MUSIC, WORDS & MOVEMENT

Australian guitarist, composer, producer, and musical director Kyran Daniel returned to Hydra to deliver an incredible live listening session of his latest album, Like the Night Itself.

Athens-based percussionist Alekos Roupas gave us a beat experience like no other - pure rhythm, energy, and joy.

BARRY GUY, MAYA HOMBURGER FRANK VAN DEN BRINK & JULIEN REYNOLDS

A distinguished opening night classical performance by Dutch clarinetist Frank van den Brink, British conductor and pianist Julian Reynolds, alongside the renowned classical duo Barry Guy and Maya Homburger.

Hydra’s father-and-son musicians, Yiannis and Panagiotis Gavalas, together with local Makis Saratis, shared their love for the music of Boy on a Dolphin and Hydra’s traditional songs at this year’s Tribute evening.

Hydra’s longstanding non-profit music organization showcased their talented dedication to keeping local musical traditions alive during our Boy on a Dolphin Tribute Night.

Integrating sound, voice, video, and spatial interventions, we thank this remarkable sonic artist for immersing us in her boundless sonic imagination and performance.

We celebrated Hydra’s rich poetic heritage through the voices of local poet Yiannis Gavalas and American poet John L. Holgerson, uniting words across seas and generations.

Thanks to our guest writer-directors from the Opening Night Films - Faraz Arif Ansari (Bun Tikki) and Doug Rao (Dirty Boy) - for leading an inspiring discussion on screenwriting.

We thank award-winning writer and director Doug Rao, who unveiled a 40-minute excerpt of his one-man play in development, A Veteran of Troy, and also presented his opening night film, Dirty Boy.

KYRAN DANIEL

AUSTRALIAN GUITARIST, COMPOSER & PRODUCER

Joining us for a special three-week residency, during which we are also developing new projects, is ArtCinema Music Patron Kyran Daniel - guitarist, composer, producer, and musical director. Kyran’s career began on the world stage, performing alongside Australian Grammy winner Tommy Emmanuel. His debut album, Per Se, became a landmark in the acoustic guitar world, earning him a full scholarship to the prestigious Berklee College of Music, where he studied under some of the foremost professors in contemporary songwriting and production.

Following Berklee, Kyran built a stellar reputation as a songwriter and producer for leading Australian artists including G Flip, Gretta Ray, and Kingswood. His wide-ranging musical sensibility and exceptional artistry quickly cemented his place among Australia’s most sought-after studio talents.

Now based between Paris and London, Kyran is a celebrated artist whose work bridges sound, storytelling, and sense of place. He presented a live listening session of his latest album, Like the Night Itself - an intimate performance not to be missed, made all the more poignant as a significant portion of the album was recorded at Hydra’s Old Carpet Factory studios just two years ago.

LIVE LISTENING SESSION:

World-acclaimed Australian musician Kyran Daniel, whose artistry bridges sound, storytelling, and sense of place, delivered an intimate live listening session of his latest album, Like the Night Itself. The performance carried added resonance, as much of the album had been recorded at Hydra’s Old Carpet Factory just two years prior.

A huge thank you to Stephan Collerado-Mansfield and Vassilis Korres at the Old Carpet Factory recording studio for graciously hosting us.

Like The Night Itself on Vinyl - Exclusive First-Print Edition

We’re ecstatic about the musical brilliance of our resident artist, Australian guitarist, songwriter, and producer Kyran Daniel. On the eve of his upcoming solo album, Like The Night Itself - partly recorded at Hydra’s historic Old Carpet Factory - Kyran is releasing 100 exclusive first-print vinyl copies, and reserving 10 copies for our ArtCinema community.

Watch his latest film featuring one of the album’s title tracks, and share what it evokes for you.

ALEKOS ROUPAS

Greek percussionist and world-acclaimed Alekos Roupas delivered an incredible 20-minute performance at ArtCinema’s community event, Cinema and Souvlaki, for family audiences - an early evening performance that reminded us of the power of movement and rhythm ahead of the screenings.

