About

 

Angélica Castelló (B. Mexico City, 1972)

Angélica Castelló is a Mexican-Austrian composer, recorder player, improviser, sound artist, and magnetophonic tape weaver—an act that, in metaphor and in praxis, encompasses her practice at large.

Her works intertwine bits and pieces of life into electroacoustic spells—memories, death, solace, trauma, resilience, fragility, the oneiric, the subconscious—evoking the beauty and challenge of being alive. Such spells take many shapes; they sway between instrumental and electroacoustic compositions, woven installations, reverberating altars, abstract improvisations, and performances
echoing people, nature, dreams and nightmares, fleeting and ephemeral moments. All turned into resonant beings. Her fascination with so-called obsolete machines—tapes, cassettes, radios, magnetophones—unfolds with the exploration of digital realms: lo-fi and hi-fi textures, synthetic and recorded sounds, field recordings, and the use of her Paetzold recorders as well as of her own voice—recording as an act of braiding memory (lat. recordare).

An example is her debut album, Bestiario, released in 2011. In this work, Castelló gathers seven stories turned into sonic sculptures that offer an abstract insight into the personal forces that initially set them in motion— biographical turning points and private memories lurking in Angélica Castelló’s mind, waiting to be caught and tamed (Andreas Felber).

Her work stems from aural recollections, field recordings, and ‘sons trouvés’ composed beyond the immediately perceptible: evoking haptics, colors, presences, and scents exhaled by the narrative itself. These sonic fragments are often distorted beyond recognition and woven into intricate dialogues with quotations from Renaissance and Baroque composers, echoes of Castelló’s earlier pieces, and with voices recorded specifically for the compositions. These recordings are re-layered across formats— from lo to hi-fi, analogue and digital—composed, deconstructed, and recomposed into polyphonic constellations.

Angélica Castelló composes and collaborates with a wide range of chamber ensembles and orchestras, including the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, PHACE, Ictus Ensemble, Reconsil Ensemble, Koehne Quartet, Haydn Piano Trio, Danubia Saxophone Quartet, and Ensemble Kwadrofonik, among others. Her compositional work extends to theatre, dance, film, radio, and sound installations that operate at the intersection of music, performance, and visual art.

Her artistic collaborations are as expansive as they are diverse, encompassing long-term projects and improvisational encounters with artists such as Sophie Agnel, Martina Claussen, Meritxell Collel, Gudinni Cortina, Mario de Vega, dieb13, Natalia Dominguez Rangel, Isabelle Duthoit, Kai Fagaschinski, Christian Fennesz, Miguel Ángel Gaspar, Thomas Grill, Barbara Hannigan, Franz Hautzinger, Volkmar Klien, Tobias Leibetseder, Jan Machacek, Wolfgang Mitterer, Lorena Moreno Vera, Natacha Muslera, Jérôme Noetinger, Arnold “noid” Haberl, Maja Osojnik, Angeliki Papoulia, Christos Passalis, Tom Pauwels, Eva Reiter, Juanjose Rivas, Billy Roisz, Aude Romary, Barbara Romen, Matija Schellender, Michael Schmid, Gunter Schneider, Astrid Schwarz, Martin Siewert, Lucía Simón Medina, Burkhard Stangl, Nicolas Spencer, Fernando Vigueras, and many others active in the fields of new and experimental music.

Castelló’s work has been presented across Europe and the Americas in major festivals such as Wien Modern, Ars Electronica, Sonic Acts, CTM Festival, Sacrum Profanum, Météo, Visiones Sonoras, and Darmstadt Summer Courses. Her solo and collaborative releases appear on Interstellar Records, Grünrekorder, Mosz, einklang_records, Mandorla Label, Mikroton Recordings, Monotype, and chmafu nocords, i.a.

Beyond performance, she is active as a curator and educator, having founded the long-running concert series Neue Musik in St. Ruprecht (2004–2016). She teaches at the mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts in the Certificate Program in Electroacoustic and Experimental Music (ELAK). Recent major projects include: ESPACIO 7, 2024 (Premiered in September 2024) for Flute (also piccolo & bass), Bass Clarinet in B, Percussion (Bass Drum, Vibraphone, Tam Tam, Wooden block, Bells, Metall Objects & Triangle), E-Organ, Violin, Violoncello and Electronics. Commissioned by festival Klangspuren Schwaz. ABISMO, 2023 (Premiered in January 2023) electroacustic / fixed media. Acousmonium 2023 International festival of multichannel electroacoustic music co-production of the Floating Sound Gallery Vienna, Alcôme and echoraum. STAR WASHERS, 2020-2021 (Premiered in January 2022) for Orchestra and Electronics. Commissioned by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Marin Alsop, Music Director and electronic cooperation with Barbara Hannigan. CATORCE REFLEXIONES SOBRE EL FIN / FOURTEEN REFLECTIONS ON THE END, 2019, 14 bodies woven with magnetic tapes hang inert in space. Sound installation for the museo de arte contemporáneo de oaxaca (maco) / Oaxaca; SONIC BLUE, 2013 (Premiered 6 October 2013) for sub-contrabass Paetzold recorder, accompaniment and electronics. Commissioned by Musikprotokoll Graz.

In 2022, her music theatre project Red Rooms—seven episodes about a precarious relationship, inspired by Louise Bourgeois’ installations Red Room (Child) and Red Room (Parents)—premiered at Schauspielhaus Wien as part of the Wien Modern festival. Conceived for voices, chamber ensemble, recorder trio, Revox tape machine, radios, cassette players, and electronics, the piece delves into realms of innocence and danger, life and death, eros and abuse, love and power. It confronts the family archetypes to the Red Riding Hood characters through a visceral perspective.

Likewise, the core of Castelló’s magnetophonic tape weaving resides in the material’s dual role as a recording surface and a storyteller. Through the use of old radios and cassette players, she constructs altars of sound that evoke past presences.

In this body of works, she ties the precision to the meditative in the act of weaving— tejer lo vivido (weaving what has been lived). Often in dialogue with her compositions, born from transformed field recordings, radio waves, and whispered incantations, they expand in oceanic textures, vast and engulfing. Some examples of these installations are Magnetic Room, 2017, Magellanic Tapes, 2018, and Magnetic Islands, 2017.

Castelló studied music in Mexico City , Montreal, Amsterdam, and Vienna, where she has been based since 1999. He holds a master’s degree in composition. Since 2019, Castelló has been a member of Mexico’s Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte. She is also a three-time recipient of the Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts and Culture State Scholarship (2011, 2016, 2021) and was honored with the Outstanding Artist Award from the Austrian State in 2014. In 2025, she received the Ernst Krenek Prize for composition from the City of Vienna.