Byzantium After Byzantium explores the enduring influence of Byzantine tradition on the lives and cultural works of the Balkan and Eastern Mediterranean peoples after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. It features original musical compositions and songs created by Kyriakos Kalaitzidis, the artistic director of the musical ensemble En Chordais, with lyrics by Vasiliki Nevrokopli and texts by notable Greek literary figures that highlight the impact of the Byzantine legacy on modern Greek intellectual creativity.
Kyriakos Kalaitzidis’ approach is the ripe fruit of his extensive experience with Byzantine music as a cantor, as well as his profound knowledge as a researcher, with a strong scientific background. His pieces have been presented at some of the world’s top music venues and released by record labels in Greece and abroad. Byzantium After Byzantium is a musical performance that creatively engages with the Byzantine past as both a historical heritage and a source of inspiration for contemporary art, offering an artistic answer to the question: “Why Byzantium?”.
Drawing inspiration from Sakis Serefas’ multi-awarded book A Dinosaur On My Balcony, the music and visual performance How Many People Fit on My Balcony invites children and teenagers on a dreamlike wandering adventure through Thessaloniki across space and time: As little Giannis, who has climbed onto the head of a rare friend, the dinosaur Saurus, wanders through the city, he discovers “how old, continuous, and diverse Thessaloniki’s history is and how the things one experiences as the present will become a valuable testimony for future generations”.
Live onstage music, presented as both an original composition and a creative reimagining of Thessaloniki’s diverse musical tradition, interacts with visual art (video) and storytelling, offering the audience the chance to gain an experiential insight into Thessaloniki as a vibrant blend of cultures and also realize the importance of preserving and respecting cultural polyphony in our daily lives.
*The performance will be preceded by a music and visual workshop for children aged 6 to 12.
In the enduring dance of existence, the concepts of Beginning, Space, and Time intertwine, creating a grid that connects life to death. LOGOS 132 revolves around the performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 15, Op. 132, a composition that explores mortality and the human condition. At the same time, John Cage’s piece Atlas Eclipticalis will illuminate the concepts of non-space and the atemporal, through a sound conversation between music and sculptures, inviting visitors to reflect on their relationship with time.
At the heart of the installation is a series of sculptures specifically created for this performance by Cypriot visual artist Stella N. Christou. These sculptures will transmit natural microsounds, recorded by members of the Ergon Ensemble and inspired by modern techniques employed by pioneering composers, which will simulate the sensation of being in an anechoic chamber and create a sonic atmosphere complemented by the recitation of poems from T. S. Eliot’s collection, Four Quartets.
The musical performance Echoes of Time – From the Art of Petroloukas Halkias to Contemporary Creation brings the musical tradition of Epirus into the present day by blending its deep history and cultural significance with contemporary arrangements, original compositions, and modern dance.
Drawing on the art of the legendary Petroloukas Halkias and the extensive repertoire of Epirus music, the select Epirus ensemble of the Holy Metropolis of Ioannina, in collaboration with internationally acclaimed lutist Vasilis Kostas, who supervises the ensemble’s performance and musical direction, creates a vibrant dialogue with the past.
The orchestra, comprising sixteen young musicians consistently trained in Epirus folk music, creates dynamic conversations and bridges with the contemporary musical landscape. Participating as a prominent guest will be the virtuoso of the Constantinopolitan lyra, Sokratis Sinopoulos. A special groundbreaking feature of the show will be the collaboration with dancers Charitini Koukou and Marilia Haremi, who transform the pieces into a contemporary movement approach, reflecting the stories behind the compositions. The performance also features the great instrumentalists Andreas Pappas (percussion), Panagiotis Aivazidis (qanun), and Panagiotis Georgakopoulos (drums), offering a comprehensive artistic experience.
How does a contemporary text sound when it engages in dialogue with an older one, such as an excerpt from Odysseus Elytis’ poem Axion Esti (Worthy it is), after an oral testimony? How could all these elements come together in an emblematic composition by Dmitri Shostakovich about World War II? Musicians Faidon Miliadis, Laertis Kokolanis, Enkela Kokolani, and Angelios Liakakis will perform Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8 in an open dialogue with actor Dimitris Mandrinos. A new theatrical monologue by Thodoris Iosifidis, intended for the Ancient Theatre of Pleuron, will attempt to express through words what music conveys as experienced emotions. The sources for this piece, which converses with music, include survivors’ accounts, as well as earlier and more recent literary texts associated with war. Literary and musical motifs blend in an effort to acknowledge the collective trauma caused by World War II.
