artist and composer Pilar Miralles will visit Georgia Tech as part of the “Spanish Young Music Talents” program, where the university orchestra will premiere her latest work.

The Georgia Tech Symphony Orchestra (GTSO) opens the 2024 season with the world premiere of Pilar Miralles’ new work, entitled my grandpa used to braid esparto grass for hours under the shadow of the fig tree. Juhi Bansal’s In the Pocket will also receive its Georgia premiere, while the GTSO closes the night with Rimsky-Korsakov’s symphonic suite Scheherazade, inspired by the legendary heroine and tales of One Thousand and One Nights.

Pilar Miralles’ visit will include additional activities that allow the composer to engage with students and meet fellow creators through workshops, masterclasses, and more.

Spanish Young Music Talents (SYMT) is the new program of the Cultural Office of the Embassy of Spain in Washington, D.C. SYMT has been envisioned to enhance and support Spanish young musicians’ careers, in collaboration with U.S. music schools and universities at a higher level (bachelor and graduate students orchestras), offering them an experience abroad.

SYMT aims to offer young musicians not only a concert or recital in the U.S., but a complete experience with complementary activities such as masterclasses, talks, conferences, etc. to broaden their opportunities and contacts. All visiting musicians are winners of the Juventudes Musicales de España national award and under 30 years old.

Pilar Miralles

Pilar Miralles (Almería, Spain, 1997) is a composer and sound artist based in Helsinki, Finland. She completed her Master’s Degree in Electroacoustic Composition at Centro Superior Katarina Gurska of Madrid (2020) and her Master of Music in Composition at the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki (2022).

Miralles is currently a doctoral candidate at DocMus Doctoral School (Arts Study Programme), at the same institution. In her artistic research project, she investigates and questions, through the compositional process, the normalization of a culture of the overload, whose main consequence is the lack of space for a reflexive construction of the self.

Her works have been part of festivals such as Time of Music in Viitasaari (Finland, 2023), ManiFeste at the IRCAM in Paris (France, 2022), or the VANG new music series of CentroCentro in Madrid (Spain, 2023). Her most recent recognition was the First Prize of the Young Composers Award organized by the Spanish Society of Authors and Publishers (SGAE) in Madrid (Spain, 2023), thanks to which she is the current composer in residence of Juventudes Musicales de España (Spanish Musical Youths). She also collaborates as a co-teacher of the SuperCollider programming workshop organized by the Music Technology department of the Sibelius Academy since 2023. Lastly, she has been invited by the Ulysses Network to join the “Ulysses Journeys for Young Composers” in 2023 and 2024.

Read the interview with Pilar Miralles in The Technique about her experience at Georgia Tech and view the world premiere of her piece, My grandpa used to braid esparto grass for hours under the shadow of the fig tree, performed by the GT Symphony Orchestra (GTSO) for the opening night of the 2024 GTSO concert season.