ZEITSTRÖME FESTIVAL – Tage für aktuelle Musik | SONAR QUARTETT / SOFIA LABROPOULOU – works for Kanun and string quartet | Akademie für Tonkunst, Darmstadt, Germany | Feb 11, 2023 | 19:00
The highly virtuosic Sonar Quartet and the Kanun player Sofia Labropoulou present works by Dimitri Papageorgiou and Stefan Pohlit, which were developed especially for these musicians. The Turkish zither meets the traditional string quartet and together they promise extraordinary and exciting sound experiences.
The Sonar Quartet’s composition commissions are funded by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. The concert is sponsored by the German Music Council as part of the NEUSTART KULTUR program with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
Program
Dimitri Papageorgiou (*1965) Oumuamua for Kanun and string quartet
Stefan Pohlit (*1976) eyéo (Streichquartett #5) for Kanun and string quartet
In collaboration with the Greek kanunist Sofia Labropoulou, the Sonar Quartet is developing new commissioned works by Dimitri Papageorgiou and Stefan Pohlit, as well as its own framework program that continues to spin the aesthetic directions of the compositions on the borders of improvisation. Against the background of the arithmetic tradition of the Aegean region, the focus is now on the development of a microtonal playing practice, on which the modern kanun (descendant of the Pythagorean monochord) is based.
With Sofia Labropoulou, the ensemble focuses on a personality who has translated the musical heritage of the European and Aegean musical traditions into a living practice. Papageorgiou’s and Pohlit’s completely different perspectives are flanked within the program by a separate improvisation laboratory, which transforms the purely subjective perspectives of the compositional styles in the mirror of the equally subjective “interaction culture” of the ensemble. The framework program is also based in parts on composed works of the Turkish makam tradition, which the ensemble arranges and alienates independently before becoming independent with the theoretical foundations of the arithmetic tradition.
With
Sonar Quartet: Susanne Zapf (violin), Wojciech Garbowski (violin), Ian Anderson (viola), Konstantin Manaev (cello); Sofia Labropoulou (kanun)
Program
Works by Stefan Pohlit and Dimitri Papageorgiou
Info
The concert will be recorded by SRF2 and broadcast on 15.2.
On the occasion of the 100th birthday of Iannis Xenakis, the Bremen Percussion Ensemble commissions 3 generations of Greek composers in its homage. Grouped around the work Okho by Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) are 4 world premieres by Georgia Koumará (1991), Petros Leivadas (1990), Irini Amargianaki (1980) and Dimitri Papageorgiou (1965).
The works were written as part of the Schlag>|<Art project of the Bremen Percussion Ensemble.
Performances in Germany
December 1st, Kulturkirche St. Stephani Bremen
December 3rd, Tonalisaal, Hamburg
December 6th, Unerhörte Musik, BKA Theater, Berlin
Program
Iannis Xenakis 1922-2001 “Okho” (1989) for 3 percussionists
Irini Amargianaki *1980 “a lullaby for Xenakis” (2022) premiere for 4 percussionists
Georgia Koumará *1991 ” Perceptives on radical attention” (2022) premiere for 4 percussionists
Petros Leivadas *1990 “Night watches” (2022) UA for 4 percussionists
Dimitri Papageorgiou *1965 “Divagations” (2022) UA for 4 percussionists
In the gallery above, rehearshing In the Vestige of the Present in the scope of CROSSROADS 2022: Contemporary Music Days in Armenia with Ensemble Assonance and the fabulous Anahit Ararati Dilbaryan, Mikayel Navasardyan and Narek Avagyan through the lens of the immensely talented photographer Mane Hovhannisyan
Many thanks to Aram Hovhannisyan, Ruben Antonyan, Sergey Umroyan, Haykuhi Alaverdyan, and of course the performers of Ensemble Assonance for making this residency a joyful experience.
A video of the performance of the work is due at the end of October.
