Alternative Stage Founding Donor
Major Sponsor of the Greek National Opera
The Contemporary Music Days festival brings an unprecedented - by Greek standards - line-up of eighteen concerts dedicated to contemporary musical creation, running from 25 October to 14 November 2026 at the GNO Alternative Stage at the SNFCC. Titled Multiple Presents, the Festival features six new commissions from Greek composers, numerous premieres and reruns, as well as tributes to emblematic figures in 20th-and-21st-century music. It is a musical event of rare range and polyphony, highlighting the vibrancy of contemporary music and inviting audiences on a fascinating journey through its diverse aspects, new trends, and unexpected pathways.
This multifaceted programme, curated by composer Ioannis Angelakis, maps contemporary musical creation, spanning acoustic and electronic music as well as hybrid and stage works, through the coexistence of renowned ensembles and artists, newly formed groups, and emerging soloists and composers.
It features, among other things, tributes to György Kurtág, György Ligeti, and Georges Aperghis; concerts by the Ergon Ensemble conducted by Nicolas Vassiliou; the ERT Choir's first collaboration with the Greek Composers' Union; the TETTTIX ensemble; and an anniversary concert by the ARTéfacts ensemble. The events also include a piano recital by Stephanos Thomopoulos, unfolding the piano world of Giorgos Koumendakis; the screening of the milestone film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari accompanied by music by Nikos Karagiannis; and the new international composition competition Re:Trace.
The Contemporary Music Days Festival was born out of a dual need: on the one hand, to create a steady place dedicated to contemporary musical creation, and on the other, to reexamine what contemporary means today. It was not meant to signal a mere time category but to serve as a way to relate to the music of the 20th and 21st centuries: to modernism, the avant-garde, as well as to the ruptures and continuities that still shape our experience of sound. In this line of thinking, the Contemporary Music Days Festival does not propose a single aesthetic or a linear narrative but rather an open field of coexistence in which different readings of the past and present are continually recaptured. Special emphasis will be placed on tributes to György Kurtág (marking his 100th anniversary), Georges Aperghis (celebrating his 80th anniversary), and György Ligeti (commemorating the 20th anniversary of his death), which bring emblematic works of contemporary music back to the foreground, not as historical references but as contemporary touchstones from which the new commissions draw material, inspiration, and artistic vision. The collaborations with the ERT Choir and the Greek Composers' Union enhance the logic of an expanded ecosystem in which contemporary music is shaped by networks of people, ensembles, and institutions notes Ioannis Angelakis.
■ Songs for a Return
31 October 2026 · Starts at 20.30
Samples, programming: Tasos Rosopoulos
Tassis Christoyannis voice, Korina Vougiouka guitar, Alexandros Botinis violoncello
A single musical narrative about longing and the hard road home. The journey begins with nostos, the ache for return, but gradually reaches beyond any place on the map, until the wear and change that time brings become the ultimate measure of experience.
The steps quicken at times and falter at others, caught between Anticipation and Longing, Doubt, Fear, Sorrow and Delay. Each step has to face the past, its own purpose and the test of one's roots.
The organic warmth of the human voice and of wooden instruments meets an otherworldly electronic landscape, while recordings of real footsteps in natural surroundings form the inner pulse of this journey back.
The cycle's text draws on poems, translations, and stray words and phrases by Myrsini Gkana, Kostas Ouranis, Giorgos Koropoulis, Dionysis Kapsalis, Yiannis Skarimbas, Andreas Embirikos, Giorgos Sarantaris, Homer, an anonymous 16th-century Cypriot poet, Wilhelm Müller and Emily Dickinson.
