This year, it’s finally happening. After a first attempt in 2024, electronic composer Maya Shenfeld and experimental filmmaker Pedro Maia arrive at Eufònic with Under the Sun, an audiovisual performance developed over the past two years between Berlin and one of the deepest marble quarries in the world, in southern Portugal. Through a cycle of electroacoustic pieces for analogue synthesizers, woodwind instruments, voice and field recordings, in dialogue with footage filmed under the scorching sun of the hottest summer ever recorded, Shenfeld and Maia explore change and repetition, deep time and fleeting moments, balance and looming threat. Pushing the possibilities of Super 8 cinema and drone filming to their limits, Maia’s analogue film processing enters into dialogue with Shenfeld’s textured and layered compositions, creating an immersive and radiant live audiovisual experience.
Maya Shenfeld & Pedro Maia
Maya Shenfeld is a composer and sound artist based in Berlin. Trained in classical music, her practice moves between contemporary composition, electronics, site-specific installations and microtonal experimentation, establishing her as one of the most distinctive voices in new experimental music. Her debut album, In Free Fall, released in 2022, brought her international recognition, while Under the Sun, released by Thrill Jockey in 2024, expands her language towards a more physical, climatic and collective form of listening.
Pedro Maia is an experimental filmmaker and visual artist known for a practice deeply connected to analogue cinema, Super 8 and manual film processing. His work explores the physical limits of film as a medium and often unfolds live, in dialogue with music and sound. In Under the Sun, his vision of the eroded landscape of the Portuguese quarry intersects with Shenfeld’s compositions to shape a dense, solar and hypnotic audiovisual piece.