Residency 2013 Description

Sounding Paths

Α week-­‐long residency for experimentation & improvisation on found sounds & local traditions

Old Jesuit Monastery
Ano Syros, Cyclades Greece
1-­7 July 2013

Invited Artist:
Μike Cooper (U.Κ. / Italy)


Echoes of rembetika at the Ano Syros piazza, operas in the Apollo Theatre, tsambuna bagpipes in the Apano Meria, monastery bells, boat horns, sudden gusts of wind, old grammophones, voices, memories, private narratives and formal histories. The Syros soundscape, in imagination and reality, stands on an eclectic and heterogeneous web of distinct historical and contemporary traditions, constantly under construction, reinterpretation and revision.


How do sound traditions interact with the here and now of improvisation and sonic experimentation? For one week in July, the Syros Institute invites a group of musicians to stay at the Old Jesuit Monastery in Ano Syros and work in a group as well as individually, to construct their own personal and subjective sonic narratives, documents, covers and interpretations. During their residency at the Monastery, invited artists will have the opportunity to engage with an array of individual & group activities, including visits & fieldtrips to different parts of the island, intensive group discussions, rehearsal & jam sessions, as well as informal gigs in homes or outdoor locations. Through these processes, they will be able to share and exchange approaches, and to present their own, “faithful” or more “heretic” reworkings and interpretations of local musical traditions, enriching them with all kinds of found sounds.


Residency Organisers:
Danae Stefanou, Yannis Kotsonis