33rd Daegu International Contemporary Music Festival | Ensemble iiiiiiiii | 대구콘서트하우스 챔버홀 Chamber Hall | Thursday 25/08/22, 19:30 |
au moins … (Fr. for “at the very least”) occurs in shifting times. What happened and what happens at every single moment punctuate each other… In reconstructions… Glimpses of the past are brought back to the flux of the present… Fragile interpolations enforce some semblance of unity… Until something, almost spontaneous, changes the way we orient to sound… On time… and beyond…
The work was commissioned by ensemble iiiiiiiii, Seongmin Ji – artistic director.
33rd Daegu International Contemporary Music Festival | Ensemble iiiiiiiii | 대구콘서트하우스 챔버홀 Chamber Hall | Thursday 25/08/22, 19:30 |
The world premiere of au moins… (2022) for flute, bass clarinet, violin, and piano is taking place at the Daegu International Contemporary Music Festival (Cheol Ha Park, Artistic Director), in a concert that also entails works by Siho Kim, Simon Steen-Andersen, Caspar Johannes Walter, Alex Mincek, Yukiko Watanabe, Enno Poppe, and Eunsil Kwon.
au moins … (Fr. for “at the very least”) occurs in shifting times. What happened and what happens at every single moment punctuate each other… In reconstructions… Glimpses of the past are brought back to the flux of the present… Fragile interpolations enforce some semblance of unity… Until something, almost spontaneous, changes the way we orient to sound… On time… and beyond…
The work was commissioned by the Ensemble iiiiiiiii.
ensembleiiiiiiiii is an ensemble founded in 2014 to devote itself to contemporary music. ensemble iiiiiiiii led ‘iN International contemporary music festival’ in which composers, musicians and visual artist from six countries including UK, Italy, Sweden, Russia, and Austria participated and sponsored by AVL CF, Austria’s leading art sponsorship foundation, and the Austrian Embassy in Korea. ensemble iiiiiiiii pursues concerts and programs internationally, such as performances being broadcast on ORF Ö1, Austria’s largest national broadcaster. recently, we have commissioned a recording session by chinese composer, Z.Huang from solo to ensemble pieces and invited by various organization and composer’s group.
ICMC 2022 (International Computer Music Conference) is hosted by the University of Limerick in Limerick, Ireland between Jul 3 and 9 in-person and online.
Among dozens of very interesting pieces, my work “…am I hearing voices within the voice?” for fixed media is presented as a part of the concert program on Jul 7.
inner sOUndscapes | Pitman Recital Hall, Catlett Music Center | April 29, 2022 | 20:00
“…am I hearing voices within the voice?” will be performed at the University of Oklahoma School of Music within the concert series inner sOUndscapes, curated by professor Konstantinos Karathanasis.
The work was composed in more voices and vocal manifestations from samples of principally non-verbal vocalizations, reconstructed by fragmenting, overlaying, and filtering the vocal timbres, to accommodate my own requirements
During the composition process, I was more interested in the subtleties of spoken sound when speech is deprived of meaning, the subtle pauses, speech cadences, evolving dynamics, the stumbles, the stammers, the um’s, and ah’s, the speeding up and slowing down.
The program entails works by Andriotis, Daniels, Karathanasis, Papageorgiou, Tomlinson, and Vanderburg.
Ensemble of the Performance Practice of Contempoary Music (PPCM): Gregory Chalier – flute/piccolo flute, Elena Arbonies Jauregui – clarinet/bass clarinet, Lea Moullet – violin, Leo Morello – cello
The outHEAR New Music Week, is an international symposium and master class for composition, featuring Ensemble Klangforum Wien in collaboration with four members of Performance Practice in Contemporary Music (PPCM) ensemble. Is organized by the Mayoralty of Culture and Sciences of the City of Larissa (Panos Sapkas, deputy mayor) and it is taking place from April 1st – April 10th, 2022 at the Municipal Conservatory of Larissa.
The outHear New Music Week was initiated by Christos Lenoutsos, pianist, and is co-organized by the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz, the Department of Music Studies of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. It is under the auspices of the Austrian Embassy in Athens, Greece.
