Tribute to Iannis Xenakis by Various, pet. 20 maj. 2022, Od (2022/2022), Alternative Stage, Athens, Greece

The Alternative Stage of ELS participates in the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of the great pioneer of music of the 20th century Iannis Xenakis with an extensive program of concerts and performances that covers the range from his radical solo writing to his stage work. Few names marked the front line of the international artistic avant-garde of the last century as much as that of Xenakis, an inexhaustible multi-creator with wide influence, who left Greece to settle in Paris during the civil war. His invention was never trapped in the traditional barriers that separate science from art or the arts: During the fifty years in which he was active, Xenakis saw music as a privileged field for the expression of universal principles and abstract structures, exploring its relation to other fields of human knowledge and activity, such as physics and philosophy, and applying to its composition processes by means of contemplative mathematics, set theory, or game theory. Alongside, The tribute of the Alternative Stage begins with the new choreographic approach of Lila Zafeiropoulou to the modern ballet of Xenakis Kraanerg, the composer's reaction to the transformative but also destructive power of the youth movements of the late 60's. The following are two concert programs in which distinguished soloists of contemporary music confront Xenakis's overly skilful percussion work (with pioneering works of music that explore the boundary between music organization and noise, often inspired by ancient Greek heritage and piano (with Stefanos Thomopoulos daring the performance of the composer's everything for the instrument). Finally, at the end of the tribute, the important contemporary music ensemble from Thessaloniki dissonArt ensemble presents a program of works by Xenakis for a room ensemble that spans the last two decades of the production of a great and irreconcilable creator.