Subset Festival ⊆
New Music Festival
4-8 June
Curated by Stavros Gasparatos
In co-production with the Athens Conservatoire
The Subset Festival, the multifaceted music platform launched in 2023, held by the Athens Epidaurus Festival in co-production with the Athens Conservatoire, returns refreshed but always with a focus on the dialogue between contemporary music and new media. Named after a mathematical term (subset ⊆), Subset Festival weaves together diverse versions of contemporary musical creation, incorporating a wide variety of artistic trends. From June 4 to June 8, the Conservatoire venues will host musical ensembles and soloists, established and up-and-coming alike, both from Greece and around the world, visual and sound installations and performances, as well as open-call workshops.
The Subset Festival brings together distinguished artists from the international contemporary music scene, such as Ryoji Ikeda, Mouse on Mars ft. Dodo NKishi, Christina Vantzou, Carmen Villain, Lyra Pramuk, Heinali & Andriana-Yaroslava Saienko, alongside acclaimed Greek composers and ensembles, including Dimitris Kamarotos, Philippos Tsalachouris, Theodoros Lotis, BLIP, Nikos Antonopoulos, Dimitris Papageorgiou, Andreas Paparousos, Irini Amargianaki, Savvas Metaxas, Giannis Arapis, and Dimitris Tigas. The series of concerts will take place across the Ioannis Despotopoulos Amphitheatre, the New Stage, and the Arts’ Foyer of the Athens Conservatoire.
Finally, Subset Festival also hosts exceptional collaborations between artists and ensembles, including a joint performance by the New Babylon ensemble and ARTéfacts ensemble, a collaboration between Alexandra Katerinopoulou and Sofyann Ben Youssef (AKA AMMAR 808), and a creative meeting of composer Michalis Paraskakis and poet Eleonore Schönmaier.
PROGRAMME
June 4, 2025
Dimitris Kamarotos
A Time Ratio
In A Time Ratio, composer Dimitris Kamarotos proposes a work that unfolds in two spaces and forms, based on Yiorgos Veltsos texts Sketch for Electra and Sketch for Phaedra, respectively.
Philippos Tsalachouris
Lapis Silentium
Inspired by visual artist Rena’s Tsangaiou mesmerising and deeply poignant imagery, composer Philippos Tsalachouris created a series of “aural images” for piano and string quartet, which will accompany the projection in real-time and parallel mode. The images set the stage for sound, and the sound breathes time into the images.
Theodoros Lotis
SCRAPING – Silent Landscapes and Sonic Pariahs
SCRAPING – Silent Landscapes and Sonic Pariahs is an interactive algorithmic music composition that explores and sheds light on the often-overlooked soundscape of noise pollution in urban environments. Extending over 40 minutes and presented through an immersive ambisonic sound system, the work focuses on the relentless mechanical hum of generators, air-conditioning systems, and refrigerator units that overwhelms the city streets.
June 5, 2025
Carmen Villain
The diverse sonic worlds that Carmen Villain has built over her career are shaped by her natural curiosity about sound. Her music hits a sweet spot between the languid yet vibrant pulse of dub and cosmic fourth-world* influences, creating evocative granular soundscapes and melodies with hints of instruments such as flute, voice, and clarinet.
Lyra Pramuk
Devotional music, at its core, embodies the deep-seated human urge to express our innermost, primal emotions. For Lyra Pramuk, devotion is ingrained in her futurist folk music, which harnesses the power and giddiness of technology to present the human voice as an object of limitless possibility.
BLIP
Chimeras
For their newly commissioned work at the Subset Festival, BLIP propose a space for sonic play, open to diverse ideas and sound-generating media. This hybrid, spatial, and site-specific sound piece incorporates found objects, percussion, acoustic phenomena, self-devised circuits, and light, while further welcoming natural, amplified, and electronic sounds that interact, coalescing into an electroacoustic musical amalgamation.
