Name: Tribute to Iannis Xenakis
Start: 2022-05-07T00:00:00.000Z
End: 2022-05-26T00:00:00.000Z
Location: Alternative Stage

Organization

Greek National Opera

Tribute to Iannis Xenakis

Athens

Greece

Alternative Stage

Public

Concert

Approved

Tribute to Iannis Xenakis: Tribute to Iannis Xenakis Xenakis

Ministry of Culture and Sports
2nd Greek National Opera Online Festival
Counterpoints
A “consonance” of Greek art music with public architecture
27 September – 31 October 2020
nationalopera.gr/en, GNO Facebook page, GNO YouTube channel, digitalculture.gov.gr 

The Greek National Opera presents its 2nd Online Festival titled “Counterpoints”*. The festival is curated by Giorgos Koumendakis and sheds light upon the relationship between Greek art music and architecture. The Festival’s videos will be streamed online from 27 September to 31 October 2020 and will remain available to the public for 30 days after their premiere. The videos will be streamed online at nationalopera.gr/en, on GNO’s Facebook page and YouTube channel, as well as on the website of the Ministry of Culture and Sports digitalculture.gov.gr.

Architecture and music are two arts that share a lot in common: the primacy of structure, the importance of shapes, contrasts and textures, and the deep and immediate communication with the viewer. Through the dialogue of these primordial arts, emblematic buildings of Athens converse with great works from the historical repository of Greek art music. Reaching from the Cretan Renaissance to the present day, works of architecture and music of a respective historical period and style complete each other, offering a fruitful experience to the audience. The Festival’s ultimate goal is to bring out our country’s musical and architectural legacy through the harmonious and equitable pairing of the images of the buildings with the sounds of the works, while communicating to the audience the Greek music and architectural creation.
The Festival was shot at some of the greatest buildings of Athens, such as the Church of the Holy Apostles at the Ancient Agora, the Gennadius Library, the French Institute, the Little Stock Exchange, the Athens Conservatoire, and the Athens International Airport “Eleftherios Venizelos”. In these places, celebrated Greek artists perform works of Londariti, Konstantinidis, Kalomiris, Ravel, Kounadis, Adamis, Dragatakis, Xenakis, Hatzis, Papadatos, Alexiadis, etc. The Festival is curated by Greek National Opera’s Artistic Director Giorgos Koumendakis. 

Giorgos Koumendakis notes: “When last March, in the midst of the pandemic, we began planning a new online artistic programme, we could not imagine how successful our 1st Online Festival (May-June 2020) would be. Each of its video performances attracted tens of thousands of viewers and many positive comments from across the globe.
After a lot of demanding shooting in the summer, the time has now come for the Greek National Opera’s 2nd Online Festival, titled Counterpoints, which shall engage Greek art music into a creative dialogue with public architecture. Our wish is to celebrate Greek musical creation, from the Cretan Renaissance to this day, bringing to the foreground some of the most remarkable compositions of great Greek composers, such as Londariti, Konstantinidis, Kalomiris, Kounadis, Adamis, Dragatakis, Xenakis, Hatzis, Papadatos, Alexiadis. We asked distinguished artists of the GNO and beyond, to study and interpret these emblematic art music works in prestigious buildings that form part of the historical legacy of Athens. From 29/9 to 31/10, we invite you to travel with us –through the screen of your computer, tablet or mobile phone– using our music and architectural legacy as a vehicle, and making stopovers at the Cretan Renaissance, the Interwar period, the encounter of our folk music with art music, modernism, Xenakis’s universe and the 21st century.”

More info and detailed programme: nationalopera.gr
GNO lead donor STAVROS NIARCHOS FOUNDATION

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.

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