GREEK PERCUSSIONIST

Born in Ioannina, Alekos started studying Greek traditional percussion instruments at an early age, as well as participating in live performances – including festivals of traditional Greek dance. He took drum lessons at the Municipal Conservatory of Ioannina. He continued his studies and graduated from the department of traditional and modern percussion at the Philippos Nakas Conservatory, studying with Professor Petros Kourtis. He also studied privately and participated in workshops with many significant artists such as Alex Acuna, Eguie Castrillo, Richie Gajate Garcia, Yshai Afterman, Misirli Ahmet, and Petro Pablo Rodriguez Mireles.

  • His percussion work has encompasses a large number of musical genres and he has collaborated as a session musician with a many top artists, composers, and singers, as well as touring around the world. Some of his significant recent collaborations have included Gloria Gaynor at Athens Concert Hall, Marios Fragoulis at the Odeon of Herod Atticus in Athens, under the direction of 6 time Grammy winner, Jorge Calandrelli, as well as legendary Greek artists like, Mary Linda, Marinella, Tolis Voskopoulos, Antonis Remos, Glykeria, and Melina Kana.

    Since 2011 Alekos has also taught at the Philippos Nakas Conservatory’s department of traditional and modern percussion, offering seminars on modern approaches to percussion, and the multi-percussion set. During his 2018 US tour, he held a workshop on Mediterranean and Greek approaches to percussion, as a visiting artist at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, in the Ernesto Diaz ensemble class. Alekos is also co-founder of the Percussion4One group.

    Alekos plays the full range of traditional Greek, Mediterranean, Latin, Brazilian and West African percussion instruments, including the dumbek and darbuka, the defi of Epirus, the dauli or davul, the bendir, cajon ,timbales and the congas. His unique style is a fusion of these traditional techniques giving him a characteristic and distinctive sound in the world music scene.

OPENING NIGHT CLASSICAL PERFORMANCE

Thank you to the incredible musicians Barry Guy, Maya Homburger, Frank van den Brink, and Julian Reynolds for their remarkable performances at Lazaros Kountouriotis Mansion during ArtCinema’s welcome event.

BARRY GUY AND MAYA HOMBURGER

Barry Guy is an innovative bass player and composer whose creative diversity in the fields of jazz improvisation, chamber and orchestral performance and solo recitals is the outcome both of an unusually varied training and a zest for experimentation, underpinned by a dedication to the double bass and the ideal of musical communication.

  • He is founder and Artistic Director of the London Jazz Composers Orchestra and the BGNO (Barry Guy New Orchestra) for which he has written several extended works. In 2014 he founded the “Blue Shroud Band” to perform his composition “The Blue Shroud” based on Picasso's painting “Guernica” with texts by the Irish poet Kerry Hardie. His concert works for chamber orchestras, chamber groups and soloists have been widely performed and his skillful and inventive writing has resulted in an exceptional series of compositions. In 2016 Barry Guy was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Middlesex, London and also appointed Honorary Professor to the Rhythmic Conservatory in Copenhagen. In 2019 he completed a commission for the KRONOS String Quartet as part of their series “50 for the Future”. Barry Guy continues to give solo recitals throughout Europe as well as continuing associations with colleagues involved in improvised, baroque and contemporary music. Among his current ensembles are the Homburger / Guy Duo, the "Acanthis" Trio with Lucas Niggli and Maya Homburger, the Duo with Jordina Milla (piano), the Parker / Guy / Lytton trio, "Tarfala" with Mats Gustafsson and Raymond Strid, “Free Radicals” with Peter Evans (tpt) and Agusti Fernandez (piano), the trio with Torben Snekkestad (saxophone and Agusti Fernandez (piano) as well as various piano trios: The Izumi Kimura Trio with Gerry Hemingway, the trio with Agusti Fernandez and Zlatko Kaucic, the trio with Angelica Sanchez and Ramon Lopez and the longstanding trio with Marilyn Crispell and Paul Lytton.

