Girilal Baars

Composer, singer and musician based in Uppsala, Sweden, born July 8, 1967 in Moscow. He has studied singing at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, improvisation at Uppsala University, composition at the Electronic Music Studio (EMS) and sound art at the Dramatiska Institutet, Stockholm. Baars works with vocal folk music, vocal so-called extended techniques and with electroacoustic music. He often includes interactive technologies in his works. In 2001, Baars co-founded the vocal quartet Äijä, based in Finland. Their album Jet-Black was nominated in 2009 for an EMMA (Finland's equivalent of the Swedish Grammy). His work Litanies in Zero Kelvin was selected for the art music festival Nordiska Musikdagarna in Oslo 2009. At Kalvfestivalen, an opera for two voices based on Karin Boye's Kallocain was premiered in 2010. In addition to the regular group Äijä, Girilal Baars is an active member of the Stockholm-based music collective The Great Learning Orchestra and together with Per Åhlund forms the voice electronic duo Den Arkaiska Rösten. Baars is also a producer and technician. He runs his own studio in Uppsala, where he has composed music for documentaries, art films, dance productions, installations and an experimental choreographic computer game.