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
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.
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.
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?
Anaeresis Piano Composition Meeting | 19 Feb 2022 | 19:00 (Athens) | online presentations
Panayiotis Demopoulos is performing at the Anaeresis Piano Composition Meeting. Among the works is also my “d’ogni luce muto” (2003) a work for piano solo commissioned by SCI and ASCAP.
program:
G. Vogiatzis: Condolatory Bodies
B. Field: Fire
D. Papageorgiou: …d’ogni luce muto
P. Safar: Red tailed hawk
L. Sakellarides: Quiet mind
A. Rizzella: Il silenzio degli ignavi
N. Harizanos: Great expectations
“d’ogni luce muto…” consists of a limited number of brief chord progressions that are woven, rewoven, and occasionally juxtaposed to form longer static moments into the structure. The reduction of the sound elements, on the other hand, is intended to shift the listeners’ attention to the inner life of the piano – it’s resonance. So, the music exists rather in the space between the piano and the audience.
Premiere of “Synecdochai” for 15 performers (clarinet, trombone, marimba, harp, cello, yiayli tambour, oud, ney, qanun, Zarb, trumpet, electric guitar, double bass, piano, drums set).Kornilios Selamsis – conductor.
Commissioned by the Alternative Scene of the Greek National Opéra, Niarchos Cultural Center, Athens.
Program Note
The starting point for the work Syncedochai is the micro-history of the Notaras brothers’ rivalry over a woman (Makrygiannis, Memoirs), which evokes a series of interesting associations, referring to the various levels of conflict between Greek groups over the distribution of power. Rather than a description of these syncretic relationships, I aim at the structural level, creating superpositions of logical conflict through musical ideas of a heterogeneous nature. By avoiding a unified narrative and projecting alternative idioms of musical discourse, I attempt to highlight the fluidity of relationships between disparate materials and dispositions
The work is part of the Greek Songbook for the 200th anniversary of the Greek Revolution of 1821, edited by the composer Cornelios Selamsis. Over 30 creators from the fields of scholarly and popular music and performing arts engage in a series of bold musical constructions, songs and images.
The foundation of the project is the use of a series of anthologized historical materials (texts, scores or narratives) related directly or indirectly to persons and things of the era of the revolution – a fragmentary landscape made of lifeless ruins, around which the descendants build their contemporary superstructure.
Without, otherwise, any attempt to disguise its inherent contradictions, the musical material produced is aligned at the level of its sonic negotiation by the use of ten instruments of European and five of traditional music, in a confrontational scheme that aspires to render in a formal way the series of disparate currents that converged in the cultural and political melting pot of 1821.
The production is supported by a donation from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org] for the creation of the National Opera’s anniversary programme for the 200th anniversary of the Greek Revolution of 1821.
…am I hearing voices within the voice? for fixed media is presented at the 5th Annual Research on Contemporary Composition Conference, at the University of North Georgia, Dahlonega Campus, Georgia, U.S.A.
October 30, 2021, Breakout Session 3 – 2:00pm – 5:00pm Georgia GA, USA Time ( 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM GMT)October 31, 2021 (Gainesville Campus):Acousmatic Installation (Mobile) – 2:00pm – 5:00pm Georgia GA, USA Time ( 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM GMT)
Program Note “. . . am I hearing voices within the voice?” 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 into the subleties 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.
Delian Academy for New Music | Online Edition | June 23, 2021
Ensemble in residence Proxima Centauri performing pieces by Havel, Levine, Bedrossian and Papageorgiou.
Marie-Bernadette Charrier –artistic director / saxophone
Sylvain Millepied – flûte
Benoit Poly – percussion
Hilomi Sakaguchi – piano
Christophe Havel – électronique
Program Note
“…risuona piu lontano che mai” is a work shaped and, at the same time, fractured by the brevity of its mnemonic fragments, which reappear in manifold and often distressing reocurrences and insistent retrospections through a series of regenerations and rearrangements of the material. Echoing the strangeness of an indescribable sound, these mnemonic fragments are advancing and regressing non-linearly, in stumbles and stutters, uncertainties and hesitations. They are treated as, what Deleuze (and Guattari would call, blocks of becomings in contemplative and non-hierarchical dialogues with one another. As something happening in the process, in intimate intimacy.
“A becoming is always in the middle; one can only get it by the middle. A becoming is neither one, or two, nor the relation of the two; it is the in-between, the borderline or line of flight… If becoming is a block (a line-block), it is because it constitutes a zone of proximity and indiscernability, a no-man’s land, a non-localizable relation sweeping up the two distant or contiguous points, carrying one into the proximity of the other – and the border-proximity is indifferent to both contiguity and to distance.” Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Continuum, London and New York, 2003), p. 293.
Languages of the Unheard by Danae Theodoridou & Dimitri Papageorgiou. A live experiment of conversing in the language of protest, participatory performance, 2020.
Freiraum Festival 2020 Online Artistic Interventions | Saturday, October 31st, 2020 | 16:45-17:00 Greek Time (15:45-16:00 CET or 10:45 EDT) | watch live at http://www.freiraumfestival.eu
“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?
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)
Languages of the Unheard is 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.
A collaborative, decentralised, democratised festival taking place simultaneously in the physical and the digital worlds.Developed jointly by more than 40 organisations spread around Europe, the Freiraum Festival includes an Online Summit and more than 20 Local Events, dealing with two issues that have been accelerated by the recent pandemic crisis: the “State of Freedom in Europe today: the ongoing biopolitical crisis and emerging social movements”, and the “State of the Arts: new formats and audiences”.During three days at the end of October (30/10-1/11), established thinkers and audiences around Europe gather to discuss these issues, online and offline, in specially conceived events which transform the local into a subjective centre.The online Summit combines a studio and teleconferencing platform (Zoom). It includes talks, discussions, artistic interventions especially made for the online format, and live connection with the local events held by the Freiraum partners.More information & programme: www.freiraumfestival.eu
dimitri papageorgiou 