The outHEAR Symposium and Master Class in composition is an intensive curriculum in composition. Our Composer Fellows work closely with the world-class performers of the Ensemble Klangforum Wien and distinguished faculty, Franck Bedrossian, Dimitri Papageorgiou, and Orestis Toufektsis, in one-on-one lessons and mentoring, masterclasses, coaching, rehearsals, discussions, and performances.
Concertzender, the Netherlands |Crosslinks – Electronic Frequencies | Languages of the Unheard | Wednesday 23th March 2022, 23:00 CET
The radio station “Concertzender” in the Netherlands has dedicated three episodes of its broadcasting program to the 5th Tehran International Electronic Music Festival (TIEMF).
The first episode is going to be published on Wednesday 23th March 2022, 23:00 CET, and includes the work Languages of the Unheard A live experiment of conversing in the language of protest, participatory performance, which I co-created with Danae Theodoridou in 2020. To listen to the broadcast, please visit https://www.concertzender.nl/programma/electronic_frequencies_653402/
Languages of the Unheard. Commissioned by Common Lab – Goethe-Institut Excellency Initiative by Goethe-Institut Thessaloniki & ArtBOX in collaboration with TIF-HELEXPO, Freiraum, and Institute Hypewerk for Postindustrial Design, in the context of the State of the Arts. Concept, creation: Danae Theodoridou. Composition: Dimitri Papageorgiou. Participants: Kate Adams (UK), Maria Apostolakea (France), Marijana Cvetkovic (Serbia), Ivana Filip (Croatia), Elena Koukoli (Greece), Janeda Milio (Albania), Eleni Mylona (Switzerland), Stefanie Schweiger (Austria), Elena Stamatopoulou (Greece), Tina Yotopoulou (Greece)
The rest of the program entails works by Pedro García-Velásquez, Giacomo Guerrini, Marco Alberghini, Sam Barreto Cardoso Bertoldi, Angelo Marrone, Armando Vanzi, Alessia Anastassopulos, and Erfan Javadi.
Don’t miss this amazing program and also the news item, which is written by the amazing Concertzender.
Check out the bio for having access to the broadcasts link.
tiemf.com | 19 Feb 2022 | 21:30 Central European Time |
“Languages of the Unheard: at the opening concert of the Tehran International Electronic Music Festival, on February 19, 2022. The work will stay online until March 5th on the festival’s webpage (tiemf.com) Languages of the Unheard, is an experiment of conversing in the language of protest, we created together with Danae Theodoridou for Freiraum Festival 2020. Languages of the Unheard was commissioned by the project “Common Lab”, a Goethe-Institut Excellency Initiative by Goethe-Institut Thessaloniki & ArtBOX, in collaboration with TIF- HELEXPO and Freiraum Festival 2020. Curated by Christos Savvidis. Forever grateful to the lovely women, Maria Apostolakea, Marijana Cvetkovic, Ivana Filip, Elena Koukoli, Janeda Milo, Eleni Mylona, Stefanie Schweiger, Έλενα Σίγμα & Tina Yotopoulou, who inhabited our idea with such generosity and devotion!
Program notes
‘WHAT WE MUST SEE is that a riot is the language of the unheard.’, Martin Luther King
Following a performance score, i.e. a list of instructions similar to those of a board game, Languages of the Unheard construct an online visual and auditory manifesto based on the language of signs and slogans coming from important protests in different European countries from the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC) or ‘Common Market’ in 1957 to 2020.
Playing with the performativity of zoom’s feature to ‘rename’ ourselves, we will change constantly our names using the language of those signs, producing a written dialogue in the language of protest. During this dialogue, parts of our words will be audio processed and fed back into the dialogue in different ways, creating a soundscape of languages of the unheard.
This ‘silent’ conversation aims to reveal the materiality of the language of protest in order to create an embodied experience of its social force. What stays from our common fights in public space when we don’t have the proximity of our bodies? How can we turn immaterial language into a material ‘action’ in the way Arendt defined the term as the human ability to initiate something in public space that addresses the many without being able to control its outcome in advance?
dimitri papageorgiou 