Danae Stefanou

Danae Stefanou makes improvised sounds and texts. She is Associate Professor and founding director of the Experimental & Improvised Music Ensembles at the School of Music Studies, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, where she also runs two arts-based research initiatives (noise:muse and Critical Music Histories) and supervises numerous graduate projects on critical historiography, sound studies, DIY and improvisational aesthetics, and issues of gender and politics in contemporary music. She has published widely in peer-reviewed journals (JRMA, JIMS, Musicae Scientiae), music dictionaries (Grove Music Online) and edited volumes, including the “Cambridge Companion to Film Music” (CUP, 2016), “Made in Greece: Studies in Greek Popular Music” (Routledge, 2018), “Contemporary Popular Music Studies” (Springer, 2019), and “Music and Landscape / Soundscape and Sonic Arts” (Universal Edition, 2019). Her visceral, intensely tactile approach to sound and listening has been described as real-time composition “with no safety net,” and her acoustic explorations of the piano interior are often likened with the work of electronic composers. Active as a performer since the 1990s, she has performed, composed, and curated hundreds of independent intermedia actions and events in public spaces, DIY venues, arts institutions and educational establishments. She has collaborated with organizations such as the Onassis Stegi, SNFCC, MOMus, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki Film Festival, SIFF, Athens Epidaurus Festival, Thessaloniki Concert Hall, Goethe-Institut-Athen, L’Institut Français de Grèce, Arts & Humanities Research Council in the UK, and Arts Council Ireland.