The audiovisual performance The Trail of Tears is based on a real historical event. In 1830, the U.S. government ordered the five remaining Native American tribes living east of the Mississippi River, known as the civilized tribes, to take all their belongings and relocate from their ancestral lands. The forced journey of the Indians towards the mainland in winter, which passed down in history as “the trail of tears”, carried within it many dangers. Many Indians lost their lives on the way to their new homeland. The Trail of Tears is one of the last chapters of the extensive European advance in America, resulting in the demise of the native populations’ civilizations. The performance will use excerpts from Erich Scheurmann’s book The Papalagi, original texts, and evidence from historical sources.
*Featured in the performance will be Iannis Xenakis’ piece Rebonds B for solo percussion, Lefteris Papadimitriou’s musical composition Variations for Piano, and Vasilis Kountouris’ (Studio 19) sound composition Beats & Pieces.
*We would like to thank Proti Yli Publications for kindly providing the excerpts from the book “The Papalagi” by Erich Scheurmann.
The new piece by Yannis Belonis Journey Across the Balkans for Symphony Orchestra, Mixed Choir, and Narrator focuses on the conflict that influenced the cultural dynamics among the Balkan peoples: while chauvinism of nation-states “enforced” the enhancement of national identities, the frequent mixing of populations along with numerous, consecutive border shifts often led to a fusion of traditions and deep intercultural interactions. Therefore, musical cultures that developed in Southeastern Europe, with their distinct differences and similarities, have created a particularly interesting and colourful musical mosaic that keeps evolving through modern sounds, illuminating the complex and often unexplored aspects of the cultural fermentations that have occurred within the Balkan peninsula throughout the centuries.
The music of all the Balkan peoples was processed uniformly to create a performance involving a symphony orchestra, mixed choir, and a narrator. The latter, through the reading of Harris Sarris’ well-documented texts, will shed light on the conflicting and interconnected cultural identities of the people in the region. The performance’s musical journey begins in Greece and returns to its starting point, after traveling through all the states of the Balkan Peninsula – Bulgaria, Turkey, Albania, Serbia, North Macedonia, Romania, Montenegro, Croatia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The musical piece SOMNIA PACIS: Dreaming Of Peace is a collective platform, where music and speech come together to expressively interact. Starting from war conflict and moving towards its gradual impact on individuals, communities, and eventually the world, the piece is an artistic search for peaceful coexistence. It combines both classical and traditional timbres, sometimes using complex and other times simple expressive forms. The narration sometimes complements and other times enhances the themes evoked by the music, maintaining a balance between the horror of war and the dream of peace. The collective vocal and rhythmic interplay with the percussion, accompanied by the narration, and complemented by the orchestral ensemble, which both follows the score and improvises, creates a cross-artistic tapestry. This tapestry not only aims to evoke emotions but also to stimulate the audience’s senses, and provoke them by introducing them to an unprecedented musical experience.
Two leading pieces from the literary heritage. Two iconic female characters from Greek literature, Georgios Chortatzis’ Erophile and Kostis Palamas’ Trisevegni, come together on stage.
Trisevgeni is “a person who doesn’t reflect and can’t be subdued, a person of her own mind, and a daredevil”. She doesn’t fit in with the suffocating social environment around her. She is a creature stubbornly defending her own nature – which means, a tragic heroine. Erophile watches her as she tells her story and tenderly accompanies her. She comments, interprets, and feels for her. She is the fairy of the cistern, her dead mother. Until her singing becomes one and the same as Trisevgeni’s, as she says: “My own song always, which is sung by my whole life. To my own tune”. A story tightly interwoven with a singing tune.
The multi-level musical performance The Language of Sea Shells, featuring Thodoris Voutsikakis, a prominent singer from the younger generation, and Marina Kalogirou reciting, presents the musical idioms of Mediterranean cultures along with excerpts from their written works, evoking emotions. Alongside them performing will be the Municipality of Patras Plucked Strings Orchestra “Thanasis Tsipinakis”, conducted by Anastasios Symeonidis.
The performance focuses on the contemporary Mediterranean Individual, who longs to move beyond historical divisions and find the shared inner ground that unites them with their neighbouring peoples, providing them with a strong sense of hope for the future. Morocco, Egypt, Spain, Tunisia, France, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Greece, Algeria, Turkey… The Mediterranean, this known yet unknown region, a palimpsest, a mosaic of people, cultures, religions, languages, customs, habits…The sea that gave birth to civilizations, embraced differences, the sea with the many faces that both connected and separated lives, has always been a cornerstone for its inhabitants, their struggles and dreams, as well as a source of inspiration and tranquility.
In the end, does the Mediterranean serve as a line that divides or unites the countries watered by it and their peoples? And what would happen if this sea didn’t exist – would these nations remain separate or would they potentially never come together? The people have often managed to heal their wounds and bridge the gaps dividing them through common ground or simply by accepting the cultural elements of those “opposite” them.