Born in 1975, Francisco Meirino has been active since 1994 in sound art, experimental music composition, live performance and sound installations. His work explores the tension between programmable material and the potential for its failure. Francisco Meirino is primarily interested in the idea of recording what is not supposed to be: gear failures, the death of PA systems, magnetic fields, and electro-static noises and in how he can use them and hear them radically out of context. He also composes pieces for ensembles, and his interest in this practice is to push the physical limits of the ensemble's musicians with compositions that require a strong presence and sonic tension, and to ask them to find new strategies to play their instruments. These pieces for ensembles attempt to break the barrier between acoustics and electronics, to make traditional instruments sound, without external modifications, like electronic sounds and vice versa.
Meirino mainly works with modular synthesizers, the computer, reel-to-reel tape recorders, tape echos, magnetic fields detectors, piezo transducers, various microphones, field recorders and various home-made electronics.
He has had more than 200 live performances in various venues in Europe, Japan and North America, as well as at festivals such as Rapid Ear Movement (Germany), Borderline (Greece), La Digestion (Italy), End Tymes (USA), Cable (France), Santander Arte Sonore (Spain), Activating The Medium (USA), LUFF Does Tokyo (Japan), Observatori (Spain), Musica genera (Poland), Norberg (Sweden), Akousma (Canada), LUFF (Switzerland), Ertz (Spain), etc.
Over the years, he has had the honor of collaborating on studio and live performances with artists such as Mathieu Saladin, Jérôme Noetinger, Juliette Volcer, Antoine Chessex, Bob Bellerue, Nicolas Bernier, Leif Elggren, Gerritt Wittmer, Dave Phillips, Kiko C. Esseiva, Scott Arford, Michael Gendreau, Michael Esposito, Randy H. Y. Yau, Denis Rollet, Lasse Marhaug, Jason Kahn, ILIOS, and others.
Meirino has also been commissioned by Ensemble Contrechamps (Switzerland), Residency at La Muse en Circuit (France), Residency at GRM (France), Residency at EMS (Sweden), Ensemble Vortex (Switzerland), Ensemble Phoenix (Switzerland), Cindy Van Acker (Switzerland), Yann Marussich (Switzerland), Pro Helvetia (Switzerland), Radio Airplane (Japan), Musée d'Ethnographie de Genève (Switzerland), Mostra d'Art Sonor i Visual de Barcelona (Spain), Standard/Deluxe (Switzerland), Radio Pic-Nic (Belgium), Galeria Valenzuel Klenner (Colombia), etc.
His music has been widely published by labels such as Misanthropic Agenda, Helen Scarsdale Agency, Cave12 Records, Flag Day Recordings, Antrifrost, Entr'acte, Firework Editions, Gerauschmanufakur, etc.
Meirino lives and works in Lausanne, Switzerland.