Photo by Jake Parker Scott, taken at Light Field at The Lab in SF, April 2023
Briana Marela is a Peruvian American composer, vocalist, and performing artist based out of Oakland, CA. Using her voice as a focal point, she makes use of visually engaging elements of tech augmented gestures and objects to compose and perform her music live. Her gestural and lyrical song performances draw from elements of both experimental electronic music and vocal driven pop music. Using a visual programming language and machine learning, she is able to make custom tools to create compositions with varying fixed elements that transition into moments of improvisation. She was most recently a spatial sound artist in residence at Audium in San Francisco for their residency New Voices IV, performing her multi-channel piece live every weekend from February to April 2025. She is currently a Montalvo Lucas Arts Music and Composition fellow. She received an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College in 2020.
Her newest full length release My Inner Rest, is due to be released on June 6th 2025 via AKP Recordings. Marela has self-released past albums, as well as releasing records with Jagjaguwar, Surface World and PIAPTK.