Theo Vazakas (ARTéfacts)Life together

Interviews 03.11.2021

For the feature on the Athens music scene, percussionist Theo Vazakas, a founding member of Artefacts, talks to director Louizos Aslanidis, saxophonist Guido de Flaviis, clarinetist Spyros Tzekos and percussionist Costas Seremetis about life in the group, the ensemble's major and upcoming projects, and the evolution of the scene since its inception. 

Tristan Bera: How did you become a percussionist? Can you tell me more about your training years?
Theo Vazakas: When I was a child I wanted to play drums, like most percussionists. My parents enrolled me in a music school where we did percussion, not drums, they didn't know the difference. At the Municipal Odeion of Zografou there were two teachers: Konstantinos Vorissis, who taught all the skin instruments (snare drum, timpani), and Konstantinos Theodorakos, a pianist by training, with whom Vorissis had practised percussion. Theodorakos taught the percussion keyboard very well, so the speciality was given to him. It was the first class in Athens, and I think in Greece, where the discipline of percussion was divided between different teachers. It was quite common abroad: one teacher teaches the keyboard, another the snare drum, or the timpani, at least in Strasbourg where I studied. Theodorakos' and Vorissis' teachings were full of humour, and this is one of the reasons that made me spend more time at the music conservatory. It gave me the desire to pursue music.

You finished your studies in Athens in 2003. How would you describe the situation of the contemporary music scene at that time? What were the musical references? What were the places to listen to it, the general atmosphere or the reception by the audience?
There wasn't really a stage. The Megaron is, in my memory, the only venue that programmed contemporary music. And rather rarely. The Athens Festival, at the Odeon of Herod Atticus, programmed very well-known artists, such as the Ensemble Intercontemporain, but the choice of pieces played was not very advanced. It was Messiaen, for example. The Ορχήστρα Των Χρωμάτων (Orchestre de Couleurs) sometimes did contemporary, for example, paying homage to Xenakis. This orchestra, founded by Manos Hadjidakis, no longer exists. But you could sense that the musicians were not really amused by it, they were actually bored by the contemporary. The National Association of Greek Composers, founded by Theodoros Antoniou, was the only association, the only ensemble, doing contemporary chamber music in Athens at that time. But it was neither really an ensemble nor a team. Antoniou recruited musicians on the side. As for the audience, it was very small, about forty people, always the same people you would see at each concert. 

In 2003, you arrived in Strasbourg. What difference do you feel when you discover this new scene for you?
You could say that France is the Mecca of contemporary music! At least, I had this impression when I arrived in Strasbourg at the time of the Musica festival, one of the biggest French contemporary music festivals. It was striking. Ten days of continuous contemporary music in such a small city, compared to Athens! But the mentality of the audience was about the same. Even though we are in France, even though there is a bigger audience in Strasbourg for contemporary music than there is in Athens, the reception is the same.

What does that mean? How would you define this mentality?
Very few festival-goers are really passionate about sound. Most come to have a good time but don't necessarily know a good set, a good piece, or something really new. And there are the adventurous [NDA: a neologism coined by Theo combining the wordsadventurer and curious] who really go out to discover something they don't know at all. Of course, there are also those who come just to show off. I identify the same categories in France as in Athens. The difference is perhaps that here, there are fewer connoisseurs who come to the concerts. In France, those for whom it is a profession and a passion, that is to say musicology students, composition students or instrumentalists, go en masse. 

In 2000, apart from the Megaron, the Odeon of Herod Atticus, the Orchestra of Colours, were there more alternative places where amateurs organised themselves, less institutional places? I'm thinking of ABOUT for example or similar places...
ABOUT didn't exist yet...I wasn't performing yet when I was a student. I'm trying to remember if KNOT GALLERYWhere you could listen to free jazz, had already opened in Ampelokipi [a district of Athens]... Not sure. 

How did you meet the members ofARTéfacts and how did you decide to create an ensemble? I think you are a founding member. We met at the age of 17-18 in ASON - Athens Youth Symphony Orchestra, a symphony orchestra formed by a conductor and composed of Greek students from various music schools. We became friends and some of us already had the desire to introduce contemporary music. At the time, there was no ensemble that promoted this genre. And the mentality of musicians towards contemporary music really bothered us... Then we went abroad to study but we continued to exchange ideas about the idea of such a group. We thought that with a bit of κέφι we could give a certain impetus that we didn't have yet in Athens. We formed in 2007. And our first concert as an ensemble took place in January 2008: that's our birth date.

So the formation of ARTfacts is really a written, planned proposal... It's not an organic grouping at all?
No, it was very planned. 

