BIOFONIA · the Brazilian movement
ATLÂNTICA
The first movement, made with the Guaraní ensemble Coral Guaray Oua and pre-premiered at Viborg Animation Festival in 2024 with live marimba.
BIOFONIA · the Brazilian movement
The first movement, made with the Guaraní ensemble Coral Guaray Oua and pre-premiered at Viborg Animation Festival in 2024 with live marimba.
The work
The Atlantic Forest of Brazil, made with the Guaraní ensemble Coral Guaray Oua. Outsiders arrive with machines and the logic of stockpiling and meet a cyclical way of living; when the land is exhausted, the ancient jaguar is called on to frighten them away. The ending is unresolved.
Scored for marimba, vibraphone, orchestra, choir and live animation. The scoring is built to scale — from a small pop-up concert with soloists to a full symphony orchestra and choir. Watch it live from COP30 →
The starting point
BIOFONIA did not begin with a score. The music was written where it is set: the fieldwork came first; the score came after.
In June 2024, composer Mathias Madsen Munch, marimba soloist Ronni Kot Wenzell and Anders Hentze, Country Director of the Danish Cultural Institute in Brazil, travelled to the Iguape region in southern São Paulo state. With Fábrica de Cultura Iguape they were received in Tekoá Itapuã, a Guaraní village, and invited inside the casa de reza — the house of prayer, the village's most sacred place — for conversations around the fire with the chief, his son and his daughter-in-law.
The ensemble Coral Guaray Oua opened their song tradition to the project. One of those songs, peme'en jevy — "give us our land back" — closes the first movement, ATLÂNTICA, with the permission of the people it belongs to.
An outreach group of 6th and 7th graders at Bjerregrav Friskole outside Viborg explored how a rainforest could be told through music and animation. Their visual, dramaturgical and musical ideas went directly into the finished work, and their work was later shown to the Guaraní in Brazil — it mattered to them, and the team understood it as part of why they said yes. Young people in Denmark →
The pre-premiere was at Musikteatret Viborg on 13 September 2024, with 220 in the hall, at Viborg Animation Festival, with live marimba.
The image
The rainforest is colour, movement and atmosphere rather than drawn trees and animals. Live-action film shows you the forest; abstract animation makes you imagine it, and with the music you enter it. Ouros Animation holds the visual direction across the movements.
Where it has been
“On one side of the marimba she represents our way of thinking; on the other, the Indigenous peoples’.” Mathias Madsen Munch · composer, BIOFONIANaturmødet, Hirtshals, 30 May 2026
“Among the peoples we work with, it is the women who speak. They hold the strategic overview — in Peru and in Brazil.” Mathias Madsen Munch · composer, BIOFONIAThe talk on the LEARN stage, Naturmødet, Hirtshals, 29 May 2026
“At the first meeting they received us with music, because that is how they receive people in the village. And this was the song they played for us. It became the theme of the first movement.” Anders Hentze · then Country Director, Danish Cultural Institute BrazilThe COP30 panel “Art as a Catalyst for Climate Engagement”, Denmark Pavilion, Belém, 19 November 2025
"Both myself and my art students were very excited. The combination of music and animation worked really well as a way to communicate your cause, and several students later described how deeply moved they were by the performance." Mikkel Skovborg · Teacher in the Arts Programme, Husby EfterskoleMusikteatret Viborg, September 2024 · from BIOFONIA's documentation
"Most of us are over 80 years old, so it might not connect with us in the same way it would with younger people. Afterward, we talked about how we might have felt a bit 'ashamed' … or rather, it made us reflect on the fact that, as a society, we haven't taken better care of the world and nature. Not so much on a personal level — it's hard to make a big difference as an individual — but as a generation." Lithen Agerbo · Study group, LOFMusikteatret Viborg, September 2024 · from BIOFONIA's documentation
The people
BIOFONIA is an interpretation of the rainforest, made in dialogue with the people who live in it. The artists it was made with are named, here and in the programme.
Commissioned by the soloist Ronni Kot Wenzell; pre-premiere at Viborg Animation Festival, 2024. The second movement, AMAZÔNICA, is made in Peru — see the movement →