Thessaloniki Music Chamber Festival «Up To 8»
It’s fun to get together with your friends and play games. We get together to play the game of conversation, of walking about town, of thinking things through, of coming of age, of going out, of having that morning cup of coffee together.
When we play all these everyday games with people we love, we always end up learning something about ourselves – we become more receptive, more resilient, more empathetic. That is why, from a very early age in all societies and historical periods, people felt the need to be in groups and come up with new ways to play together, whether that be sports, games, or music.
When it comes to music making, the pattern is always the same: we get in a room, up to eight people, we bring our instruments, and we start playing. In the living room or a music lover who happened to own a piano during the 19th century in Paris, friends brought their cello and violin. In the garage of a teenager in 1960s U.S.A. they brought amplifiers and electric guitars. The goal was always the same: to meet up, make music together and have fun learning something about ourselves and the others surrounding us.
This is the purpose of “Up to 8”. To regain, far from the artificial weight that comes with the term “classical music”, the simplicity and joy of those gatherings. Composers wrote some of their most potent and beautiful music for small groups in a room – works of “chamber music” that are worth being performed in our city of Thessaloniki.
In this first edition of “Up to 8” (in its lite version, due to the coronavirus), we will experience music that ranged from the 18th to the 21st century. We will listen to instruments that coexist in various combinations. We will discover the language used by a composer 300 years ago, and how it compared to the language of a composer that lives amongst us here in Thessaloniki, today.
But above all, in this inaugural edition of the Festival, we will set the tone for what follows: beyond “weight”, “seriousness” and “prestige” we will make music written by awesome people, to be heard by awesome people, played by awesome musicians.
Up to 8 is to play. We hope you will join us.
Vasilis Varvaresos
Artistic Director
Thessaloniki Music Chamber Festival