Grendel Babies "Oh My" album release party

I am very excited to be performing in this! It's been years in the making!

·.·.·.·.·.·.

“Oh My” is the debut album by the band Grendel Babies. The album features ten tracks composed by Grendel Babies frontwoman Marilena Zackheos. Mixing elements from jazz, baroque, folk, rock, incorporating tsifteteli, waltz, and swing rhythms, as well as changing time signatures, the work embraces diversity.

Expect to hear somber odes like “Enchantress” with lyrics from Sappho about the goddess Aphrodite, dark comical ballads about failed loves like “Birth of the Beheader” and “Eating,” loony swing tunes such as “Ophelia”, as well as manic anthems like “Hiroshima Maidens”, a five-and-a-half-minute history of plastic surgery and of the role that war has played in its development. 

Appearing live are the Cyprus-based Grendel Babies members: Marilena Zackheos on keys and vocals, Ioulios Georgakopoulos on drums and percussion, Alexia Yiangou on cello, Mike Zachariades on bass, Charitini Kyriakou on tzouras, Andreas Papapetrou on accordion, Julia Petrou Michaelides and Eleni Skarpari on vocals. 

The Grendel Babies' stage performance will be followed by a live DJ party, and competitions with the chance to win prizes. DJ Maria Panosian will grace the decks with select offbeat, electro-swing and retro tunes. Bring your wingtips and character shoes! 

Saturday, March 25 2017 at 09:00 pm
Kosmiko Kentro Antonaki, 17 Vasiliou Voulgaroktonou, Nicosia, Cyprus

The entrance fee is 10 Euros including a CD. 
For reservations, call 22664697

Also this month:
Grendel Babies unplugged album launch
Tuesday March 28 2017 at 08:30 pm
Prozac Kafenio, 3A Medondos, Nicosia, Cyprus

Parallax 09 - Exercise: Les Noces

Exercise: Les Noces by choreographer Elena Koukoli is a performance/installation that will be presented at The Asylum, in Peckham on Sunday 29th January as part of the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance Parallax series.

I will be participating in this event as a sound designer. Following Elena's example, I've worked with recordings of Igor Stravinsky's Les Noces and, after some rather severe editing, created a long soundtrack for the performance.

Further information on the event below the flyer.

Elena Koukoli’s Exercise: Les Noces pushes the limits of performance by interweaving music, dance and visual art. The work translates Bronislava Nijinska’s iconic ballet Les Noces to an installation of ‘ready-made choreographies’: replicated and re-performed artworks, design objects and video clips. Throughout the three hour event, the audience is invited to watch and listen, move around, come and go as they please or even attend a self-defence class. Exercise: Les Noces expands the conventional verges of dance performance, introducing a durational installation that challenges the frames of both theatre and gallery.

4pm-7pm - Admission Free
The Asylum, Caroline Garden’s Chapel, Peckham, London SE15 2SQ

Further information at: trinitylaban.ac.uk/whats-on/research-events/parallax-09-exercise-les-noces

© Elena Koukoli, 2013

Bastard Assignments at the Colouscape Music Festival

Well this is a first! I've never had a piece of mine performed in an inflatable venue before! This Saturday come and immerse yourselves in a maze of colour and sound: London composers collective Bastard Assignments are hosting an exciting performance event at the Colourscape (it's sort of an exceptionally large and colourful bouncy castle you can roll around, jump or lie in while listening to the music) for the 2016 Colourscape Music Festival, featuring work by Maria-Christina, Vitalija Glovackyte, Oli Haylett, Andreas Papapetrou and Caitlin Rowley.

Maria-Christina (harp) and Thodoris Ziarkas (double bass) will perform a new version of Spindle, a piece that explores two of my artistic obsessions: tying things up with yarn and audience participation!

Details on tickets and times:

17th September, 1-5pm at the Clapham Common [ Windmill Drive, London SW4 9DE ]

Ticket prices (admission for an hour): Adult £10, Child £5, Family £28

Further information in the Colourscape Festival Brochure.

Caryatid Unplugged at the Rosemary Branch Theatre

Quite an interesting time to be in the UK - and this might provide stimulus for further conversations:

Evi Stamatiou's Caryatid Unplugged (the Brexit edition) will be presented at the Rosemary Branch Theatre 29th June to 1st July 2016. It is a wacky play using a mix of comedy, cabaret and mime performance styles as a means to discuss issues of immigration and populist politics in the UK and Greece through the eyes of a bewildered Caryatid stuck inside the British Museum.

