Nature, Worship, and the Divine

The European medieval music ensemble Sibil•la collaborates with distinguished composers and musicians from across Greece, as part of the 3rd Sacred Music Festival.

With a strong element of the Divine, human passion, and the need for transcendence, a musical performance is created with medieval and contemporary music on historical instruments, drawing inspiration from the relationship between nature and the Divine as depicted in Western and Eastern medieval musical traditions. The concert, with works that celebrate nature from the recent Sibil•la Ensemble album, titled Viriditas, connects world premieres with the homonymous medieval concept that symbolizes the beginning of life, the eternal life-giving energy and the divine element that encompasses every form of life, including humans. The works created by Yannis Kyriakides, Yannis Panagiotou, and Angelos Mastrantonis were commissioned by the ensemble in collaboration with the GNO, while the work of Aspasia Nasopoulou was adapted for the ensemble.

This musical gathering redefines the allegory of Nature, Worship, and the Divine, blending the present with the past and launching a new kind of ceremony through the art of sound.

BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Sibil•la Ensemble

The medieval music ensemble Sibil•la Ensemble draws inspiration from the Sibyls, the female foreseers whose influence extended from pagan times to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The ensemble combines sacred and secular music from Western medieval rituals and traditions. It focuses on the repertoire from the 11th to the 15th century, and consists of voices, historical instruments such as vielle, Gothic harp, flute, organetto, medieval lute, hurdy-gurdy and percussion. The ensemble was founded in 2021 in the Netherlands by soprano and artistic director Christia Michael, along with international musicians. It has performed at music festivals such as the Utrecht Early Music Festival, the New European Bauhaus Festival in Belgium, the Faneromeni ‘24 Cultural Festival in Cyprus, the Dutch Audio Event in the Netherlands, and various private concerts and events. In March 2024, the ensemble released the world's first immersive audiovisual album Viriditas, in collaboration with the record company TRPTK, which specializes in immersive music.

Yannis Kyriakides

Composer and sound artist. Born in Limassol, Cyprus, he lives in the Netherlands. He has written over 100 compositions, mainly for musical theatre, multimedia and electroacoustic works for chamber music ensembles and large orchestras. His work has been performed worldwide by leading contemporary music ensembles at some of the most important music festivals. In 2000 he won the Gaudeamus International Composition Prize for his cantata a conSPIracy cantata. He is the recipient of many awards such as: Prix Ars Electronica (Wordless, 2006), Dutch Toonzetters Prize for best composition (paramyth, 2010), French Qwartz Prize (Antichamber, 2011), Willem Pijper Prize (dreams of the blind), International Rostrum of Composers Prize (words and song without words, 2014). Together with Andy Moor and Isabelle Vigier, he founded the electronic music record label Unsounds, which he currently manages. He is also a founding member of the ensemble MAZE and teaches composition at the Royal Conservatory (The Hague).

Angelos Mastrantonis

He studied at the Ionian University’s Department of Music Studies and holds  a doctorate in composition (Reid School of Music, University of Edinburgh). He has collaborated with Red Note Ensemble, Edinburgh Quartet, Chimera Ensemble, Edinburgh University String Orchestra and Reid School of Music Ensemble of Contemporary Music. He has won the first prize in the Emre Araci Composition Competition in 2016, New Sounds for Old Instruments in 2017, and the competition section of the Young Greek Composers' Workshop in 2014.  He received the ECAT Composition Prize in 2021, and was awarded for his work '3 Simulacra of Songs by George Gershwin' at the Union of Greek Composers’ composition competition in memory of Theodoros Antoniou (2023). He was a member of the team responsible for the organization and artistic direction of the Edinburgh Dialogues Festival (2019). He has worked as a musical copywriter for the archive of the Music Ensembles of the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation, while he has taught composition and advanced theory at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Macedonia. He works at the Alternative Stage of the Greek National Opera.

Aspasia Nasopoulou

Pianist and composer. Her works have been commissioned and performed internationally in concerts and festivals by renowned soloists and ensembles. She is awarded for her work Lelia Doura for flute quintet, in which she combines modern composition techniques and unusual rhythms with medieval texts and songs. In 2012,  she was awarded at a competition held by the MCN & Donemus publishing house for her work Lelia Doura composed for the Seldom Sene Recorder quintet and based on the songs "cantiga d'amigos", while in 2014 she won the first prize and the audience prize of the Tristan Keuris Componisten Concours composition competition for her work Nanourisma for piano, flute and bassoon. Since 2016, she has been coordinating the Residency Composer's Treat, hosted by the non-profit organization Cultureland at Buitenwerkplaats, Starnmeerdijk. Together with Fie Schouten, she has been curating the new concert series for contemporary chamber music "Nieuwe Noten Amsterdam" at the Plein Theater since 2019. Since January 2021, she has been the new artistic director of "het orkest de ereprijs".

Yannis Panagiotou

Composer and visual artist based in the UK. He holds a PhD in composition, is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of the Aegean, and teaches composition for film at the University of Edinburgh. Using multimedia narratives and oral history, his works explore themes of memory, migration and identity, presented in the USA, Japan, the UK, Lithuania, Denmark, Belgium, Switzerland, Greece, as well as in major festivals and organisations such as b-side Festival, Dialogues Festival, Miry Concertzaal, Museum of Contemporary Art (Teriad) and the Greek National Opera. He has collaborated with musical ensembles such as Plus-Minus Ensemble, Red Note Ensemble, Edinburgh Quartet and Edinburgh Film Music Orchestra. He is currently an artist in residence at the University of the Arts (Zurich) and the Artistic Director of the Peter Nelson Ensemble - Edinburgh Contemporary Music Ensemble.