Chios, Aller / Retour

Between 1898 and 1899, French wanderer and linguist Hubert Pernot met the self-taught intellectual N. Kanellakis and recorded 114 traditional melodies from the island of Chios. A fortunate encounter! This was not the first time that composers explored this rich musical and cultural material: a prominent position among them is held by Maurice Ravel with his Cinq mélodies populaires grecques [Five Greek Folk Melodies, 1904-1906] and Michalis Adamis with his Folk Songs from Chios (1989).

Lefteris Veniadis selects twelve of these recorded folk songs from Chios to recreate and reintroduce them to the public. In this performance, he proposes an alternative, unified narrative of the local collective experience on stage, serving as a contrasting foil to a contemporary chorus. This dramaturgical venture aims to bring the past into the present while also looking to the future.