A music and dance performance in collaboration with the Athos Danellis Shadow Puppet Theatre and Kyriakos Gouventas’ musical company, which will attempt to showcase the musical and dance tradition of Asia Minor through a journey across the time before its destruction, the subsequent uprooting of its inhabitants, and the transformation of their tradition in the new setting of Greece of the time.
Asia Minor has always been a crossroads of nations and cultures, a melting pot of musical traditions of the West and the East.
The folk songs and tunes still surviving to a great extent to this day are known to be an age-old legacy coming to us from a region that is at once so close, yet so far from us: Asia Minor.
On the occasion of the centenary of the Asia Minor Catastrophe, the Encardia ensemble presents a special and very topical musical programme.
An excellent anthology of songs and texts that will illuminate the ever-topical issue of refugeeism and migration.
A focal point of the performance will be human solidarity, the only thing that can alleviate the “Foreigner’s” pain, even transform it into hope and optimism.
A performance that will mostly feature old instrumental pieces from the wider region of Asia Minor ingeniously rearranged by the Violione Orchestra.
The goal of this alternative twenty-member ensemble of exclusively bowed strings is to bring out a romantic and at the same time communicative and outward-looking mood, with elements of earlier and more modern techniques, taking us on a musical journey from the past into the future with abundant improvisations while creating a dynamic continuation of the old style of performing bowed stings into the contemporary one.
The orchestra is conducted by Giannis Zarias, assistant violin professor in the Department of Music Science & Art of the University of Macedonia.
A beautiful aristocratic woman named Smyrna receives in her poor now home, somewhere in Kokkinia or Nea Ionia of the 1930s, six wandering musicians. Together they dig up and reshape precious moments from her turbulent life…
The Alcedo folk band, through the eyes and memories of a woman who’s also a city, Smyrna, compose a new and fresh musical performance and present their first Suite based on themes from the works of great Smyrnaean composers (Kalomiris, Konstantinidis and others) and other popular songwriters (Tountas, Peristeris, Papazoglou, Dragatsis-Ogdontakis and more).
The selection of songs by the above-mentioned songwriters as well as the original traditional songs from Smyrna featured in the performance are arranged by the Alcedo Folk Band.
The work is set in 1950s Greece in a train compartment hosting refugees from various areas of Asia Minor, Pontus and Cappadocia. As is often the case with travelling, passengers start telling stories both about their motherlands before the uprooting and about the adventures of their settlement in Greece.
Through original songs and texts, six stories of people unfold, showcasing their memories from their motherland before the uprooting and their nostalgia for it, their adventurous journey to Greece and the problems of their adaptation and integration into the new environment, but also a series of positive influences, brought about by the refugee influx into the economic and intellectual life of Greece.
The wandering ticket inspector is the one who conveys how natives view the Greeks of the East.
The cicada (tettix in ancient Greek) is by nature associated with the process of transformation when it turns from a nymph into an adult. In the movement-based music performance Pontic Cantada the contemporary music ensemble TETTTIX (with a triple t) presents its own imaginary version of the forced “transformation” of a society.
After the Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Treaty of Lausanne, a part of Pontic Greek refugees settled in Corfu. The mingling of populations, mutually influencing one another, forced the two parties to reconsider their beliefs and habits.
Through drama and satire and in a quasi-vaudevillian mood, TETTTIX and Eugenia Demeglio (choreography/movement) transform the kemençe and the mandolin into a new entity, in a context where otherness evokes reflection and stigmatization and is at the same time refreshing, invigorating and inspiring.
On the occasion of the centenary of the Asia Minor Catastrophe, this concert will be based on two emblematic works of Apostolos Kaldaras released in 1972-73, “Byzantine Vesper” and “Asia Minor”.
Apart from Apostolos Kaldaras’ songs, the concert will also feature covers of emblematic songs from the countries of origins of present-day refugees. The set surrounding the orchestra consists of five large paintings by Kostas Kaldaras inspired by the 2015 refugee crisis, while it will also include screenings of historical documentary material and photographs having as their theme refugees over time – a selection made in collaboration with the Photographers of Trikala Team.
Andreas Karakottas and Ioanna Giannopoulou sing accompanied by a seven-member orchestra. Arrangements are by Sakis Kontonikolas.
This musical performance involves a structured interactive improvisation (stemming from the form of the amane itself), which is connected to the Greek poetry of the 30’s.
The music is inspired by the historical/traditional amane but also provides space to more modern and free musical experimentations. The aim is to emphasize the fact that this is not a music tradition in danger of extinction but a potentially living form, which can function in the present even outside the context of its historical frame of reference.
Respectively, regarding the lyrics, the form of amane will also be preserved, but, instead of using popular verses, this musical performance will use excerpts from 1930’s “art” poetry.
Singer Eleni Tsaligopoulou, actress Eleni Kokkidou and six virtuoso musicians invite us to join them on a journey through notes and words in the beginning of the 20th century, a journey full of the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the city that will always be a reference point in modern Greek history.
Smyrna, in all its legendary beauty and with its tragic ending, will always be the most loved “lost motherland” of the Greeks.
One hundred years later, on the occasion of the sad anniversary of the Asia Minor Catastrophe, Eleni Tsaligopoulou performs timeless songs from Smyrna and of composers of the time, while Eleni Kokkidou narrates testimonies of the uprooting and excerpts from relevant works of Greek literature. A concert full of history, dedicated to the memory that calls these songs its motherland, by two leading artists.
In a directed performance of music and dance, the one hundred performers together with the orchestra and “Ionia” choir, the soloists, the dancers and the narrator meet the exceptional groups “Anatoliki Romilia”, “Horostates” and “Alismonites Patrides” Larissa, dressed in their authentic traditional costumes.
They take us a hundred years back to Smyrna with its sounds, colours, aura and culture. Smyrna was a multidimensional city that flourished but was finally destroyed and its residents give us a strong message of life and encouragement starting up new lives together in various places in Greece, such as Nea Ionia in Volos.
The great grandchildren of these refugees through performance of songs and dances, full of light and energy , bring us a message of hope, joy, life and promise for a better future.