Folk Music Analysis 2018 concerts in Thessaloniki
Tuesday 26 to Thursday 28 June
Amphitheatre Piraeus Bank Conference Center
The joint conference will host a series of stimulating music performances—one-hour length evening concerts—spotlighting the multi-faceted music of the Balkans and the Μediterranean. The events will feature traditional idioms (Balkan vocal group, Byzantine chant, instrumental group) as well as experimental ones (woodwinds and beatboxing, fusion ensemble, mixed media performance).
The three concerts of this year’s joint conference will take place at the Amphitheatre of the Piraeus Bank Conference Center (Katouni 12–14, in the Ladadika neighborhood).
PROGRAM
1st Concert: Tuesday 26 June, 20:00-21:00
Nikos Diminakis: Beatbox & Winds
modal4: Music from the ensemble’s recent CD
2nd Concert: Wednesday 27 June, 20:00-21:00
Choral Workshop of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki: Y. Constantinidis, Eight Asia Minor songs
Byzantine Choir of the State Conservatory of Thessaloniki: Selection of Byzantine hymns
STRINGLESS female a capella vocal group: Selection of traditional Balkan songs
3rd Concert: Thursday 28 June, 20:00-21:00
Athena Katsanevaki: Moiroloi Trilogy, composed by Dimitris Bakas
BAHARí/Flamenco Arabe: Flamenco music with kanun, flute, guitar and vocals
Entrance is free to all the participants of the conference and also to the citizens and visitors of Thessaloniki. The musical events are organized by the Local Organizing Committee. For more information, contact Costas Tsougras (co-chair).
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Nikos Diminakis: Beatbox & Winds
Beatbox is a vocal technique standing for the box that produces the beat, meaning briefly the performer’s mouth and it’s sounds. This term (i.e. beatbox) initially defined a historically recorded musical idiom that branched out of the American underground hip-hop movement of the 80s. By now it has grown to be a worldwide associated and dynamically evolving way of musical expression not only in the hip-hop culture but also in other musical genres like drum&bass, dub, dubstep, electro, techno, etc. Beatbox is also transforming rapidly in an umbrella term since it manages to combine a number of diverse sound production techniques of different ethnic groups in various periods of their cultural identity (i.e. mongolian throat singing, eefing, etc.). It acts as a continually expanding depository of musical sounds (produced solely by the performer’s mouth) and thus reflects somehow the ongoing ancestral music process of experimenting with every potential environmental sound in order to incorporate them gradually in an art form.
Furthermore, the wind instruments in use here are the flute, the baritone saxophone, the pvc didjeridou, the melodica and the double recorder. There is also a mouth harp presented, which is originally labeled as a lamellophone (plucked idiophone), but in this case is being played as a rhythmic drone-making wind instrument due to the respiratory techniques applied in it. The program is based on the successive alteration of the above instrumental suggestions along with the beatbox techniques in a number of original compositions/tunes.
modal4 lies between yesterday and today, post modernism and tradition, the “old ways” and the “shape of things to come”.
modal4 lies between black and white, without being gray but more as messenger through time reflecting the echoes of a forgotten ritual, the never ending agony of expressing the deeper and darker moments of a human soul. Music has always been a way to share and express our feelings and especially love, pain and grief… and that’s exactly what modal4 do… they share. They share through their music and performance adding us to their companion making each one part of their sonic ritual. Forgotten melodies and dusty soundscapes of another era coming forward through a variable prism of influences and references… from the vast musical tradition of the east mediterranean to the lush and reverberant dark wave sounds of the 80’s and from the nonconforming free jazz aesthetics to the post rock sonic spaces of the last decades.
modal4 is a band of four individuals contributing their own perspective to an ancient and still never ending journey to the deepest human emotions: Evgenios Voulgaris (yayli tanbur), Thanos Gountanos (fretless guitar), Dimitris Tasoudis (drums), Pavlos Spyropoulos (contrabass).
Choral Workshop of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Conductor: Erifili Damianou
Choral Workshop (“Chorodiako Ergastiri”) was founded in October 2016. It is a youth choir attached to the School of Music Studies of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Its members are students who have completed the compulsory course in the School’s Choir and are particularly interested in the further study and presentation of choral music. The repertoire of the group focuses on a capella music—renaissance, classical and contemporary— while special emphasis is given to the works by Greek composers. The group is frequently singing in concerts and formal ceremonies in the Aristotle University receiving excellent reviews. The “Choral Workshop” is conducted by Erifili Damianou.
