Rare military camp exhibits are presented in the historical site of Kodra, in Kalamaria, Thessaloniki. With the help of an experienced guide, audiences will be guided through the different “room cemeteries”. Audience members will be requested to remain silent – the rooms reveal their secrets and desires only upon the condition of absolute silence.
The tour will be followed by the laying of a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It is the moment when the “Unknown” Soldier will confess the unexpected end of his path to the unknown visitors. Next comes a short stop in front of Johann Sebastian Bach. The only exhibit in the camp that is allowed to talk to birds and barbed wire fences. The end of the trail signals the beginning of a new one. Our hope and wish is that art can cast away the negative energy of what’s dead and peacefully warm up human togetherness in those old military camps in the city that have been patiently waiting for it for years. The former military camps profess resurrection in the everyday eulogy of our cities.
The twenty-member ensemble Violione Orchestra, in collaboration with the popular musical duo of Vassilis Skoutas and Dimitris Mitarakis, approaches for the first time in its artistic career the burning issue of climate crisis and its political, social, cultural and economic effects, in its own alternative performing style, adapting typical pieces of Greek traditional music and rebetiko songs of the gramophone period (1900-1960). The production brings out a romantic and at the same time communicative and outward-looking mood, with elements of both the old and the new styles.
In the concert titled Crises from the Historical Past to This Day under the artistic direction of Giannis Zarias, assistant violin professor at the Department of Music Science and Art of the University of Macedonia, the Violione Orchestra will take audiences on a unique musical journey from the past to the future, with a lot of improvisation and creating a dynamic continuation from the old to the modern style of performing bowed-string instruments.
The only piano ensemble in the world Piandaemonium presents for the first time the work Voices at the End, a multimedia composition for six pianos by the New Zealand composer of Greek descent John Psathas, accompanied by pre-recorded sound parts and the documentary-film Planetary by activist Joanna Macy. The work will be presented in combination with Dimitris Economou’s Antiphenomena, a Piandaemonium commission, which will be given its world premiere. The two works treat climate change and its effect on human activity and everyday life.
Piandaemonium was founded in 1998 in Thessaloniki on the initiative of Domna Evnouchidou and initially consisted of herself and eleven former students of hers. Since then, the ensemble has evolved, has changed its composition many times – although its core has remained unaltered –, and has appeared in many concerts. A company of musicians fights against the pianist loneliness, creates a piano orchestra and attempts to redefine the traditional piano sound in a new context.
Sokratis Sinopoulos and Vasilis Kostas, two highly regarded Greek musicians with international acclaim, collaborate to create a dynamic and original musical performance called Swirling in the Aegean. The performance explores the potential of combining two musical instruments that bear a historical significance in Greek music, the lyre and the lute. Inspired by Mediterranean traditions and using original compositions and interactive improvisations, they create modern musical landscapes in real time, offering a unique listening experience.
The duo is accompanied by impressive live drawing by Soloύp, who captures and complements the stories and places that inspired the musical compositions. With his sketches he creates and destroys a story of images in real time, in front of the eyes of the audience, portraying it simultaneously with the music and in contrast to it.
The final result captures the fertile clash of the new with the old, as well as the creative contrast, interaction, and eventually blend of different musical traditions and styles into a harmonized ensemble.
Vincenzo Cornaro’s romance Erotokritos takes on a fresh, more liberated form in a musical performance that incorporates story-telling and visual elements, allowing the audience to fully grasp its plot. More specifically, the music of the performance emphasizes modern, original musical compositions and a diverse arrangement. These are the outcomes of collaboration, teamwork, and intercultural interaction among the artists – a lasting feature of the Labyrinth Musical Workshop’s work.
Snow Whites is a performance for two narrators and a four-member instrumental ensemble. In this performance, three Snow Whites come together to discuss the pains of growing up, the cost of coming of age, and the gifts of the woods. Snow Whites, like all fairy tales, knows no language, religious, or cultural boundaries.