How do you choose the compositions for the ARTéfacts ensemble?
It really depends on the project. In the case of a project that we take from conception to concert, we try to involve composers. There is usually a theme. This is the case with our first album, Thiva Km 102 (2013). A group of art therapists were starting a programme with the inmates of a women's prison at kilometre 102 in the city of Thebes, and invited us to collaborate on the artistic form that the archive of this programme should take, to transform this sound archive and make it into a CD album. We then worked with composers (including Laurent Durupt and Maurilio Cacciatore) based on the therapists' recordings. The process lasted from 2010 to 2013. The result was very strong, carried by violent testimonies in which women told how they had been captured by the police... Composers write for us. Sometimes we are offered an idea or a concert. We then try to put together a programme, for example, on the occasion of Neos Kosmos for Stegi Onassis at the invitation of Christos Carras. We can also develop a new project based on an inspiring theme, or vice versa. Two or three pieces form a theme and we create an evening. For example, our first concert was on the theme of jazz in contemporary music. 

As a group, how do you make decisions? I'm always interested to know how an artistic collective works...
We joke that we are a democratic group that discusses everything but ultimately does what Theodore wants! (Theodore is me!). Well, we discuss. At one time, we met every fortnight to exchange ideas, even if we didn't make music. We tried different ways of working. At the artistic level, we make decisions together. There is no artistic director who imposes a vision. This is one of the reasons why we decided not to have a composer or a conductor. This decision has advantages and disadvantages. Our rehearsals take longer than a normal ensemble. We are very strict in recruiting members. The core is quite small. There are five of us at the moment, but we have had as many as eight members. After three years of existence, we have created a framework. It's not an artistic manifesto, but it's reflections to protect the cohesion of the whole and the functioning of the work as a group. We take easy decisions by majority vote. For more difficult decisions, for example the entry of a new member, the vote must be unanimous.

Is life in the studio very important to you?
We are completely independent. This is different from other ensembles that are given rehearsal spaces with instruments. We started in Filothei [a neighbourhood of Athens] in a 30m2 studio, which could hardly hold twenty people and the drums, percussion, etc. For the last three years we have been in Agios Dimitrios[ibid] in a studio of 80m2. The covid crisis has slowed down our development. We only meet there when we are doing a project. It is not a creative laboratory. 

What is your relationship with the stage and the audience?
We really wanted to break down the image of academic contemporary music, which is too distant between the person making the music and the audience receiving it. I don't like to feel that distance as an audience. We are always looking for ways to be accessible and to reach the widest possible audience. We conceive our concerts as a flow, a piece of art, a work in itself, without too many pauses between pieces. And we try to keep the attention from the beginning to the end, without big breaks and long set-up changes, so that the audience leaves the music and the concert as little as possible. 

How would you describe your music in terms of genres, in some detail?
The music of ARTéfacts does not exist...outside of the projects. Each project has its own identity. Of course, we have not played all the genres of contemporary music, but amateurs could easily find their way in our repertoire: minimalism, serialism, etc. 

When did you start introducing images into the concerts?
In 2009, from the arrival of the director Louizos Aslanidis who had done his military service with the clarinettist Spyros Tzekos. Louizos has a production company that houses all our projects. This infrastructure has helped us a lot on a practical level. When he makes videos - because we don't systematically produce them - he puts himself in the position of the audience and the listener, in listening and feeling, and tries to find out what the audience would need to see to feel more comfortable. 

Could you talk about an important ARTéfacts project for you?
Zapping! A tribute to Frank Zappa and Cohabitation with K.Bhta [pronounced Kapavita] have a special place in our hearts... Spyros [Tzekos] and I conceived the project with K.Bhta even before we formed the band. It was in Amsterdam, where Spyros was studying, that while listening to the album Acoustica (2005), in which the ensemble Alarm Will Sound rearranges the music of Aphex Twin, we got the idea to work on the music of Stereo NovaK.Bhta's band. Their music had given rhythm to our adolescence... It's a tribute album to K.Bhta made with K.Bhta. Because we first did the parts, the recording, the demos with the composer Kornilios SelamsisThen we approached K.Bhta on myspace. Facebook didn't exist yet. He agreed to participate. We finally set up the project at Stegi Onassis. The album took ten years from the time we started talking about it to its release in 2015.
As for the Zappa project, we proposed it many times to venues to no avail, before the Athens festival finally agreed to program it for the 2017 edition. We liked it a lot because it's music we love and it has a very obvious link with contemporary music. 

