Clara Maïda’s musical research lies at the crossroads of psychoanalysis, nanoscience, and philosophy — particularly the works of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. She has developed dense, kinetic, branched sound networks through experimenting with structural convergences between unconscious temporal processes, musical form, and microbiological and genetic mechanisms.

Maïda’s work draws on the concept of the “rhizome” from Deleuze and Guattari, used to describe a nonlinear network that “connects any point to another point.” Using various instrumental techniques applied to different instruments and electronic tools, her pieces explore hybridization. She is interested in the sonic “inter-territory” between the psyche and the urban environment (particularly the underground), between organic and mechanical materials, between the human and the machine, and between musical sound and noise.

She calls her music “nanomusic” in reference to her bottom-up approach to composition. This is characterized by the assembly of micro-units, which she calls “pulsons” or “sound quanta,” whose connections and trajectories are constantly being rearranged by hidden forces in an elastic, non-directional, associative space-time.

Maïda holds a doctorate in composition from the University of Huddersfield, a master’s in musicology, creation, music, and society from Paris 8 University Vincennes-Saint-Denis, a state diploma in teaching piano, and a degree in psychology from Aix-Marseille University. She was also the recipient of composition grants from the Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien 2022, the Berlin Senat 2015, and the Akademie der Künste Berlin 2006. In 2012, she was laureate of the Institut Français Programme Hors les Murs.

Maïda has received commissions from ensembles, festivals, and important institutions, and has also been composer-in-residence at several electroacoustic music studios, such as Art Zoyd, GRM, Césaré, Akademie der Künste Berlin, GMEM, the French Ministry of Culture, Radio France, Festival ECLAT (Stuttgart), Studios Électroniques de la Technische Universität, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Festival International de Guitare de Paris, SACEM/Festival Klang! (Hamburg), the DAAD’s Berliner Künstlerprogramm where she was Guest Composer in 2007-2008, and the Orchestre National de Lyon.

Her music has been played at international festivals by various ensembles and performers, such as Arditti Quartet, Neue Vocalsolisten, KNM Berlin, Les Percussions de Strasbourg, Resonanz, L’Itinéraire, Accroche Note, 2E2M, NEM, MCME, EOC, Alternance, Proxima Centauri, OENM, UI New Music, CrossingLines, Orchestre National de Lyon, Pellegrini Quartet, Theo Nabicht, Thierry Miroglio, Armand Angster, Caroline Delume, Martine Joste, Jan Michiels, Heather O’Donnell, Seth Josel, Stephen Gosling, and Michael Weilacher. Her music has been played on radio stations in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Spain, Switzerland, Mexico, Australia, and South Africa.

In 2015, she was Guest Professor of Composition at the Catalonia College of Music in Barcelona. She has also given conferences, colloquium presentations, seminars, and masterclasses at various institutions in France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New York.

Maïda lives in Paris and Berlin.