Nexus I for Accordion and fixed media is getting its world premiere by Peter Katina. The concert will take place at Divadlo Viola Centre on 7th of December 2022. The piece is dedicated to Peter who has commissioned it. In this piece, the Accordion is in an open dialogue and connection (nexus) with an imaginary part of itself (electronics). The musical material consists of very small, fragmented gestures closely examined and observed from multiple perspectives. The electronic part has at times symbiotic character, at other times an anti-biotic one. The sonic image of the piece can be seen as unpredictable star reflections on mirrors placed into the darkness of the abyss.
Orbits for piano and tape is getting a performance in Korea by Jongin Moon. The piece will be played as a part of this year’s Arts Incubator festival “Borderless Point”. October 22, 17pm at Oil Tank Culture Park T1, T2. More information about the festival and the program can be found here https://audio-trading-manual.kr/index.html
Atkal got a new transcription (Bass Flute and Alto) and was premiered on the 23rd of September 2022 by Helēna Sorokina (Alto) and Elena Gabbrielli (Flutes) at Leechkirche, Graz. The piece was performed as a part of the project Singing Flute along with pieces by Gundega Smite, Liva Bluma, Sarah Grace Graves, Elisabeth Harnik, Rebecca Saunders, and Salvatore Sciarrino.
On April 6th, Fani Karagianni is presenting a new CD release with Contemporary Greek works for solo piano. The album includes 18 works for solo piano by 13 Greek composers of the 20th and 21st century: Nikos Skalkotas, Giannis A. Papaioannou, Argyris Kounadis, Costas Nikitas, Christos Samaras, Costas Tsougras, Maronidis, Dimitris Oikonomou, Stella Dalampira, Glykeria Koutoula, Orestis Papaioannou. The 4th etude from 4 (Hommage) Etudes is included in the CD.
There will be a round-table discussion with Costas Tsougras, Fani Karagianni, Georgios-Ioulios Papadopoulos, George Sakallieros, Petros Vouvaris. The presentation/concert will take place at the concert hall “Melina Mercouri” of the State Conservatory of Thessaloniki (15 Frangon, Thessaloniki) on Wednesday, April 6, 2022, at 20:00.
7 Consecutive INVENTions are getting a performance by the Greek pianist Fani Karagianni at
AI and Music S+T+ARTS Festival: Synergies of musical creation with Artificial Intelligence Thursday 28 15:20 – 15:35 | Streaming Channel 1
In this exclusive audiovisual streaming, presented by the AI research and communication platform Artificia, we go behind the scenes of Thessaloniki Universities AI Chameleon, a GAN capable of generating musical harmonies that can be used by composers. In a 15 minute capsule, a chamber quartet of musicians from Barcelona’s OBC and the Greek pianist Fanny Karagianni will play pieces whose harmonic content was based on human-machine interaction.
Please watch a new video of Tobias Weiß performing 4 (hommage) études. The concert took place at Fanny Hensel-Saal in Vienna on the 6th of February 2019. The piece is an hommage to the following composers I. Hommage à Helmut Lachenmann, II. Hommage à Gyorgy Ligeti, III. Hommage à Steve Reich and IV. Hommage à Gundega Šmite. Various aspects of the piano playing techniques are highlighted in each of these miniature etudes whilst the fundamental aim of the piece is to help the younger students to open up their minds into a poly-stylistic acoustic environment of negative pedaling, minimalism, patterns, clusters, and isorhythmic structures; in an emotional trip that spans from icy austerity to a warm contemplative nirvana! Enjoy!
meta.ξ | music always wins | a dramatized installation by Longleash Trio
Chaconne for piano, violin, Violoncello, and fixed media is going to get its premiere in New York on the 7th of July 2021 by the American Trio Longleash. The piece is focusing on the sonic moment of a glass breaking and creating a crystalline sound while its particles fall apart on the ground. A special poem was composed by Gundega Smite and myself for this purpose and was used as an outline for the development of the form of the piece.
poem by Gundega Smite & Dimitris Maronidis
When asked about his work words and music and the battle between the two, Samuel Beckett was clear: music is the absolute winner, as it “is the idea itself, unaware of the world of phenomena”2, in contrast to Beckett’s view on language and its expressive limitations
This is indeed true, since music ―especially abstract music― has no signified meaning, at least in the way language has. Even when an extra-musical idea or text is signified through the music, to the unaware listener music remains ―and can be perceived as― a signifier, since there is no established code attaching certain meanings to certain sounds.