Since your beginnings more than ten years ago, has your relationship with technology evolved?
I still suck (laughs). Louizos and Spyros use it but we didn't really integrate it. We've stayed analogue. We've done some live electronics, but it's not a real part of our work, unless the composer asks for it for his piece. 

What about your relationship to other genres? like, for example, jazz?
As a band, we don't have much to do with other genres, unless a collaboration requires it. I think Guido [De Flaviis, the saxophonist] plays some jazz. I don't play jazz. I listen to jazz but I haven't studied it. 

Do you have common references in the group? And what are yours?
The only common reference would be the well-known rock of the 1970s and 80s: Pink Floyd, Zeppelin or Queen. In terms of the contemporary music repertoire, everyone studied in different circles. When I was younger I was very fond of Evelyn Glennie and Steven Schick. I decided to study in Strasbourg to follow the teaching ofEmmanuel Séjourné, whose work I admired and who played in concerts the repertoire I wanted to play. 

And in contemporary Greek music, not necessarily in percussion?
For me, the most important name is [Iannis] Xenakis. It's a common Greek habit: when someone is dead and appreciated abroad, you end up appreciating him here. But when he was alive, it wasn't music. I also studied Jani Christou quite a bit, even though there is not much percussion, I liked his early music very much, close to Stravinsky. And then Nikos Skalkottas is a sure and indisputable value. For me, these are the three Greeks. 

How would you describe the scene in Athens today?
I hope we have helped to improve it. I really like this scene. It's flourishing. On the other hand, I see that in the last three years there is less passion and dynamism. 

This decline would have started before the pandemic?
The pandemic has accentuated it...

Could you name the places that make up the Athens scene for you?
Stegi Onassis really pushed the scene from 2011. This is the first time we were paid, before that we paid to play... There was ABOUT, KNOT Gallery, the Embros Theatre which was a squat nestled in Psyrri, ANART Gallery which still exists, I think, the Trianon on Patision Avenue, and the Parnassos, in Plateia Karitsi, more classical. The Parnassos was the first concert hall in Athens before the Megaron and was considered the best acoustic. We never played at the Goethe Institute, but we collaborated with the French Institute which supported the project Thiva Km 102 because of the presence of French composers. 

Which composers, soloists or ensembles could you mention today?
TETTIX, ERGON or DISSONART in Thessaloniki...I think the ensembles held up, so it makes composers want to collaborate. What was striking [in Athens] was that the stage was boosted by the audience. The golden period for contemporary music is really 2008-2014, in the middle of the economic crisis, strangely enough. Then, contemporary music was no longer programmed in the big halls. It was programmed in the basement, it became underground again. I don't like this mysticism, I'm rather mathematical.

What would be the challenges to guarantee the future of this scene?
If I see a drop in interest, it's not extinction, it's still going strong though. Ensembles exist and others continue to emerge. Perhaps imagining a collective agreement would be necessary... Since institutions have existed, musicians who are part of the scene, and I include ARTéfacts, have forgotten to take charge of their own history by relying on institutional programmers and communication officers. We forgot to promote ourselves, to write our own story. Thanks to these institutions, we suddenly felt that we could make music. But that's not enough, you have to make music but also build a story. 

What are the current projects of ARTéfacts?
From 7 to 13 November, we are collaborating in Strasbourg with two French ensembles, Links (based in Paris) and HANATSUmirror (based in Strasbourg). The project, entitled EXOrgueis centred on a monumental organ, but whose parts are transferable to the hall. The computer-controlled sound is spatialised. We have already done a version in Paris and we continue to do residencies with composers: in Poissy with the composer Laurent Durupt; and in Strasbourg with two pieces by Sergio Rodriguez and Mathias Fernandez. In February, we will be in residence with Alexandros Markeas at the Mégaron. In May, we will record at Radio France the piece composed by Annabelle Playein the framework of the EXOrgue project, which I don't know if it will be an album in the end.
We are also setting up an experimental project, based on an idea by Christos Carras at Stegi Onassis, with the Syrian & Greek Youth Forum (SGYF)and under the guidance of musicologists and curators Danae Stefan and Yannis Kotsonis [the founders of Knot Gallery]. We are trying to find a way to make completely different music from the culture of contemporary music and the Middle East. We're in the middle of it now. If the result is satisfactory, we will play on the Stegi stage. If not, it will remain an experiment, or a video only, because everything is filmed.

Would you like to add anything? Five words to describe ARTéfacts...
ARTeFACT is NoT an OrDiN4Ry EnS3MbLe... What makes me proud is that we have been involved in the creation of about forty works and it is thanks to our existence that these works were created (laughs). 

Tristan Bera in Athens.

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