YANNIS KYRIAKIDES

Yannis Kyriakides

Yannis Kyriakides was born in Limassol, Cyprus in 1969 and as a result of the Turkish military occupation in 1974 emigrated with his family to Britain. After travelling for a year with his violin in the near east, learning traditional music, he returned to England to study musicology at York ...
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1982   Teodora Stepancic
1997   Maarten Altena
2006   Bas Wiegers
2007   Jacques Palinckx
2007   Palinckx
2007   The Ex
2012   Slagwerk Den Haag
2016   Tomoko Mukaiyama
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by Podiuminfo / Festivalinfo

4/8/21, Rewire Festival, Den Haag

Biography Yannis Kyriakides

Yannis Kyriakides was born in Limassol, Cyprus in 1969 and as a result of the Turkish military occupation in 1974 emigrated with his family to Britain. After travelling for a year with his violin in the near east, learning traditional music, he returned to England to study musicology at York University, later being drawn by the music of Louis Andriessen to move to The Netherlands, with whom he studied under at The Hague Conservatory. At that time he also had the inspiring opportunity to collaborate as composer on three projects with the maverick conceptual sound artist Dick Raaijmaakers. As a composer he strives to create new forms and hybrids of media, synthesizing disparate sound sources and exploring spatial and temporal experience. He has focused in the majority of his work on ways of combining traditional performance practices with digital media. The sensory space where music happens is a particular preoccupation, and for this end a way of bypassing the conventional structures of how music is presented is sought. The question as to what music is actually communicating is also a recurring theme in his work and he is often drawn to the relation between emotion and language and how that defines our experience of music. He regularly composes works for ensembles such as ASKO Ensemble, Icebreaker Ensemble, Ensemble Integrales and Maarten Altena Ensemble, of which he is the artistic director. Other collaborations include musikFabrik, Orkest de Volharding, Nozferatu, Palmos, London Sinfonietta, LOOS, Percussion Group The Hague, Zephyr Quartet, Esprit Ensemble, Nsemble, Ensemble Cantus and others. As an improviser he is involved in the Amsterdam electronic improv scene, he has a regular duo with Andy Moor (the Ex) called Red v Green, and is a member of the dance-music improvisation group Magpie. Together with Andy Moor and Isabelle Vigier he founded and runs the CD label for innovative new electronic music, UNSOUNDS. Kyriakides teaches composition at the Royal Conservatory at The Hague. He has written over fifty compositions, of which recent large scale works include: 'Strobo' for six percussionists, glass and stroboscopes; 'Scape' for video and ensemble; 'Spinoza (or I am not where I think myself to be)' music theatre; 'Subliminal: the Lucretian Picnic' for ensemble, video, live electronics; 'Lab Fly Dreams' for ensemble and electronics, 'The Buffer Zone' music theatre, 'Escamotage' music theatre (Staatsoper Stutgart) and 'Wordless' twelve electronic portraits for headphones and PA. He was featured composer at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in 2007. The opera 'Ocean of Rain' opened the Aldeburgh Festival in 2008. In September 2000 Kyriakides won the Gaudeamus Music Prize for 'a conSPIracy cantata' and in 2006 he received Honorary Mentions of the Prix Ars Electronica for 'Wordless'.

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