MMMΔ & ALEM • L’Âge de l’absolutisme
The Athens Epidaurus Festival at the Athens Conservatoire

Curated by Stavros Gasparatos

MMMΔ, alongside Baroque organist virtuoso Alem, present live the album L'âge de l’absolutisme, released by Antifrost in 2021. Idiosyncratic masterpieces, watersheds of late Baroque music (“Adagio” from Alessandro Marcello’s Oboe Concerto in D minor, “Sarabande” from Handel’s Keyboard Suite in D minor, “Air” from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major) are combined in an unconventional performance. The typically rich and bass sound of ΜΜΜΔ produces a fertile distortion in a unique dialogue with Alem’s  keyboards, resulting in an unexpected collaboration.

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The Subset Festival borrows a mathematical term (“subset” ⊆) for the name of an avant-garde new music festival held as part of the Athens Epidaurus Festival at the brand-new stages of the Athens Conservatoire. This five-day event will incorporate a wide range of artistic works, in the hopes of bringing diverse versions of contemporary musical creation and presentation into contact with each other. Within these five days, the three Athens Conservatoire stages will host by turns musical ensembles, sound and visual installations as well as musical performances in a multifaceted and particularly extroverted musical platform.

Drawing on a series of works chosen by the Athens Epidaurus Festival open call, artists from around the world, established and up-and-coming alike, will present their works in Athens and converse with one another, involving every one of us in this dialogue. With that in mind, participating artists will share their modus operandi with the audience in the form of special workshops and discussions. At the same time, directors and curators of similar events from across the globe will have the opportunity to be familiarized with the diverse contemporary Greek music scene.

The Subset Festival includes two commissions to contemporary Greek ensembles, TETTTIX and Trigger Happy, both of which are creating new works/installations for the Festival at the new stage of the Athens Conversatoire. Furthermore, established contemporary music artists, Greek and international, are participating (Ergon Ensemble, Vinyl -terror & -horror, MMMΔ & ALEM) as are avant-garde electronic musicians from Europe, Greece (Saber Rider) and foreigners (Robert Henke, Kali Malone, Hekla, Sébastien Roux), some of whom are making their Greek debut. Special emphasis will be placed on the outreach of the programme through laboratories by Triger Happy, TETTTIX, Sébastien Roux AND Robert Henke in collaboration with Goethe-Institut Athen.