The play features some music by yours truly! Further information below.

Get your tickets here: http://www.rosemarybranchtheatre.co.uk/?event=caryatid

Evi Stamatiou performing Caryatid Unplugged in MONOMAFFIA Pärnu Teatrifestival 2014

In a madly comic performance pitching modern anti-immigration dogma against a wry wink from the ancient world, celebrated political theatre artist Evi Stamatiou satirizes the British Government’s ironic position – on the one hand refusing to return the Greek marbles (here represented by Stamatiou’s touching embodiment of a lone female statue), and on the other, unceremoniously resisting the arrival of the unwanted Greek, presented in ribald comic form as Rita, an economic migrant wishing to stay in Blighty.  Heralded as creating “a world of bubbly satire”, Stamatiou punctures the po-faced indifference of David Cameron and others, and presents Rita’s desire to remain and the marbles’ desire to leave as a playful, but direct challenge to the questionable status quo.

After a successful run at The Edinburgh Festival and Monomaffia Festival in Estonia, this hilarious show will ruffle feathers in London for the first time 6 days after the EU referendum.  Whatever Britain decides, what will happen to Rita and the statue? Are they in or out?

Her infectious delivery wins over the audience. Under the slapstick, the finger stays firmly on our political pulse, and towards the end the message suddenly becomes shockingly clear when the spotlight turns on the exploitation at the heart of Europe’s dark underbelly – The Stage

Current cast and creatives: Evi Stamatiou (writer/director/performer), Ellen Macleod (performer), Tom White (performer) and Andreas Papapetrou (music). Many thanks to Matt Smith for design and lighting tips.

Pudili: New music works for children

Join us for a free concert on June 12th 2016 at the Municipal Conservatory of Petroupoli, Greece, featuring premieres of six new works for young children. I am participating with a work called "Psithyros tis limnis" (The lake's whisper) for children's choir and handheld percussion. See poster for further details.

"Out of thin air" in Sound and Movement - 2nd April

Rehearsal for "Out of thin air" - 20 March 2016

This Saturday, 2nd April at 6pm, choreographer Elena Koukoli and I are presenting our collaborative project titled "Out of thin air", a promenade piece for dancers, small choir and electronics (tape part). The performance will be part of in Sound and Movement and the event will also host a performance by the improvising percussion and electronics duo Far Rainbow (Bobby Barry and Emily Mary Barnett) with dancer Inês Zinho Pinheiro and "We are on the same page" by composer Vassilis Chatzimakris, performed by members of the In(s)core collective.

The event will take place at the Old Finsbury Town Hall, Rosebery Avenue, London EC1R 4RP.

I hope to see some familiar faces there! Here is the link to the facebook event if you want more information: https://www.facebook.com/events/1685901724992880

Please note that due to staffing limitations we cannot sell tickets at the door - so if you plan to come you will need to purchase them online in advance. Here is the link for the tickets: https://billetto.co.uk/en/events/zero-wave-presents-sound-and-movement-pieces-for-dance    

Dancer group rehearsal for "Out of thin air" - 20 March 2016

"Out of Thin Air"
A collaborative project between choreographer Elena Koukoli and composer Andreas Papapetrou.

Exploring notions of emptiness and excess, this performance invites the audience to navigate the space and seek out the drifting gestures and meaningless utterances happening in the void. Performers: Patricia Auchterlonie, Katerina Barabouti, Rebecca Callow, Vassilis Chatzimakris, Sandra Elphinston, Becky Leslie, Caroline Mawer, Rena Minegishi, Maria Nikitidou, Zina Abdul Nour, Becky O'Brien, Pavlina Papadopoulou, Andreas Papapetrou, Hannah Parsons & Robert Suchy.

Call for performers! - 2nd April 2016

I'm working on a project in collaboration with choreographer Elena Koukoli, which explores the concept of air as breath. I'm seeking performers who are comfortable using their voices to create soundscapes - singers, actors and amateur vocal enthusiasts - to help me realise my part in this: a small vocal ensemble with electronics - duration c.15 minutes. The performers do not need to have extensive experience in choral singing as the piece is not technically demanding, but will need to be comfortable with basic interaction with dancers and audience during performance (i.e. walking to different spots in the hall - no acting necessary!).

