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.
Poreia Theatre participates in the Ministry of Culture’s programme “All of Greece, One Culture” for the first time with the performance A Few Pieces of Stone. In this partially walking performance, young people of Greek-British descent from Thrace will visit the homeland of their parents and grandparents and will be guided through the archaeological site of the Ancient Zone.
During the tour, they will raise various questions about the everyday life in the Ancient Zone, its peak and decline, the excavation history of Thrace, the significance of ancient monuments, etc. The discussion goes beyond learning about our homeland, touching on themes such as the seizure and destruction of cultural treasures – like the Parthenon marbles –, cultural identity, identity narratives and the crises that stem from them, the role of local cultural heritage, its connection to all of humanity, and more. At the end of the tour, everyone will challenge themselves with the crucial questions: “What is a monument beyond just a few pieces of stone?”, “Why is it important to me personally?”, “Why should I care?”.
Educational workshop
During the making of the performance, students from local schools, young individuals, will participate in a workshop led by the director Sofia Vgenopoulou. The workshop will take place in the Archaeological Museum of Alexandroupolis. It has been designed to show how History and cultural identity are reflected in the eyes of the local youth, gather material for the final shaping of the event, and encourage the active involvement of a group of students in the performance.
When George Seferis visits Cappadocia in 1950, some three decades after he himself left as an immigrant from Vourla in Smyrna, his birthplace, he is impressed by the fragments of previous civilizations he found there. He visits the frescoes he finds in the cavernous churches, sensing the fragility of a place that has been a refuge for many cultures in times of war and persecution, recording his observations in the form of a diary. Instead of focusing on the clash of cultures and hostilities, he seeks answers in the figures of the frescoes and in the figure of the popular craftsman who captures ‘with clumsiness, but also with all the coolness of spontaneous gesture’ an authenticity that may have been lost in religious iconography through its gradual standardisation. The collective, and in his case personal, trauma creatively gives way to the observation of a source of human strength that points to the common root of existence outside of ethnic divisions.
How can the creativity found in these forms of spontaneous and symbolic production be translated into the present? Are folk art production and its echoes a vocabulary capable of incorporating historical and social resonances? Could folk art correspond to a sense of identity rooted in the primordial and the universal, as opposed to national identity?
The group exhibition Re-exploding Constellations traces the interactions and divergences between two cultures meeting within an existing geographic context, while extending beyond it through the narratives of the materials themselves and the connections proposed by the participating artists. Through six installation-artworks, the artists present their own interpretations drawing on the study of styles, traditional art forms, material and immaterial rituals, historical and anecdotal narratives.
Parallel activities
Folktale workshop for children by Filia Dendrinou (4/7 at 11.00)
Guided tour of the exhibition with the curator and artists (4/7 at 18.00)
Narration of folktale by Filia Dendrinou (4/7 at 19.30)
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.
A theatrical piece that explores the “Odyssey” of the artist Renato Mordo and his wife Trude, set against the backdrop of his tragic imprisonment in Haidari during the German Occupation of Athens. An Austrian Jew of Greek and, for a short time, also of German, nationality, Mordo is an easy target in a time when the world has been divided into camps.
The main focus in this piece is on the Time that is running out, as the decision to transfer Mordo to Auschwitz is still pending. Through his correspondence with his wife Trude, her dreams and nightmares, her great love for Music and Theatre, and her inner conflicts are brought to life, as her descent, religion, nationality, and artistic identity sometimes serve as pathways to salvation, while at other times they lead to her condemnation.
The second protagonist on the stage is Music. Kalliopi Mitropoulou brings compositions in the style of the Inter-war era to life, taking us on a journey from the African coasts to the cabarets of Central Europe.