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 performed her piece “Tuning the Wind” in 4D sound in several occasions.
Portioli has performed as Grand River at major international venues and festivals, including CTM Festival, NODE Festival, Berghain, MUTEK, Mapping Festival, Kraftwerk, Barbican Hall, Funkhaus, Maintenant Festival, 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, as well as on the visuals for One Instrument, the record label she founded 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 and Davide Sabbadini
SELECTED PRESS
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
2022: Crack Mix
2022: Music From Memory Mix
2021: Resident Advisor Mix
2021: Tangerine Dream - Raum (Grand River Remix) - Resident Advisor review
2021: Fact Magazine: Patch Notes
2021: HÖR Mix
2020: Inverted Audio - Best Albums of 2020
2020: Resident Advisor - Best Music of September 2020
2020: Beats In Space Mix
2020: Blink A Few Times To Clear Your Eyes - Resident Advisor review
2020: Blink A Few Times To Clear Your Eyes - Inverted Audio review
2020: Dekmantel Mix
2018: XLR8R Artist Tips
INTERVIEWS
2022: Music From Memory Interview and Mix
2022: DJ MAG
2021: Shape Platform
2021: Zweikommasieben
2021: Soundworks, MUTEK
2020: Document Journal
2020: Art + Music + Technology
2020: Radio Raheem
2019: Clot Magazine
2018: Orb Mag