INTERNATIONAL ilSUONO CONTEMPORARY MUSIC WEEK
An Annual Summer Composition Academy in Sansepolcro, 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 unique opportunities for research, artistic challenge, experimentation, and growth. In the ideal environment of Città di Castello, we created a setting to encourage and inspire. In this environment, a select pool of young composers, 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 and sound artist based in San Diego, CA.
Taking inspiration from the sound world of inaccessible natural environments (underwater and terrestrial), his work aims to place listeners into auditory representations of such environments and invites them to become immersed into artistic experiences involving sounds unheard.
He is currently a Postdoctoral Scholar at Qualcomm Institute of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (CalIT2), developing unconventional, multi-modal data rendering techniques with particular focus on sonification of extreme environmental events. Previous experience includes research appointments at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography's Acoustics Lab and the Center for New Music & Audio Technologies (CNMAT) at UC Berkeley.
Theocharis holds a PhD in Music Composition from the University of California San Diego. Other institutions he studied at include the Eastman School of Music, IRCAM, and Sibelius Academy.
His portfolio consists of acoustic, electroacoustic, acousmatic, sound art, and sound installation works that involve acoustic components, pre-recorded media, and generative and interactive processes, being presented within immersive environments using multichannel setups and Ambisonics.
Theocharis has participated in several renowned venues and master-classes such as, among others, IRCAM's ManiFeste Academy, initially in the composition program with ensemble Intercontemporain in 2018, and then in the electronic music workshop AIME (Atelier d'Interprétation des Musiques Électroacoustiques) in 2019, FORUM with Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, SEAMUS 2019 at Berklee, Shanghai New Music Week with Mivos Quartet, VIPA 2016 with the [Switch~ Ensemble], Mixtur Festival 2017 with Proxima Centauri, Workshop for Young Composers in Tchaikovsky City, Etchings Festival with ECCE, IDEA Young Composers Workshop with Divertimento ensemble, World Saxophone Congress (Strasbourg, 2015 and Zagreb, 2018).
Theocharis has received instruction from Rand Steiger, Lei Liang, Ricardo Zohn Muldoon, Allan Schindler, Chaya Czernowin, Brian Ferneyhough, Fred Lerdahl, Rebecca Saunders, Philippe Leroux, Franck Bedrossian, Raphael Cendo, Georg Friedrich Haas, Beat Furrer, Francesco Filidei, and Stefano Gervasoni.
Theocharis has given master-classes at the Ionian University as well as talks at Stanford Universityand the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California (UABC). Since the summer of 2020, he is the composer-in-residence at the Paxos Festival in Greece. In 2021, he will be the composer-in-residence of the New Music Festival at the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California (UABC) in Ensenada, Mexico.
Theocharis's music has been released by ArsPublica. His scores are published by Babel Scores.
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