The musical group In excelsis presents a finely-tuned performance called Εις την Πόλιν – Istanbul, exploring the multiple and diverse aspects of the musical, artistic, and spiritual landscape of “Ottoman” Constantinople. Through this landscape, painted with the colours of sounds, speech, and movement, the goal is to capture the atmosphere and ambiance of that era – sometimes dreamlike and spiritual, other times filled with conflict or sacredness, yet always colourful and diverse.
Hymns from the Byzantine music repertoire intersect with the sacred music of the Dervishes (specifically the Mevlevi order), alongside typical orchestral compositions reflecting the intellectual secularism that dominated the Sultan’s Palace and Constantinople for centuries following its Fall. At the same time, “military marches” blend with excerpts from folk lamentations about the Fall of Constantinople, complementing the most important musical compositions related to Constantinople during that time.
Phygital is an immersive event showcasing live audiovisual performances that blend digital and physical-analog musical instruments, complemented by digital projections.
The Phygital event is structured into three distinct live music performances of contemporary electronic music artists George Apergis and Alex Retsis, alongside simultaneous digital artwork projections by the artistic group DEN. This includes visual haikus, a collage of brief micro-compositions combining instrumental and synthetic forms, connected by a deconstructive and unpredictable storytelling.
In the first hour, the audience will experience a digital live music performance by Qebo (Alex Retsis), featuring a blend of electroacoustic and ambient music inspired by the architecture of the castle.
The second hour highlights the EMEX project by George Apergis and Alex Retsis, blending physical-analog instruments with digital technology to offer a dynamic interplay between digital and analog sounds.
The final hour is dedicated to an analog live performance where George Apergis will exclusively use vinyl records.
The music theatre performance In the Labyrinth: Accounts and Poems by Incarcerated Women brings to life poems, thoughts, and accounts of women who have been imprisoned, as well as those who have been released from prison.
The emotional fluctuations, internal conflicts, and mental struggle of these women are brought to the foreground through the performance of traditional songs from various parts of Greece and Southern Italy. Seven female artists – five musicians, an actress, and a dancer –join forces on stage to create a poetic, musical, and visual representation of the Labyrinth.
A contemporary ritual that blends storytelling with live music and dance, creating a performance that is both dynamic and ardent, while also embracing a more traditional (“doric”) approach to presenting various stage expressions, with the goal of vividly portraying on stage the Labyrinth found within the minds and souls of incarcerated women. A hymn to every individual’s personal journey towards the much-desired freedom.
We are the first to be part of a “co-habitation” arrangement between humans and machines. Experimentation no longer focuses on the dialogue but on the new content itself, along with the urgent, burning question: “We instead of Them or They instead of Us? Are we with Them? We as Them or They as Us”. The confrontation takes place at the only spot allowing room for a pause, in the uncharted space where artificial intelligence meets emotional intelligence.
Artificial Confidence is a musical techno-noir piece. The allegory running through it like a beam of light, and the ritual of an anthropo-mechanic event combine elements of music theatre with the norms of spoken word theatre. The libretto and stage direction emphasize the ambiguity of each Test without concrete data, while the musical composition constantly comments on the mechanics of modern mediation, where no one knows whom or what they are called upon to mimic – do creations mimic their creators or vice versa?
The international performer Erini presents the music and dance performance “Malés,” in which the thematic axis of “conflict” is drawn from the Cretan “mantinada”. In the Cretan dialect, “Malés” means quarrel/fight, and in this particular performance, it challenges the audience to view conflict not only as a destructive force but also as a source of creation and inspiration that emerges from cultural osmosis. Erini collaborates with Manolis Manousakis (music director) and Aristoula Toli (dance director) and interprets traditional Cretan songs in interesting orchestrations of an ever-evolving tradition. At the same time, the performance highlights the interconnected relationship between music, song, and dance, the threefold event, a dynamic phenomenon with performative power that constitutes an integral part of the artistic and cultural expression of the local Cretan culture, while emphasis is given to the content and meanings of the words. The conflict and its various aspects are depicted, visualized, and questioned through the “female gaze” in Cretan music.
