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.

■ The Revolt of the Double Bass: From Myth to Logos

3 November 2026 · Starts at 20.30

Works by Oswald Amiralis, Sofia Gubaidulina, Kaija Saariaho, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Beat Furrer, and excerpts from films by Georges Lautner and Bernard Lowles

Emily Tsimidaki soprano

Spyros Arkoudis trumpet, Oswald Amiralis double bass, Marinos Tranoudakis percussion, Ersilia Mikrou harp

This concert presents works in which the double bass moves from its traditional role as accompanist to the centre of the musical action, becoming a vehicle for speech, reflection and dramatic presence.

Rather than functioning as conventional technical studies, Gubaidulina's études explore different sound worlds across their five short movements through the interplay of harp, double bass and percussion.

In Stockhausen's piece, trumpet and double bass engage in an intensely focused dialogue in which resonance, articulation, dynamics and a sense of space are fundamental musical parameters. The title Halt refers to an interruption in the flow of sound that does not entail a halt in time itself. The black cape and hat act as theatrical signs that set the double bassist apart from the image of the conventional orchestral musician.

Kaija Saariaho creates a delicate, hypnotic soundscape inspired by the image of a starry sky. Each bar is conceived as a 'star', a unique sonic object. The double bass provides a dark, deep sonic foundation, while the percussion introduces isolated flashes of sound like stars in the night sky.

The poem by the Spanish poet José Ángel Valente recalls the myth of the Lotus-eaters, whose seductive oblivion erases every tie to the past and every wish to return. Furrer turns this idea into sound within a fragile soundscape of whispers, microtonal deviations, harmonics, tremolos, glissandos and unstable rhythmic reflections. Language shatters, words appear and disappear, and identity itself becomes unstable.

Finally, Dans la nuit des temps calls up tender memories, loves and passions. It evokes the unequal struggle with time, the existential anxieties of a distant world, strange battles, a melancholy born of the painful sense of the ephemeral, loneliness and serenity.