Saturday, July 12, 21:00
Horto Theatre
Admission: 10€
Choir and Orchestra of Volos Music School
Kerasia Siarra, Irini Baruta teaching and coordination
Hortodia and Agria Mixed Choir
Nikos Adraskelas, preparation and conducting
Nikos Kypourgos: “He is a cosmopolitan of music. He has composed operas, vocal, orchestral, chamber, ballet, songs and music for theatre and film. He flexibly changes fields of action. An enlightener with graduated studies but with work that defies categorization. He is musically multilingual and becomes the priest who marries different musical genres. Like the bee he will roam rare gardens to bring us his gift. He has found his audience. They are music lovers, young and old, who seek and preserve their youth.” extract from Athens Voice article find more here www.nikoskypourgos.com
Irini Barouta was born and raised in Thessaloniki, where she took her first cello lessons at the Music College Conservatory with Professor Michalis Liatsos. She then studied at the Department of Music Studies of the Ionian University, with Professor Ioannis Toulis, where she graduated with a specialization in cello performance. During her studies she was accepted at the Academy of Music I.J.Paderewski University in Poznan, Poland, where she studied for one semester with Professor Agnieszka Brojek, through the Erasmus+ programme. In 2017 she was accepted on a full scholarship from the University of Houston, Moores School of Music, Texas, where she continued her studies in cello at the graduate level with Professor Vagram Saradjian. During her graduate studies, she held an assistant cellist position with the university’s representative quartet, the Tomazt String Quartet, and was also an AHEPA Scholar. In 2020 she was accepted into the doctoral program at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, on full scholarship and an assistant professorship, studying with Professor Denis Parker. She has attended cello and chamber music seminars with teachers such as Dimitris Patras, Anatoli Krastev, Mario de Secondi, Anthony Elliot, Rastrelli Cello Quartet etc. She holds advanced degrees in harmony and counterpoint from the Thessaloniki Music College, with Yannis Baroutas. She has given concerts either solo or as a member of an ensemble in Greece, Italy, Austria, and the USA. As an orchestral musician, she has played in the Corfu Old Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Alkis Baltas, the Rhodes Symphony Orchestra, the Greek Youth Symphony Orchestra (ELSON), the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra, LA, and the Acadiana Symphony Orchestra, LA. Since 2024 she lives and works in Volos as a cello teacher at the Volos Music School and the Volos Municipal Conservatory. At the same time, she plays in the symphony orchestra of the city and performs concerts in Magnesia and elsewhere.
Kerasia Siara was born and raised in Volos, where she took her first piano lessons at the Music School of Kaiti Z. She started her piano studies in Kita Samartzi’s piano school in Kaia Samartzi, with teacher Nitsa Amaxopoulou. She continued her studies at the Volos Municipal Conservatory next to the renowned pianist and teacher Mr. Dinos Mastrogiannis. At the age of 20, she graduated from his class, obtaining a Piano Diploma with an A grade. At the same time he obtained the Diplomas of Harmony, Counterpoint and Fugue with distinction from the classes of B. Foster, I. Grampsas and I. Karkala. In 2002 he received the Bachelor of Music Science and Art degree of the University of Macedonia with Honours. During her studies there she studied piano with Mrs. Zoe Samsarelou. She has attended piano seminars with Giulia and Konstatin Ganev, Uwe Maschke and Ruth Gerald. In 2006 she obtained a Diploma in Composition with a grade of A with distinction from the class of Mr. Irinaos Triantafyllou. After completing a cycle of musical studies in 2015, she obtained the Diploma of Choir Conducting with a grade of Excellent Unanimous from the class of C. She graduated from the Faculty of Music with a degree of Honours from G.G. Karkala. She has participated in chamber music concerts and has collaborated with many artists in the field of musical accompaniment. Since 1998 and for six years she worked at the Volos Municipal Conservatory teaching music theory, and since 2004 she has been appointed in Secondary Education. For seven years she has been a member of the teaching staff of the Volos Music School as a piano teacher and conductor of the fortissimo choir.
Nikos Adraskelas was born in 1984 in Athens. He began his musical studies at the Ars Nova Conservatory and in 2004 he completed his piano diploma (class of Christina Tertipi). At the same time he studies and continues in theory with the corresponding titles: tonal harmony (with Yannis Pantazatos), baroque and renaissance counterpoint (with Panagiotis Adam), practical harmony (with Alexandros Kalogeras), fugue (with Yannis Karkala) while in 2018 he completes his studies in choir conducting with the corresponding diploma at the Dimitris Demopoulos Conservatory (Kozani) with Nikos Efthymiadis. His relationship with George Hadjinikos, whom he first met at the Horto seminars in South Pelion in 2003, was decisive for his musical development. From 2006 to 2011, together with Christos Marinos, as a piano duo, they gave concerts in Greece, Austria, the Netherlands and England, many of them in collaboration with orchestras, chamber music ensembles and lyric singers. In 2011 he settled permanently in Horto where he founded the social multicultural choir Hortodia whose activities are artistically and socially part of the life of the inhabitants of South Pelion. In 2014 and 2015 he composes the music for the performances of the Volos Theatre The Fusiliers of Katsipora by F.G. Lorca and The Little Prince by S. Exupery. From 2015 to 2021 he is the director of the choirs and piano teacher at the Volos Municipal Conservatory. In 2017 he became secretary of the Angelinis-Hadjinikos Foundation and main organizer of the Horto Festival where he continues to this day, along with piano teaching, the development of musical skills in young and old through group lessons and choral ensembles. In 2022 he also took over the Mixed Choir of the Municipal Unit of Agrias Volos, of which he is the conductor until today.
