She's in the middle of writing. Composer Sofia Avramidou is finalizing the score of her new work, Geranomachie, which will be premiered by the Ensemble Intercontemporain at the Grand Soir Numériqueat the Philharmonie de Paris in December. An enigmatic title, evoking an ancient and mysterious myth, on the border between animality and humanity.

Her first musical memory is a traditional Sephardic song... Sofia Avramidou, born in Greece in 1988, began by studying traditional music. 

Greece, Italy: a Mediterranean apprenticeship
She learned to play instruments such as the oud and the ney, a reed flute dating back to ancient Egypt, improvising while singing the music of the Eastern Mediterranean. At the age of 18, as a musicology student at the Aristotle University of Thessalonica, she joined the composition department. After a master's degree, she continued her studies at the Santa Cecilia Academy in Rome, inIvan Fedele's class. Then it was off to France! Boulogne-Billancourt Conservatory, before joiningIrcam's composition and computer science program in 2017.

Metallages, for flute, clarinet, horn, percussion, piano and string quartet, premiered at the Royaumont Festival, Val d'Oise in 2020.

A literary soul, a vivid imagination
The musician has fallen in love with the ancient myth of Geranomachia. In Greek: the battle of the migratory birds. A tale as old as time, referring to the bloody battles between migratory birds and a people of dwarves. There are countless versions of this tale, all over the world: in ancient times (Homer, Herodotus), in Latin funerary art, in various Amerindian myths (Cherokee, Salish, Apache), and in a number of Chinese Taoist monks' tales... The composer was attracted by its poetry, and by its striking topicality: Geranomachia is about migration.

Immobilism and momentum
Sofia Avramidou 's approach is highly intuitive.
The poetic idea behind Geranomachie lies in the dichotomy between two philosophical concepts: migratory culture versus stable culture, heaven versus earth, animality versus humanity, and the violence this encounter engenders. Birds symbolize animality, but they also embody movement, adaptation, collectivity and a strong sense of protection and solidarity. Humans, on the other hand, are withdrawn, immobilized, violent and aggressive. With 24 instruments and electronics at her disposal, she plays with different bodies of sound, chiseling out contrasts.

Fascinated by fairy tales
Literature is a major source of inspiration for the young composer. For the Venice Biennale in 2017, she composed La Légende de Saint-Martin, a piece for solo cello directly inspired by "Je suis perdue", a theatrical monologue by Jean Cocteau. Sofia is also fascinated by the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. Her chamber opera, "Rodi rodi, morsicchia! La casina chi rosichia? composed in 2018, is marked by the story of Hansel and Gretel, while the piece she composed during her studies at Ircam, "Keep digging the hare hole", is inspired by Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.

Mark your calendars! Discover Geranomachie on December 3, 2021, at the Philharmonie!

Suzanne Gervais