Relying on the most vulnerable of all musical instruments, the human voice, they cross over time and lands, undergo changes, and offer us wonderful versions of their story from the Balkans, Europe, and Africa. The magical fairytales are songs that pass down from one generation to another, each time dressed in the rhythms and melodies of the community of the story-teller who narrates them.
Lucrece, the most virtuous wife in the whole of Rome, ignites an illicit passion in Tarquin, the king’s son. After being raped, entrapped in the contradictory ethical demands of her time, she kills herself. Her suicide triggers the expulsion of the kings and the establishment of the Roman Republic. This is the version of the story, as told in one of the most well-known European legends.
William Shakespeare’s narrative poem The Rape of Lucrece highlights the clash between modernity and the earlier, compact, medieval world that is falling apart: it portrays the struggle of the new, independent thinker against the outdated arbitrariness of the lords. The male world of the countryside, wars, and unbridled power is contrasted with the female world of innerness, negotiation, and ethical boundaries. Inspired by Shakespeare’s Lucrece, six musicians, two actors, and a choreographer collaborate to create a music theatre narrative, blending speech and movement with musical improvisations and scores from the late Renaissance, early Baroque, and the 20th century.
A spatial performance based on Das Lied von der Erde by Gustav Mahler
A freestyle artistic venture about the existential connection between humans and nature. A healing promenade, almost like an afternoon walk. An almost primeval, inner, psychotherapeutic conflict that makes peace with the determinism of co-existence.
In the spatial performance The Song of the Earth, the ensemble musicians are positioned at key locations along the main walking path on the island of Agios Achilleios in Small Prespa Lake, performing solo pieces by Billone, Xenakis, Murail, Saariaho, Yun, Hosokawa and other composers. The walk will end at the location of the reconciliation ritual, the partially demolished niche of the Agios Achilleios basilica, with the performance of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde [The Song of the Earth], in Schoenberg’s arrangement.
The audience’s unconfined wandering across the natural landscape and their almost random encounters with solo musical snippets from modern music of the past few decades, places them in the spotlight, almost at the centre of a contrast. The more, however, they move forward, the more they realize that all that is made with empathy and respect can co-exist in harmony. The conflict is increasingly weakening. At the end of the path, as the sun sets and Mahler’s music echoes in the 10th-century basilica, the audience not only loves each other, but also themselves.
The Wondrous Story of Hor-Hor Agha is a shadow puppet music theatre performance inspired by the 1875 operetta Leblebici hor-hor agha (The Chickpea Seller). It features original music for two singers and musicians from the Oros Ensemble, along with a new reading of the work, focusing on the tensions between the present and a past that is forever gone.
Searching for his daughter in the streets of a big city, the central hero clashes with a strange and at first hostile world, while his journey leads him to a path of transformation. Expanding its technical boundaries, the shadow puppet theatre form (featuring Eirini Mastora) transforms into the stage setting of a contemporary fairy tale. The music creates the background of sounds where the characters develop, while the text establishes a new story by combining folk and art traditions, oral and written language.
Three vocal ensembles, Isokratisses from Greece, Lot Kurbeti from Albania, and Abagar Quartet from Bulgaria, invited by WOMO and the female vocal ensemble CHÓRES, leave their mark on the musical performance BALKANIA, unfolding their expressiveness and aesthetics through their local musical traditions.
The repertoire selection aims to highlight the intersections and differences among them, creating a diverse canvas of Balkan colours and polyphonic styles. The elements of conflict include highlighting and distinguishing each national identity through language, the differences in musical structure, instruments, and details in musical execution, as well as in aesthetics.
The unique characteristics and influences of each of the musical traditions featured in the concert reflect the historical background and the challenging experiences deeply rooted in the collective memory of the nations mentioned above, during the 20th century. They also mirror the political will that shaped both the form and impact of these traditions on a global scale. Within a context of cultural exchange, the concert gives space to the differences that bring out the musical diversity, distinctiveness, and individuality of each region.