Bio

Bernardo Alvarado Rojas is a music producer, composer, and sound designer whose work explores the intersections of humanity, ecology, and sound. His artistic practice seeks to foster vitality, self-awareness, and a heightened perception of our relationship with the Earth and its living systems. Through a blend of ancestral and contemporary acoustic instruments, environmental sound recording, and electronic media, he creates immersive musical works that investigate ecological interdependence and the expressive depth of human experience. Born and raised in Mexico City, Bernardo began his formal musical training at the age of nineteen at Concordia University, where he studied classical composition, piano, guitar, and music production. He received instruction in piano, harmony, and counterpoint under Dr. Yaron Ross; composition under Dr. Georges Dimitrov; and classical guitar with Patrick Kearney, Jérôme Ducharme, and Dr. Tariq Harb. He graduated with honours in 2015. Following his studies, Bernardo developed a diverse professional practice as a composer, performer, producer, and sound designer. Under the artist name KALMO, he develops and performs his guitar and instrumental repertoire in collaboration musicians from different musical backgrounds. With his label VibroSounds, he provides composition, sound design, and post-production services for film, dance, and audiovisual media. His work regularly involves collaboration with music supervisors, filmmakers, video artists, and choreographers. In 2022, he collaborated with contemporary dancer Paco Ziel and the transdisciplinary dance company VIAS to create Flesh and Sound, a performance and audiovisual installation inspired by pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican art, premiered in 2023. That same year, under the moniker Asceta, he released Peregrinaje al Cosmos, a neo-classical and electronic album integrating Amerindian instruments. He also composed the music for Terrarium, a socio-ecological immersive audiovisual installation by photographer Damian Siqueiros and Terra Sapiens Studios. Bernardo is currently developing A Blue Moment, an interdisciplinary project combining film, poetry, immersive sound, and dance that examines Arctic loss and environmental transformation, as well as Waaseyaa, a storytelling work for chamber ensemble and Amerindian instruments with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. He is also developing his flamenco guitar skills studying with guitarists such as Manuel Valencia and José Gálvez in Jerez de la Frontera. His ongoing practice is defined by research-based creation, environmental and cultural engagement, and the translation of socio-ecological realities into perceptually and emotionally resonant sound worlds.