When it comes to a live performance of music, is this autonomy a virtue or a flaw? Especially when more than one fields of art are involved and a certain ―or uncertain― message is to be delivered, is the absence of the signified a desired quality of music?
At the bottom line, this principle seems to be inevitably present. Thus, the question raised is not how to change the nature of music, but rather the way it is perceived. That is, to question Beckett’s note: why does music always win? Why is language ―or its visual representation― inferior to music?
In a conventional concert situation, the audience is placed against the stage (and the music) and perceives it in a rather passive way, in the sense that no action that can interfere with the performance is meant to be taken. In this way, any other element that could possibly function as a reference (or even signified) is imposed on the top of music and is decorative. In this situation, music wins again.
Two years after the premiere of my piece Mise en abîme in Riga, I have managed to retrieve the audio files of the recording of that performance! Though the recording suffers from some technical issues (live electronics being recorded only from mics on-stage so lacking a bit of the high frequencies), the spirit of the piece is present here. I think this is probably my most meditative piece so enjoy it in serenity and preferably in dark in your bed!
Mise en abîme is a term used in visual arts to describe a formal technique of placing a copy of an image within itself, often in a way that suggests an infinitely recurring sequence. A common way of experiencing this effect is by standing between two mirrors, seeing, as a result, an infinite reproduction of one’s image. In this piece, I try to imitate this phenomenon in the field of sound. Fragments of music are repeated many times, each time slightly distorted, in order to create perceptually the same effect.
Mise en abîme was commissioned by Arena Festivāls at Riga, Latvia, and was composed in Autumn of 2018. The premiere of the piece took place at VEF Cultural House in Riga on the 30th of October 2018 by Trio ART-i-Shock and Altera Veritas Ensemble collaborating for this unique concert.
This is a LIVE recording of the premiere. Please mind using a pair of headphones, or loudspeakers to listen to this music.
(YouTube painting) “Las Meninas” by Diego Velázquez
During the second Covid-19 lockdown here in Thessaloniki, I received an email from my very good friend Mehmet Can Ozer to contribute to his festival digitIZMir with a video improvisation. I thought this would be a nice opportunity to experiment with a Korg littleBits analogue synth kit I bought a few years ago. In my electronic works, I seek usually for high sound fidelity. This time, I wanted to play in the field of lo-fi electronics. I programmed a simple granulation engine in SuperCollider, plugged the analog synth into my audio interface, and recorded everything with my camera’s onboard microphone on the fly. Tinkering the hardware and experimenting in this way always brings to me memories of my childhood, when I was enjoying so much to disassemble my toys in order to understand how they work and finding ways to make completely new use out of them!
You can watch the video on 13.12.2020, 31 (CET) on the festival’s YouTube channel. Enjoy!
Please listen to a live recording of my most recent piece performed in Riga by LNSO Double Bass Orchestra conducted by Jānis Stafeckis. Fantasia & Toccata was composed in 2020 amidst the worldwide Covid19 pandemic and under tremendously stressful conditions in my personal life. It has been a piece of luck that in that particular circumstance such an extraordinary and weird formation of an ensemble was given in my hands. No other medium could express better the turmoil I was going through the months this piece was composed.
Please mind using a pair of speakers or headphones to listen to this music due to its low-frequency content.
Live recording (Radio 3) of the premiere at Great Guild Hall, Riga 08.10.2020 Performers: LNSO double bass orchestra (Oskars Bokanovs, Toms Timofejevs, Andris Veinbergs, Dāvis Vilks, Alise Broka, Kristaps Pētersons, Jurģis Klotiņš, Gustavs Vilsons, Viktors Stankēvičs, Raivo Ozols, Viktors Veļičko, Haralds Arnis, Undīne Berga, Mārcis Lipskis, Dzintars Sabļins, Raivis Misjuns)
“I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.”
Four (Hommage) Études is getting performed in Armenia by Hayk Melikyan. The piece consists of 4 etudes made as hommages to four composers (Lachemnam, Ligeti, Reich and Smite). Each etude highlights some aspects of the compositional style of the composer to whom it refers but is always seen from a pedagogical perspective
On March 15th 2020 (17 pm) Orbits for piano and tape, is getting another performance at Mexico by Carmen Fergoso at the Auditorio Multiaulas EMA1 Facultad de Artes BUAP along with works by Lockwood and Capuzano. The piece was composed back in 2014 and was premiered in Latvia. A new work based on similar sonic concepts is coming very soon!
