The artistic conflict among Romantic composers, with its significant social implications, is brought to the foreground through a unique piano recital by George-Emmanuel Lazaridis accompanied by a live performance featuring original movement by two dancers onstage: Theano Xydia and Natalia Bika.
The performance The War of the Romantics will take the audience on a journey across the mid-19th century, focusing on the clash between the aesthetics of Johannes Brahms and Franz Liszt.
In this context, the programme will include two iconic pieces from the piano repertoire: Brahms’ Four Ballades and Liszt’s Sonata in B minor – two compositions that reflect two entirely different and possibly conflicting musical styles that were pivotal in shaping the future of music. The Bazeos tower, a 17th-century historical monument at the center of Naxos, will serve as the backdrop for a dialogue between music and body that will lead to their harmonious union.
Within the Greek-speaking villages of the Salento plain in Southern Italy lies a captivating tradition that intertwines myth with reality and still echoes to this day. It has to do with the cure of women affected by the bite of a poisonous spider. It is the phenomenon of tarantism.
The performance La tarantata by Encardia is inspired by the faces of women in the remote areas of Southern Italy and, by extension, by women on a global scale who bear the “conflicts” imposed on them by their immediate surroundings or society. The women as lovers, mothers, wives, refugees, or victims of war, objects of desire, or abandonment, the “tarantata” women…! And as the conflict transforms into a mental poison, these women “cast the evil away” and are led to redemption through an ecstatic dance, to the beat of healer-musicians. The performance comes complete by inviting the audience to participate in a redemptive dance with clear references to the tarantism phenomenon.
The Wondrous Story of Hor-Hor Agha is a shadow puppet music theatre performance inspired by the 1875 operetta Leblebici hor-hor agha (The Chickpea Seller). It features original music for two singers and musicians from the Oros Ensemble, along with a new reading of the work, focusing on the tensions between the present and a past that is forever gone.
Searching for his daughter in the streets of a big city, the central hero clashes with a strange and at first hostile world, while his journey leads him to a path of transformation. Expanding its technical boundaries, the shadow puppet theatre form (featuring Eirini Mastora) transforms into the stage setting of a contemporary fairy tale. The music creates the background of sounds where the characters develop, while the text establishes a new story by combining folk and art traditions, oral and written language.
Phygital is an immersive event showcasing live audiovisual performances that blend digital and physical-analog musical instruments, complemented by digital projections.
The Phygital event is structured into three distinct live music performances of contemporary electronic music artists George Apergis and Alex Retsis, alongside simultaneous digital artwork projections by the artistic group DEN. This includes visual haikus, a collage of brief micro-compositions combining instrumental and synthetic forms, connected by a deconstructive and unpredictable storytelling.
In the first hour, the audience will experience a digital live music performance by Qebo (Alex Retsis), featuring a blend of electroacoustic and ambient music inspired by the architecture of the castle.
The second hour highlights the EMEX project by George Apergis and Alex Retsis, blending physical-analog instruments with digital technology to offer a dynamic interplay between digital and analog sounds.
The final hour is dedicated to an analog live performance where George Apergis will exclusively use vinyl records.
The music theatre performance In the Labyrinth: Accounts and Poems by Incarcerated Women brings to life poems, thoughts, and accounts of women who have been imprisoned, as well as those who have been released from prison.
The emotional fluctuations, internal conflicts, and mental struggle of these women are brought to the foreground through the performance of traditional songs from various parts of Greece and Southern Italy. Seven female artists – five musicians, an actress, and a dancer –join forces on stage to create a poetic, musical, and visual representation of the Labyrinth.
A contemporary ritual that blends storytelling with live music and dance, creating a performance that is both dynamic and ardent, while also embracing a more traditional (“doric”) approach to presenting various stage expressions, with the goal of vividly portraying on stage the Labyrinth found within the minds and souls of incarcerated women. A hymn to every individual’s personal journey towards the much-desired freedom.
