INTERNATIONAL ilSUONO CONTEMPORARY MUSIC WEEK
An Annual Summer Composition Academy in Città di Castello, Italy
"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 Athens, Greece, Theocharis Papatrechas (b. 1988) is a composer, sound artist, electronic musician, and educator, currently based in Oakland, CA.
Theocharis holds a PhD in Music from the University of California, San Diego, where he worked closely with Rand Steiger, Lei Liang, and Miller Puckette. He has also had the privilege to study at other significant institutions, including the Eastman School of Music, IRCAM, Sibelius Academy, and Ionian University.
Theocharis is currently in residence at the Center for New Music & Audio Technologies (CNMAT) of the University of California, Berkeley as a Visiting Researcher and Composer, developing a sound installation that involves instrumentalists, motion sensors, and real-time electronics diffused through a 3D multichannel system.
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. In his creative practice, he is preoccupied with themes such as tactility, fragility, granulation, sound sculpting, and sonic spaces.
Between 2018-2020, Theocharis had been collaborating with composer Lei Liang and oceanographer Joshua Jones on several 3D audio installation projects taken place at the 32-channel Spatialization Lab of the Qualcomm Institute of Technology. The team uses data of audio recordings captured by hydrophones at the bottom of the Arctic's ocean.
Since 2016, Theocharis leads the artistic direction of the annual summer composition academy ilSUONO Contemporary Music Week, which takes place annually in Città di Castello, Italy. The initiative was founded in collaboration with Italian saxophonist Michele Bianchini and the ensemble Suono Giallo. Theocharis's responsibilities at ilSUONO include sound engineering, programming, organizational and administrational duties, participant selections, artists invitations, and communications and promotions.
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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