Improv 2

Electronic and traditional soloists try new things together.

Two ensembles with Greek and foreign musicians in a unique evening. Ko Ishikawa – Giorgos Varoutas – Nikos Sidirokastritis tell electroacoustic stories between ancient and digital time. Sounds as old as the world, made by wood and chords, combine with electronics. Landscapes of Greece and Japan merge. New geographies are moulded on stage with us as sole witnesses.

Zoi Efstathiou and Egil Kalman meet on the keyboards: a “tweaked” piano for Zoi and modular synthesizers for Egil. Together they create a sound environment where the line between acoustic and electronic music is blurred. Through interaction and improvisation, the duo carves new, magical sound objects. Their new composition, “Athroa” (En Masse) will be presented for the first time in Greece.

The world of improvised music is wide-ranging and it brings together areas we can hardly imagine. The traditional virtuoso at the fair improvises. So do folk instrumentalists on stage. Even classical composers in their concerts and sonatas allowed room for the musician to deploy his skill: it was the renowned cadenza. At a time that borders between genres vanish, musicians may combine in their improvisations all the genres mentioned above.

This is the direction to be taken during the two musical encounters in the Onassis Stegi. The one ensemble is made up of Ko Ishikawa, a soloist of traditional Japanese music, Giorgos Varoutas, a guitarist who investigates alternative approaches to the guitar, and Nikos Sidirokastritis, a percussion virtuoso, whose sound combines jazz with Greek traditional music.

In the second ensemble, Zoi Efstathiou, a pianist and composer with classical and jazz piano studies, meets Swedish Egil Kalman, an eclectic musician who oscillates between experimental and traditional music.