“If only I could get out of this body and have a different one”.
The Reading of Transformations is a musical performance that explores the timelessness of destiny and its connection to both individual and collective choices. Through the stage narration of three myths by Ovid – Echo and Narcissus, Erysichthon, and Phaethon – in Theodoros Papangelis’ Greek translation, the eternal fluidity of earthly bodies comes to the foreground. An orchestral instrumental ensemble engages in dialogue with the narrators and a percussion ensemble, creating lively soundscapes and narrative timbres. Sometimes it accompanies storytelling, while at other times, it takes on a leading role, transforming sound into a carrier of action and meaning, thereby illuminating the dynamics of the collective body. Two vital questions emerge from this performance: Is destiny inevitable, or is it a result of our decisions? How do classical myths embody modern reality?
Axion Esti (1960) – based on the poetic composition of the same name by the Nobel Prize-winning poet Odysseus Elytis – is presented through the timbral palette of 6 pianos and the sonic homogeneity of the interpretation of 12 pianists from the Piandaemonium Ensemble on 30 and 31 July 2025 at the Hellenistic Theatre of Dion.
The iconic work, set to music by Mikis Theodorakis, constitutes a hybrid sound, combining a symphony orchestra and choir on the one hand, with a cantor and narrator on the other, at a crossroads where spoken music meets tradition. The deep discussion of the expressive loads of heterogeneous musical traditions is carried out on the canvas of Elytis’ high poetry, aiming to express a modern and multidimensional Greekness, and aspiring to communicate its collective message directly to a large audience. This distinctive sound acquires new life through the original conception and performance of the unique Piandaemonium Ensemble, which, with its twenty-five years of experience, attempts a modern sonic reapproach to a work that still carries the symbols of a culture that is constantly renewed.
Supplicant and the ritual of Supplication (Hiketia) were unwritten laws of divine origin and their guardian was the king of 12 gods Zeus, the divine refugee who was rescued as an infant after his mother Rhea fled to the most sacred of Cretan caves, the Idaeon Andro.
In this emblematic place, in the heart of Psiloritis, through an artistic and scientific partnership, the timeless concept of Ikesia as a refugee and Plea is approached in the context of the 100th anniversary of the Asia Minor Catastrophe. At an altitude of 1550 meters, a symbolic thematic cycle will be attempted from Smyrna waterfront to the foothills of Xenios Zeus, which will include two thematic contributions, a theatrical excerpt from Aeschylus’ tragedy Icetides and the musical-theatrical improvisation
Refugee (part of Metartum a Cultural – Augmented Reality Project). Finally, the event concludes with a musical performance by the band of the Cretan artist Vassilis Skoulas.
The Dark Side of Memory/The Pier is a musical multimedia performance about the collective trauma of “the Asia Minor Catastrophe” and the twofold substance of our roots. It is structured around testimonies of historical unnamed protagonists, which, during the performance, are voiced by an unseen person.
Small pieces of living memory, gleaned from the sacred pool of the dead, drip their blessing onto the present, weaving the ground on which every wound rejoices and heals. The living root of the catastrophe sprouts underground in the body of Greece, founding an Asia Minor which is more real than the actual one.
Everything is abandoned to the ocean of the inevitable, transforming the throng of the uprooted into an international symbol. Music is an islet of consolation, a hint about the inner homeland, towards which the refugees unceasingly march.
A proposal that combines the original traditional music of Asia Minor, from the days of joy and prosperity to the days of the uprooting, folk-rebetiko music as it evolved in metropolitan Greece, and contemporary music.
Three different orchestras co-exist onstage, the original traditional orchestra of Smyrna, the Folk-Rebetiko orchestra in the form it acquired in inland Greece, and a Classical Symphony Orchestra performing the Oratorio. The latter will present in its world premiere Christos Samaras’ work Mnimes (Memories).
This musical journey is a sequence and co-habitation of music, poetry, dance, images and performing, composing a complete, ripe, and interdisciplinary performance-concert that illuminates the eternal Asia Minor of Greeks.