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 music has 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:

Cryptologic Spectrum
Electronic audio (3rd order ambisonic), 2025[work in progress]Composed at the Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre studios.
More info soon.

Para-real Deformations of South Asian Vinyl
Electronic audio (stereo), 2025Creation for True Form Projects and developed within my research with the East in West Vinyl Archive.The piece investigates semi-autonomous remix as a mode of collective memory and aesthetic-morphological agency. It experiments with an imaginary ethical machine-listening apparatus, one that attends to, recombines, and deforms archival South Asian vinyl records while resisting claims to a singular “true form.”

1115wvst
Site-specific composition for clocktower and electronic audio, 2025Composed for The University of Birmingham's 125th Anniversary celebrations.A sonic intervention to Old Joe, the tallest clocktower in the UK, where the live sounding clock chimes are accompanied by electronic sound projected from the top of the belfry.Recordings of the clocktower's own bells are broken using waveset synthesis and recomposed: first as buzzing, synthetic apparitions; then brushing against the live bells; and finally as extended timbres and melodic after-images that remain recognisably clock-like.

Autofagos
Live electronics (stereo), 2025Two identical AI agents are connected in a recurring machine listening feedback network controlled by a human performer that interacts with the system 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 or the performer. It functions as a silent hemisphere of the brain, being an essential part of the sound-generating process, but never to be directly heard.The human performer must control both hemispheres' actions, despite being unable to hear one of them.

Wheels within wheels
Electronic audio for IKO loudspeaker (3rd order ambisonic), 2025This piece investigates the possibilities in IKO-specific modes of listening and the discontinuous, non-linear spatial cues that arise from the interaction of beamformed projection and irregular space. The piece is driven by the search of balancing materials, spatial trajectories, and a proposed "apophatic" compositional logic that yield acausal relationships in perceptual space.All materials in this piece were synthesised with the sapf audio programming language.
Composed at the Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre studios.

The Birmingham Companion to East-West Politics, vol. I
Electronic Audio (3rd order ambisonic), 2025This 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 (through PCA and MLPs) 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.Composed at the Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre studios.
Premiered at BEAST FEaST 2025, Birmingham, United Kingdom.

La literalidad de la expresión
Quartet of Andean aerophones and electronic audio, 2022Composed for and premiered 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.

Events

UPCOMING EVENTS+ 04.11.2025 - Birmingham, UK - premiere of Para-real Deformations of South Asian Vinyl at Pan-Pan.PAST EVENTS+ 20-26.10.2025 - Birmingham, UK - 'Old Joe' Sonic Intervention for the University of Birmingham's 125th Anniversary celebrations. Daily performances of 1115wvst at 11:15am.+ 11.10.2025 - Leeds, UK - Synthesizer Research Network SYNTHposium - Paper presentation: Synthesising the unimagined: an addendum to the Birmingham Companion to East-West Politics at the University of Leeds.+ 26.08.2025 - Chiang Mai, Thailand - Live electronic improvisation performance at Chiang Mai University.+ 23.08.2025 - Bangkok, Thailand - Diversity in Unison: Wonderland. PGVIM International Symposium 2025 - collective multimedia composition and performance.+ 17.08.2025 - Bangkok, Thailand - The Sonic Art & Improvisation, by TYOY - live electronic improvisation performance at POA White Box.+ 02.05.2025 - Birmingham, UK - BEAST FEaST 2025 - premiere of The Birmingham Companion to East-West Politics, vol. I.Events before 2025?I launched this new website in 2025 and decided to just add information on events that would happen from this year onwards.

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.