Season is a participatory music theatre performance with an original dramaturgy focusing on the conflict between employers and employees in the food services sector.
During a gala in the courtyard of an archaeological museum, an unexpected fight between the owner and the catering employees will break out behind the scenes. The conflict will soon be transferred to the event venue, and the stage will transform into a political forum about tourism and seasonal work.
A frenzied performance aiming to shatter the facade of tourism, the promotion of a polished image, and the harmony of the music, in order to shed light on the underlying internal conflicts. A tribute to the hardworking individuals, those who pay and are paid for under the Greek Sun. Based on interviews, the performance transitions to pure fiction before returning to an artistic interpretation of reality.
The musical performance Nephelococcygiae and Chirping by Michalis and Pantelis Kalogerakis and Tonia Tzirita Zacharatou explores the relationship between humans and birds. In this stage production, poetic language that has been set to music intertwines with fragments of scientific facts, ornithological findings, and stories about birds.
Original musical compositions inspired by poems penned by Miltos Sachtouris, Napoleon Lapathiotis, Jacques Prévert and others, are presented live by a group of musicians and two performers, as they struggle to investigate the possibility of coexistence between humans and birds in a present that is marked by continuous conflicts. What does survive today from the utopian city of Aristophanes’ Nephelococcygia? What stories are hidden behind seabirds flying to the land in search of food, migratory birds colliding with airplanes, or pigeons in city centers? What songs lie within their flying lives?
Conflict, whether destructive, life-bearing, or both, is a fundamental state where different energies, forces, materials, humans, views, and cultures meet – an encounter that radically transforms all the involved parts.
Ergon ensemble presents three fascinating, modern musical pieces treating the theme of conflict, in a single narrative for piano, clarinet, cello, violin, and narrator.
The programme will feature the pieces Shattila (2004-05) by Samir Odeh-Tamimi, composed after the Sabra and Shatila massacre on 16 September 1982, Stalag VIIIA (2018) by Tristan Murail, referring to the Nazi concentration camp Stalag VIII-A, and Quatuor pour la fin du temps (1940) by Olivier Messiaen, a quartet written by the composer while he was held captive at the Stalag VIII-A concentration camp. These pieces will be combined with scientific and literary excerpts, poems, and original texts discussing conflict in the past and present, (and potentially for eternity), all curated, compiled, and presented by Paris Mexis.
A popular 16th-century Cretan poem featuring a wolf, a fox, and a donkey has been adapted into a modern musical fairy tale with visual elements titled The Donkey’s Tale. It is a piece that satirizes various types of human individuals across different times and places.
Animals play the role of humans. They speak, imagine, dream, conspire, and make jokes. With folk humour, rhyming verses, and an idiomatic language, the performance “covertly and painlessly” criticizes the Western European social classes and the oppression of the weak by the powerful.
Natalia Kotsani and Tasos Kofodimos set the poem to music and perform it, maintaining its plot and units. Visual artist Natalia Manta tells the story using both analogue and digital means and highlighting its modern allegorical aspects, while four musicians on stage engage with the heroes and their tales through music, crafting a parallel narrative of their own.
I fylláda toy gadárou or Gadárou, lykou, kai alepous diigisis hairei is one of the most well-known folk books among the modern Greek people, with numerous reprints up to the 19th century. It is a work by an anonymous poet, written from a humorous and satirical perspective and published in Venice in 1539, twenty years after Bergadis’ poem Apókopos .
Three mahallahs (Turkish word for districts) are situated in the three corners of a village, each one far from the others. Each one has their own square, stores, tombs, and festivals. And each of them naturally believes their own are the best, ensuring that the rest of the world is aware of this… In a dystopian village, a female singer accompanied by video projections and otherworldly or completely tangible sounds, is called to explore three communities, inside a mosque. Songs and images come together to clash, fight, and leave their pieces behind. The singer collects all that is left to create a new, harmonized, modern space, that nobody knows whether it will stand the test of time or not. In the end, are these mahallahs as different as they thought they were?