BIOGRAPHY

João Renato Orecchia Zúñiga was born in Brooklyn, NY to a Peruvian mother and an Italian father. He grew up in the city’s mixed immigrant communities, in all their contradictory beauty, displacement and unsettledness. With a strong connection to an elusive somewhere-else, Orecchia had always been drawn towards unfamiliar territory.

While living in London in the 1990’s, Orecchia picked up the guitar and later in Berlin in the early 2000’s, played in dozens of bands and began composing for dance, theatre, film and solo releases throughout the Berlin underground. He began to experiment with electronics while continuing to explore the outer reaches of the sonic capabilities of the guitar.

In 2005, Orecchia relocated to Johannesburg. Plugging into the underground music and visual arts scenes, the city provided an endless source of inspiration and wonderful confusion. Orecchia has carved a space for himself that sits comfortably between these seemingly incongruous spaces, working with Afrorock group BLK JKS, Thandiswa Mazwai, classical and new music pianist Jill Richards and Lukas Ligeti to name a few as well as world renowned visual artists such as William Kentridge and Kudzanai Chiurai.

Orecchia has become increasingly concerned with the nature of sound itself, how sound acts and how bodies are affected by the movement and vibration of sound. This is the starting point for most of Orecchia’s current musical output. He seeks to uncover the relationships between individual sounds in movement and observe their interaction. Drawing on processes in the vein of Lucier and Reich as well as the concrete of Varése and Schaeffer, Orecchia is interested in relinquishing total control in favour of surprise and discovery, allowing music to unfold through the tactile, physical engagement with a system set into motion by a process.

Orecchia participates in gallery and museum exhibitions with installation, video, drawing and printmaking. Orecchia has received a South African Film & Television Award for sound design and has published in the Leonardo Music Journal and the Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies.

Explore this site to find out about different kinds of projects in music, sound, visual arts and public performance or jump straight to see and listen to things on spotify or apple music or soundcloud or mixcloud or youtube or instagram. If you appreciate the things you find, please consider supporting my work on patreon.