MAGDA MAYAS DUO | Germany

Mayas explores textural, linear sound collages. She has developed a set of techniques that draw on a history of prepared and internal piano vocabulary, but are highly individualized and expand the language for internal piano music creation.
Over the past 20 years, she has developed a vocabulary that uses both the internal and external parts of the piano, using amplifiers, fixtures and objects that become extensions of the instrument itself.
 
Magda Mayas, born in 1979, is a pianist and composer living in Berlin. Over the past 20 years, she has developed a musical sound stock that uses both the internal and external parts of the piano, using amplifiers, fixtures and objects that become extensions of the instrument itself. Mayas has developed a set of techniques that draw on a history of prepared and internal piano vocabulary, but are highly individualized and expand the language for internal piano music creation.
 
She holds a PhD in Music Performance and Interpretation from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She teaches improvisation at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, where she has been the program coordinator since 2019.
 
Mayas performs solo internationally as well as in collaboration with a large number of musicians and composers. Current projects are Spill, a duo with drummer Tony Buck, a duo with Christine Abdelnour (sax), Jane in Ether with Biliana Voutchkova (vl) and Miako Klein (recorders) and Splitter Orchester Berlin.
 Festivals and exhibitions include Maerz Musik (2012,2015), Documenta (2012), Berlin Biennale (2014) and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (2015). She received a residency at the Villa Aurora in Los Angeles in 2016 and residencies in 2017 and 2019 at the Montalvo Arts Center in California. She also co-curated the "Music Unlimited" festival in Wels, Austria in 2019. She has produced radio tracks for ABC Australia and Deutschlandradio Kultur and has released over 40 CDS to date. 
 
The Spill Duo project
The duo was formed in 2002. To date they have released four albums as a duo (see below) and have collaborated with John Butcher as Vellum on the UnSounds label released by Plume as well as with American bassist Damon Smith on the CD Spill Plus (on the Nuscope label).
Over the past five years they have also developed a collaboration with Melbourne based guitarist David Brown who has performed many times in Australia and across Europe. For three months in the summer of 2016, SPILL were together on an artist residency program at the Villa Aurora in Los Angeles.
In November 2017 and April 2019, Tony joined Magda for periods during her stay at the Montalvo Arts Center in California, where they worked on new SPILL recordings and performance ideas. Returning to Berlin after this productive period, SPILL released a new album, Stereo, on the Berlin label of Corvo Records. In 2022, SPILL released their fifth album Mycelium, continuing their relationship with Corvo records. In many ways, this new recording continues and expands on the areas developed on the previous release, dealing with studio layering, processing and contrasting acoustic spaces.
In the fall of 2022, SPILL embarked on a mini-tour celebrating 20 years of making music, featuring special guests Olaf Rupp, Angharad Davies, Aimeé Theriot-Ramos, Christine Abdelnour, David Stackenäs and John Butcher.
 
Magda Mayas (piano and clavinet) 
Tony Buck (drums/percussion)