Aimée Portioli is a Berlin-based Dutch-Italian composer and sound designer who records and performs as Grand River.
Portioli makes experimental electronic music with rich emotional colours. Her work, influenced by minimalism and ambient music, is atmospheric yet rhythmically complex, incorporating a wide range of contemporary compositional and production techniques.
The name Grand River evokes nature, scale, and movement, all key forces in Portioli’s work. Her first release as Grand River was 2017’s Crescente EP, which was named by XLR8R as one of the best releases of the year. She followed this with her debut album Pineapple (Spazio Disponibile, 2018), which garnered praise from The Quietus among others, while its follow-up Blink A Few Times To Clear Your Eyes (Editions Mego, 2020) was positively received by Resident Advisor and The Verge, and was elected among best albums of 2020 by Inverted Audio. Her work has separately appeared on compilations by Ghostly International, Tresor, and Longform Editions. Her third album All Above will be released in 2023 once again on Editions Mego.
Besides her studio albums, Portioli has created original sound art installations for Rome’s La Galleria Nazionale and Milan’s Il Pianeta, a project of Terraforma Festival. She also contributed her interpretation of a meditation piece for the Soundworks app together with MUTEK, collaborated with Ableton for the creation of Live 11 and Ableton Loop and created and presented her piece “Tuning the Wind” in 4D spatial sound and as a sound installation.
Portioli has performed as Grand River at major international venues and festivals, including Barbican Hall, CTM Festival, L.E.V. Festival, Berghain, MUTEK, Kraftwerk, Funkhaus, Le Guess Who?, The Labyrinth, WOS Festival, and many more. She was selected to take part in SHAPE Platform’s 2021 programme.
She collaborates with visual artist Marco Ciceri on special A/V performances and for the light design of her new All Above live tour.
Since 2016 she runs the label One Instrument that invites artists to respond to a unique creative brief – to create a piece of music using just one instrument.
Aimée Portioli holds a bachelor’s degree from the Faculty of Linguistics and Communication of Milan. Her thesis explored the psychology of the communicative function of music in media. Her work today is motivated by similar questions of sound and music as a form of communication that goes beyond language.
photos by Kasia Kim-Zacharko
SELECTED PRESS
2023: All Above - Resident Advisor review
2022: Fact Magazine: "Human" Video Premiere
2022: Ableton Loop Session: In The Studio With Grand River
2022: Arte Concert Presents Tresor 30; Grand River & Pedro Maia
2021: Tangerine Dream - Raum (Grand River Remix) - Resident Advisor review
2021: Fact Magazine: Patch Notes
2020: Inverted Audio - Best Albums of 2020
2020: Resident Advisor - Best Music of September 2020
2020: Blink A Few Times To Clear Your Eyes - Resident Advisor review
2020: Blink A Few Times To Clear Your Eyes - Inverted Audio review
2018: XLR8R Artist Tips
INTERVIEWS
2023: Document Journal
2023: 15 Questions
2022: Subbacultcha
2022: DJ MAG
2021: SHAPE
2021: Zweikommasieben
2021: Soundworks
2020: Document Journal
2020: Art + Music + Technology
2020: Radio Raheem
2018: Orb Mag
MIXES
2023: Fact
2022: Crack
2022: Music From Memory
2021: Resident Advisor
2021: HÖR
2020: Dekmantel
2020: Beats In Space
2019: Blowing Up The Workshop