Gianni Bencich-grigore

Electroacoustic composer / researcher

About

Gianni Bencich-Grigore is a composer, performer, and researcher based in Birmingham, UK. His work explores the intersections of philosophy, psychoacoustics, and technology.Drawing from microsound, critical theory, and mysticism, his creative practice examines how sound can become a space for discovering the new, disrupting the apparent, and encountering the unknown.Gianni is currently associated with the Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre (BEAST) and the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Electronic Music, where he is developing work around AI synthesis, spatialised listening, and the aesthetics of the Real.His compositions, ranging from speculative sonic essays to hybrid performances with reconstructed ancient instruments, have been presented in festivals and venues across Europe, Asia, and the Americas, including major international festivals like Donaueschinger Musiktage (Germany), Festival Cervantino (Mexico), and BEAST FEaST (UK).

Work

sound examples coming soon

Some of Gianni's recent works include:

Autofagos
Live electronics, 2025Two identical AI agents are connected in a recurring machine listening feedback network, controlled by human performer that interacts to cut and modify the streams of audio and data as they are shared between agents.Inspired by lateralisation of brain functions and the potential implications of split-brain research, one of the AI agents is never heard by the audience. It functions as a silent hemisphere of the brain, being an essential part of the sound-generating process, but never to be directly heard.Despite this, the human performer must control this hemisphere's actions, while being unable to hear them.[work in progress]

Wheels within wheels
Electronic audio for IKO loudspeaker, 2025After showing the IKO to a friend, he joked that it looked like a "biblically accurate loudspeaker", alluding to the eldritch beings found in biblical visions. One such entity, from the Book of Ezekiel, is described as being made of “wheels within wheels”.This image felt well-suited to IKO-oriented composition. The ideas of recursive rotation and perpetual motion led me to develop nested formulas that shape the spatial trajectories of sound around the IKO for this piece.All sounds were generated using the sapf programming language.

The Birmingham Companion to East-West Politics, vol. I
Electronic Audio (3rd order ambisonic), 2025Premiered at BEAST FEaST 2025, Birmingham, United Kingdom.This piece reflects on the early divide in analogue synthesis paradigms in the United States, between East Coast and West Coast philosophies (exemplified by Moog and Buchla). Rather than replicating their differences, the piece attempts to resolve them through contemporary digital methods.Original recordings from modular systems by both Buchla and Moog were used to train a multi-staged AI-synthesis process to generate new material for various microsonic techniques.The piece is tied to a research paper by the composer that explores the commercial success of East Coast synthesis in relation to societal trends and the philosophy of Giles Deleuze and Michel Foucault.

La literalidad de la expresión
Quartet of Andean aerophones and electronic audioPremiered by Ensamble Maleza, on their 10th anniversary concert. Bolivia.Inspired by the unique phonetic properties of Cesar Vallejo’s poetry, this piece reimagines the potential of Pre-Columbian Andean instruments through their material deconstruction, towards a non-idiomatic, post-material space.

Contact

Whether you’re interested in collaborating, commissioning a piece, or just want to say hello, feel free to get in touch using the form below.