The Athens State Orchestra's Pilot Contemporary Music Workshop (2024-)

As it continues to expand its multi-level educational work, the Athens State Orchestra inaugurated its Pilot Contemporary Music Workshop on Spetses this year. Addressing young conductors and composers, the Workshop provided participants with a complete artistic experience along with the opportunity to work in a creative environment. The Pilot Workshop was held between 26 August and 5 September 2024, with intensive masterclasses along with group and one-on-one sessions held over a truly hectic ten days. The amazing venue, the renovated Anargyrion & Korgialenion School of Spetses, provided the ideal incubator for the project, laying the foundations for a new educational and artistic institution at which young musicians can engage in a fruitful exchange and dialogue with both their professionally established colleagues from the Athens State Orchestra and with internationally renowned conductors, soloists and composers. Participants are also given a unique opportunity to perform and conduct both new and iconic works from the repertoire, both with and without an audience. The Workshop permits the Athens State Orchestra to open up a world of collaboration and engagement, but also to facilitate live performances that allow test-runs for both compositions and conductors. The already enormous benefits are further enhanced by the professional audiovisual recordings that are made of its complete proceedings. The Conducting and Composition masterclasses are led, respectively, by the conductor Lukas Karytinos and the composer Yannis Kyriakides. The Workshop was conducted in English. The project is co-funded by the Region of Attica NSRF for 2021-2027.