The concert date is the 2nd of April (6pm) and the venue is the Old Finsbury Town Hall. The piece is not difficult to perform vocally but it will require a couple of short rehearsals (to get used to the graphic score and series of actions). The first rehearsal will be on 24th of March, 7-8.30pm in Greenwich (email me for further information). The next, same time and place on the 31st.

The evening will also include an improvised performance for drums and electronics by Emily Mary Barnett and Bobby Barry (Far Rainbow) accompanied by dancer Inês Zinho Pinheiro (and quite possibly more tba).

If you are interested in this project please let me know using the contact form of this website or my email. I look forward to hearing from you!

Finished the PhD!

As some of you may know I had my viva voce examination for my PhD thesis yesterday. It all went smoothly and I got a straight pass! 

If you are curious to see what this was all about, at the bottom of this post you'll find a link to the portfolio website with the videos of the pieces I created as part of my research. Some of it has been published here already but most of it hasn't, so you're bound to find something you haven't seen before! Check it out here:

artefactsofperformance.blogspot.com

Photo taken after the performance of Inquietus at the ICA, 28 May 2013 © C. Zografou

Khôra residency

I'm happy to announce that I've been selected to participate in this years Khôra Residency, a new 10-day residency program for cinema and sound artists, on the Cycladic island of Syros. The residency will play host to a select group of artists working on film/video and sound/music, for an intensive collaborative project. The program is a joint initiative by Syros Sound Meetings and Syros International Film Festival.

more information here: http://syrosmeetings.org/residency

Hopefully this will be my view for the next few days!

Parallax 05: Trinity Laban Composers at the ICA

Dear friends!

My piece "The Garden of Listening" for ensemble is going to be performed at the ICA for Trinity Laban's Parallax 05. Join us on Friday the 6th of February! You can find more information and tickets in the links below.

The Garden of Listening is a musical environment that works as an installation of fixed short duration with live performers. Set up as an exhibition of sounds and the performers creating them, it invites the audience to move through the space, choosing which of these "exhibits" to observe and for how long. Moving through the Garden this way - much like a bee travelling from flower to flower - each audience member follows a different path and receives a personalised experience of the performance.

Parallax 05: Trinity Laban Composers at the ICA

The Trinity Laban Research and Composition Departments showcase an evening of new and recent compositions by current Trinity Laban research students and staff at the ICA.

This project is the 5th in a series of performances whose theme renders the idea of the "parallax" – the separation of two points between which no synthesis or mediation is possible – in musical form. We will be combining compositions in a single evening event with incommensurate aesthetic positions where no common ground is possible. Yet it is precisely via the dialectical tension of such work that new syntheses become possible. 

Trinity Laban Research Degree Programme students and staff composers were invited to submit pieces according to radically different traditions: either a Lachenmann-esque deconstruction of instruments or ensembles into timbre and noise, or a more ‘conventional’ harmonic approach in which the ensemble is treated as a more sonorous whole, following concepts often associated with minimalism or neo-classicism.

---

The evening will consist of a live evening concert in the Theatre featuring performances of notated compositions for acoustic instruments performed by the Trinity Laban Contemporary Music Group (CMG). The live pieces will include diverse combinations of improvisational, live-electronic, electroacoustic and theatrical approaches.

From 6pm: Sound installation pieces

Arrive early to hear sound installation pieces, including fixed-media electroacoustic works and live electronic performance, which will run continuously from 6pm in the ICA Bar, by Guy Harries, Paul Newland, Dominic Murcott and Will Dutta.

7.30-10 pm: Live evening performance

The evening will consist of a live evening concert in the Theatre featuring performances of notated compositions for acoustic instruments performed by the Trinity Laban Contemporary Music Group. The live pieces will include diverse combinations of improvisational, live-electronic, electroacoustic and theatrical approaches.

Featured composers:

Sam Hayden – Abstraction – for piano and ensemble

Gwyn Pritchard – Tide – for solo piano

Jonathan Firth – Selections from Peaks – for ensemble

Ailie Robertson – Parallax – for ensemble

Douglas Finch – Ucluelet – for solo piano

Edward Jessen – Rood Positions – for amplified string quartet, theatrical figure & aux. audio

Andreas Papapetrou – The Garden of Listening – for ensemble

---

Friday 6 February, 7.30pm

Venue: Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH.

Tickets £8 | £5 concessions | £3 members | free to TL students & staff).

BOOK TICKETS

Publicity links from Trinity Laban & the ICA. Join the Facebook event here.