June 6, 2025
Christina Vantzou
The reintegration of the ear
With Oliver Coates, Irene Kurka, John Also Bennett
The Reintegration of the Ear is a suite of electronic and acoustic sound sources that coexist with natural environments, both terrestrial and subaquatic. Comprising hydrophone recordings from Sifnos, field recordings from Lesvos, ARP synthesizer tones, and mist-like orchestrals, the piece undulates and unfolds with an acute awareness of space.
Alexandra Katerinopoulou—Sofyann Ben Youssef (AKA AMMAR 808)
LOSS
LOSS is an immersive audio-visual installation by Sofyann Ben Youssef, the Tunisian music producer and composer celebrated for his fusion of traditional music with modern electronic soundscapes, and Alexandra Katerinopoulou, a composer who integrates traditional instruments, vocal arrangements, classical orchestral components, as well as analogue modular and digital synthesizers.
Mouse on Mars
AAI AV
ft. Dodo NKishi
Mouse on Mars, the Berlin-based duo of Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma, approach electronic music with boundless curiosity and unparalleled ingenuity. Operating in their own orbit within dance music’s nebulous echosystem, the duo’s hyper-detailed productions are inventive and groundbreaking, yet always infused with a signature joyful experimentation.
June 7, 2025
Michalis Paraskakis & Eleonore Schönmaier
Field Guide [to the lost flower]
Field Guide [to the lost flower] is an innovative multimedia music theatre piece by composer Michalis Paraskakis in collaboration with poet Eleonore Schönmaier. Inspired by Schönmaier’s poetry collection Field Guide to the Lost Flower of Crete, the work weaves music, text, video, theatre, and electronics into a unified, immersive performance. The three central characters of the piece are two performers and a grand piano, which transforms into a multi-functional object—a stage, instrument, and overall physical entity that drives the entire action.
New Babylon ensemble / ARTéfacts ensemble
Time and Money
Conductor Cecilia Castagneto
Time and Money is a multimedia concert (live electronics and video), the fruit of the collaboration between the musical ensembles New Babylon (based in Bremen) and ARTéfacts ensemble (based in Athens). On the one hand, it aims to the sharing of experiences and approaches to musical interpretation, bringing together two musical ensembles from different countries. On the other hand, it seeks to reach and converse with the Greek audience—through music—on the social dimension of time, money, and our economic system, exploring the range of human behaviours that emerge in relation to these concepts.
Ryoji Ikeda
Ryoji Ikeda, Japan’s leading electronic composer and visual artist, focuses on the fundamental ingredients of sound and the pure essence of visuals as light, employing both mathematical precision and aesthetic insights. Renowned as one of the few international artists working convincingly across both visual and sonic media, he elaborately orchestrates sound, visuals, materials, physical phenomena and mathematical concepts into immersive live performances and installations.
June 8, 2025
Nikos Antonopoulos
Blue Thread
Free improvisation, ambient drones, songs from island traditions, autotune, silences, fuzz, lo-fi beats, and all sorts of electronic sound devices are some of the elements that make up Blue Thread, the new performance by Nikos Antonopoulos. At its core, the project explores the delicate balance between the retreating analogue world and the emerging digital reality. Blue Thread serves as a thin yet resilient joint that bridges these two states, illuminating a new, hybrid space that salutes play and experimentation.
Heinali & Andriana-Yaroslava Saienko
Гільдеґарда / Hildegard
Recording under the moniker Heinali, Ukrainian composer and sound artist Oleh Shpudeiko uses the modular synthesizer to reimagine early music and sounds, reconciling the past with the present and cutting-edge technology with the notion of the sacred. For this special premiere performance, Shpudeiko will team up with composer, flautist, and singer Andriana-Yaroslava Saienko to bring the music of 12th-century abbess, philosopher, and mystic Hildegard von Bingen into a contemporary context.
Savvas Metaxas / Giannis Arapis / Dimitris Tigas
Circular
Three musicians from diverse musical backgrounds unite to create Circular, an original composition crafted especially for this year’s Subset festival.
This unique trio—featuring two electric guitars, a double bass and a modular synthesizer—merges different musical genres and traditions.