In their AAWM concert they will present Yannis Constantinidis’s “Eight Asia Minor songs”, a set of 8 Greek folk songs from Asia Minor, idiomatically harmonized and arranged for mixed choir by the Greek composer Yannis Constantinidis (Smyrna 1903 – Athens 1984).
Byzantine Choir of the State Conservatory of Thessaloniki
Conductor: Petros Papaemmanouil
Byzantine Chant is the music of the liturgical rite of the Christian Roman Empire of the East from the time of the establishment of Constantinople (at the site of ancient Byzantium) in the early 4th century and persisting beyond the interruption of the Eastern imperial succession by the Ottoman conquest in 1453. The rite is still practised by tens of millions of Eastern Orthodox Christians whose native language, or liturgical language, is Greek. It has remained the dominant liturgy of the Christian East during the past 1500 years. The Byzantine chant continued to flourish after the fall of Constantinople, specifically in monasteries throughout the former empire and at the patriarchal see of Constantinople, and is now, besides its ritual function, an active field of artistic expression and musicological research.
The Byzantine Choir of the State Conservatory of Thessaloniki, conducted by Petros Papaemmanouil, professor of Byzantine Chant at the Conservatory and PhD candidate in Byzantine musicology, will present a selection of Byzantine hymns based on liturgical texts.
STRINGLESS is a vocal a capella group of six women singers of Bulgarian and Greek origin. The name STRINGLESS is a word pun on the English word meaning “without strings” and the onomatopoeic word meaning “shrews”, mythical creatures of the Greek folk tradition. Their first CD recording was recently published by OUTLANDISH Productions (2018). They are: Albena Koutova, Dorothea Michail, Vassiliki Alexiou, Elsa Mouratidou, Katerina Mavrofrydou and Stella Yaltzi.
The program of their AAWM concert is based on Greek folk songs from Epirus, Pontus and Macedonia, as well as on Bulgarian and Turkish folk songs. All orchestrations and harmonizations are polyphonic, even when the original song is intrinsically non-polyphonic, and they are devised by the members of the group.
Moiroloi Trilogy (2012–2013)
Composer: Dimitris Bakas
Vocals: Athena Katsanevaki
Released on CD (FATA) by Migro Records, London, 2015.
Miroloi is a trilogy for live traditional voice, electrocoustic sounds and field recordings. This four-dimensional composition functions as:
a) an archive of traditional songs and performances (ethnological field-research done by Athena Katsanevaki);
b) an aesthetic comparison of old and new performances (live voice) of the same traditional songs;
c) an attempt to bring closer traditional and contemporary forms of expression by mixing the above recordings with: electroacoustic sounds and field recordings; contemporary voice techniques (extended techniques); and classical instruments combined with contemporary techniques, such as prepared piano.
d) an archive of sounds of pre-industrial life, such as that of the loom, which have long disappeared from contemporary consciousness.
Flamenco is a kind of music originating from the southern part of Spain, Andalusia. There, the existing local music Andaluz, rich in elements of Baroque, Basque as well as Arabic and Byzantine music, was united with the gypsy culture giving birth to Flamenco.
BAHARí travel through the coexistence of the rhythms of Africa, the twelve meter forms, the very rich harmony comping of Flamenco music with the contrasting modal monophonic musical heritage of the maqam tradition of the Arab world. The result of this mixture is the well-known sound of Flamenco emphasizing its Middle Eastern elements. BAHARí is a newly formed trio and its members come from very different musical backgrounds. From the scope of European classical, Flamenco, Middle Eastern and Jazz training they find themselves in an endless field of musical experiments/ possibilities which just have started. Their first appearance was at the “Petit Paris” 2017 music Festival in Athens and since the beginning of 2018 they are working on their first Recordings.
They will present a number of tunes, original and/or rearranged for flamenco guitar, flute, qanun (kanun), as well as flamenco and arabic vocals.
Band members: Yota Baron (flamenco vocals), Anastassia Zachariadou (qanun, flute, Arabic vocals), Panos Kartimpelis (flamenco guitar)