We are the first to be part of a “co-habitation” arrangement between humans and machines. Experimentation no longer focuses on the dialogue but on the new content itself, along with the urgent, burning question: “We instead of Them or They instead of Us? Are we with Them? We as Them or They as Us”. The confrontation takes place at the only spot allowing room for a pause, in the uncharted space where artificial intelligence meets emotional intelligence.
Artificial Confidence is a musical techno-noir piece. The allegory running through it like a beam of light, and the ritual of an anthropo-mechanic event combine elements of music theatre with the norms of spoken word theatre. The libretto and stage direction emphasize the ambiguity of each Test without concrete data, while the musical composition constantly comments on the mechanics of modern mediation, where no one knows whom or what they are called upon to mimic – do creations mimic their creators or vice versa?
The international performer Erini presents the music and dance performance “Malés,” in which the thematic axis of “conflict” is drawn from the Cretan “mantinada”. In the Cretan dialect, “Malés” means quarrel/fight, and in this particular performance, it challenges the audience to view conflict not only as a destructive force but also as a source of creation and inspiration that emerges from cultural osmosis. Erini collaborates with Manolis Manousakis (music director) and Aristoula Toli (dance director) and interprets traditional Cretan songs in interesting orchestrations of an ever-evolving tradition. At the same time, the performance highlights the interconnected relationship between music, song, and dance, the threefold event, a dynamic phenomenon with performative power that constitutes an integral part of the artistic and cultural expression of the local Cretan culture, while emphasis is given to the content and meanings of the words. The conflict and its various aspects are depicted, visualized, and questioned through the “female gaze” in Cretan music.
Season is a participatory music theatre performance with an original dramaturgy focusing on the conflict between employers and employees in the food services sector.
During a gala in the courtyard of an archaeological museum, an unexpected fight between the owner and the catering employees will break out behind the scenes. The conflict will soon be transferred to the event venue, and the stage will transform into a political forum about tourism and seasonal work.
A frenzied performance aiming to shatter the facade of tourism, the promotion of a polished image, and the harmony of the music, in order to shed light on the underlying internal conflicts. A tribute to the hardworking individuals, those who pay and are paid for under the Greek Sun. Based on interviews, the performance transitions to pure fiction before returning to an artistic interpretation of reality.
The musical performance Nephelococcygiae and Chirping by Michalis and Pantelis Kalogerakis and Tonia Tzirita Zacharatou explores the relationship between humans and birds. In this stage production, poetic language that has been set to music intertwines with fragments of scientific facts, ornithological findings, and stories about birds.
Original musical compositions inspired by poems penned by Miltos Sachtouris, Napoleon Lapathiotis, Jacques Prévert and others, are presented live by a group of musicians and two performers, as they struggle to investigate the possibility of coexistence between humans and birds in a present that is marked by continuous conflicts. What does survive today from the utopian city of Aristophanes’ Nephelococcygia? What stories are hidden behind seabirds flying to the land in search of food, migratory birds colliding with airplanes, or pigeons in city centers? What songs lie within their flying lives?
Conflict, whether destructive, life-bearing, or both, is a fundamental state where different energies, forces, materials, humans, views, and cultures meet – an encounter that radically transforms all the involved parts.
Ergon ensemble presents three fascinating, modern musical pieces treating the theme of conflict, in a single narrative for piano, clarinet, cello, violin, and narrator.
The programme will feature the pieces Shattila (2004-05) by Samir Odeh-Tamimi, composed after the Sabra and Shatila massacre on 16 September 1982, Stalag VIIIA (2018) by Tristan Murail, referring to the Nazi concentration camp Stalag VIII-A, and Quatuor pour la fin du temps (1940) by Olivier Messiaen, a quartet written by the composer while he was held captive at the Stalag VIII-A concentration camp. These pieces will be combined with scientific and literary excerpts, poems, and original texts discussing conflict in the past and present, (and potentially for eternity), all curated, compiled, and presented by Paris Mexis.