11th International Pharos Contemporary Music Festival

The first festival of new music to have been inaugurated in Cyprus, in 2009, the International Pharos Contemporary Music Festival is rooted in the Pharos Arts Foundation’s deep commitment to music creativity and innovation. Providing a platform for composers to collaborate with some of the most important soloists and ensembles in the world so that they develop new projects and explore new sound worlds, the Pharos Contemporary Music Festival has been decisive in acquainting the general audience of Cyprus with the music of our times. The Festival is recognised as one of the most innovative annual events in Europe, having presented a number of ground-breaking interdisciplinary programmes that reflect the profundity of the modern-day man and human spirit, and it has premiered in Cyprus numerous masterpieces of the contemporary music literature of the 20th century as well as works by a younger generation of leading composers.

Organised between 4 and 13 October 2019 at The Shoe Factory in Nicosia, the 11th International Pharos Contemporary Music Festival will feature four unique concerts, as well as a number of educational workshops and other extracurricular activities for the youth of Cyprus.

SCHEDULE:

THE (PLUCKED) STRINGS THEORY PROJECT
C BARRÉ PLUCKED TRIO
Friday 4 October 2019
The Shoe Factory, Nicosia / 8.30pm

The Festival will open with the C Barré Plucked Trio performing the The (plucked) Strings Theory Project – a truly exciting programme for the unusual combination of mandolin, harp and guitar, that offers numerous timbral and technical possibilities.

TIME TRAVELLER – THE NICOSIA ETUDES
PETER SHEPPARD SKAERVED (VIOLIN)
Sunday 6 October 2019
The Shoe Factory, Nicosia / 8.30pm

The second concert will feature one of the Festival’s closest collaborators, Grammy-nominated violinist Peter Sheppard Skaerved in an extraordinary programme for solo violin, entitled Time Traveller – The Nicosia Etudes. Inspired by the sounds, textures, architecture and poetry of various medieval cities, predominantly Nicosia, Peter assembled a programme of newly composed works by a number of leading composers, who have incorporated in their music material from the past, as for example, the extraordinary ‘Cyprus Codex’ (the only known Codex of medieval Western music in the region), the medieval Totentänze, and the colossal ‘Klagenfurt Codex’.

VOICE & PIANO RECITAL
AGATA ZUBEL (VOCALIST) & KRZYSZTOF KSIAZEK (PIANO)
Tuesday 8 October 2019
The Shoe Factory, Nicosia / 8.30pm

The celebrated composer and vocalist Agata Zubel will team up with pianist Krzysztof Ksiazek to deliver a unique recital of songs by Crumb, Ravel, Barber, Szymanowski and Obrados. Boasting a rich discography and a number of important prizes, and renowned for her unique vocal range and for her fearless use of techniques that defy stereotypes, Zubel has appeared in some of the world’s most prestigious venues with ensembles and orchestras such as Los Angeles Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, Ensemble Inter-Contemporain, Klangforum Wien, London Sinfonietta, amongst many others.

FACE: Α MULTIMEDIA MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
ELECTRA ENSEMBLE FOR NEW MUSIC
MUSIC Yannis Kyriakides
IMAGE Johannes Schwartz
TEXT Maria Barnas
Sunday 13 October 2019
The Shoe Factory, Nicosia / 8.30pm

The Festival will conclude with the multimedia musical performance FACE, by Cypriot composer Yannis Kyriakides, photographer Johannes Schwartz and writer Maria Barnas, performed by the ELECTRA Ensemble for New Music. The performance delves into the infinite expressiveness of the face, which has fascinated man for centuries. In the past, scientists assigned all kinds of character traits to people’s faces and the shape of their heads. Now computers and smartphones classify and analyse our most minimal facial expressions for fun, for identity control, or to gauge our mood for commercial gain. In this thrilling multimedia concert for voice, piano, violin, recorders, live electronics and video, composed music merges with facial recognition algorithms translated into sound.

TICKETS:
www.pharosartsfoundation.org & Tel. (+357) 22-663871 (Monday – Friday 10:00am-3:00pm)