INTERNATIONAL ilSUONO CONTEMPORARY MUSIC WEEK
An Annual New Music Academy in Italy
THEOCHARIS PAPATRECHAS
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR | COMPOSER
www.theocharis-papatrechas.com
"ilSUONO Contemporary Music Week is a collaborative endeavor that emerged organically in 2015 out of my, then, five-year friendship with Michele Bianchini and the members of the contemporary music collective Ensemble Suono Giallo.
The mission of ilSUONO is to provide young emerging composers and instrumentalists unique opportunities for research, artistic challenge, experimentation, and growth. In the ideal environment of Sansepolcro, we created a setting to encourage and inspire. In this environment, a select pool of young artists, spanning over diverse cultures and aesthetic orientations, come together to collaborate closely with highly skilled professional instrumentalists and renowned composers from prestigious academic institutions.
The founding principles that govern this annual project are dedication, passion, merit, and the desire to explore the endless potential of the musical sphere." T.P.
Originally from Greece, Theocharis Papatrechas is a composer, audio artist, and sound researcher based in Brisbane, Australia.
Theocharis holds a Ph.D. in Music Composition from University of California San Diego where he worked with Rand Steiger and Miller Puckette. Other leading institutions he studied at include the Eastman School of Music, IRCAM, and Sibelius Academy.
Praised for crafting "an intimate narrative" and achieving "beautiful instrumental intensity" (il giornale della musica), Theocharis's creative work draws inspiration from literature, poetry, mythology, philosophy, as well as the soundscapes of underwater and terrestrial environments. He integrates acoustic instruments, objects, data, electronics, and spatial audio to create immersive auditory experiences. His artistic
portfolio consists of instrumental, electroacoustic, acousmatic, sound art, and sound installation works that involve acoustic components, pre-recorded media, and generative and interactive processes, employing Dante networking systems and ambisonics in multichannel venues.
Renowned groups that have commissioned and premiered his works include the ensemble Intercontemporain, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Mivos Quartet, Vertixe Sonora, Ensemble Schallfeld, East Coast Contemporary Ensemble (ECCE), Divertimento Ensemble, Ensemble Multilatérale. Notable venues, at which works of his have been presented, include IRCAM, CCRMA at Stanford, SEAMUS at Berklee College, the Anchorage Museum, SPLICE Institute, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (NYCEMF), Vienna Konzerthaus, SpazioMusica, University of Montreal, and Shanghai Music Conservatory.
His music has been released by ArsPublica. His scores are published and available by Babel Scores.
Additionally, Theocharis has held postdoctoral appointments at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and Center for New Music & Audio Technologies (CNMAT) at UC Berkeley. His work integrates environmental data science and acoustics, focusing on the development and implementation of innovative, multi-modal data rendering techniques to sonify ecosystems and extreme environmental events. The research aims to develop a deeper understanding of the impacts of climate change through the lens of acoustics.
For the past decade, Theocharis serves as the Artistic Director of the ilSUONO Contemporary Music Week, a summer new music academy that takes place annually in Italy. The program's core mission is to diversify the practice by bringing together emerging music creators of diverse socio-economic backgrounds, ethnicities, cultures, gender orientations, and aesthetics to learn, share, and collaborate.
Theocharis teaches Composition and Music Technology at The University of Queensland. Additionally, he works as Technical Audio Operator at the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University.
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