Maya Homburger originally moved to England to join various ancient music ensembles and became one of the leaders of John Eliot Gardiner's "English Baroque Soloists".

  • Ever since meeting the composer and solo bassist Barry Guy - on the occasion of an extended concert tour with Christopher Hogwood’s Academy of Ancient Music in 1988 - she has devoted her time developing her own personal style on the baroque violin as well as managing Improvised and New Music projects and running her own CD label Maya Recordings.

    The idea to perform baroque solo works in the context of free improvised music and newly commissioned pieces sparked off the Homburger/Guy Duo and together Maya Homburger and Barry Guy have given concerts in many major Jazz, New Music and Baroque Music Festivals all over Europe and in Canada.

    Her specialities are performances of H.I.F. Biber's Mystery Sonatas as well as chamber music and cantatas by J.S.Bach.

    After living in Ireland for nine years where they contributed both to the early as well as the contemporary music scene, they moved to Switzerland in 2006. The close connection to Ireland however remained : From 2011-2017 they organised their own music and art festival in Ireland : Barrow River Arts Festival (BRAF) and they perform regularly in various Irish festivals and concert series with the ensemble "Camerata Kilkenny".

    Recordings include a. o. the Duo CDs “Ceremony” (ECM) and “Dakryon” (MAYA Recordings). The recording of the complete set of H. I. F. Biber's (1644-1704) famous Mystery Sonatas for violin and basso continuo has also been released on the MAYA label as well as a series of three solo violin CDs with J.S.Bach's Sonatas and Partitas BWV1001-1006 paired with Barry Guy's works for solo violin, called the "Butterfly Series" : “Inachis”, “Aglais” and “Lysandra”. Another ECM recording is “Folio” where she appears as violin soloist together with the Munich Chamber Orchestra. The latest Homburger/Guy Duo CD has appeared on the Intact Records Label and is called “Tales of Enchantment”. She also appears together with the Barry Guy New Orchestra (BGNO) as soloist on the Intakt CD "Amphi" and in various recordings with the Blue Shroud Band.

    Maya Homburger plays on three baroque violins which are all in original, historic condition: Antonio dalla Costa, Treviso 1740, Samuel Thompson, London 1720, Thomas Perry, 1780 Dublin. She also plays - with the baroque bow of course - on a beautiful modern violin built in 2020 by the German luthier Stefan-Peter Greiner.

FRANK VAN DEN BRINK

Frank van den Brink studied at the Conservatoria of Amsterdam and The Hague, graduating with honors from both academies. At the age of 20 van den Brink was appointed solo-clarinetist of the North Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra. He currently holds the solo clarinetist position with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra. Frank is also a member of the Netherlands Wind Ensemble and the van Swieten Society.

  • As a ‘guest principal’ van den Brink has worked with many orchestra’s worldwide, such as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, l’Orchestre National de France, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and the Ensemble Modern.
    As a soloist van den Brink has performed and recorded with many orchestras in the Netherlands and Europe, including the Radio Philharmonic, Amsterdam Sinfonietta, the North Netherlands Philharmonic, European Chamber Orchestra Per Musica, the Orchestra of Tblisi and the Radio Chamber Philharmonie.

    Throughout his professional life van den Brink has also devoted his attention to the history of the clarinet, performing on period instruments with the orchestras of Frans Brüggen, Emmanuel Krivine, Jos van Immerseel, John Eliot Gardiner and Philip Herreweghe, also appearing as a soloist with the Amsterdam Mozart Academy and  Arion Baroque Montreal. 
    A dedicated and versatile chamber musician, performing on both modern and period instruments with equal skill, van den Brink is a prolific participant in many international festivals, both as a player and as a teacher.
    He holds a teaching position at the Conservatorium of Amsterdam.

    Decades ago he fell in love with Hydra, and since a few years he owns a house in Kamini.

JULIEN REYNOLDS

Conductor Julian Reynolds enjoys a highly successful international career both in opera and in concert repertoire. Highlights of recent seasons have included engagements at the Netherlands Opera for Il barbiere di Siviglia and Norma, (available on DVD on Opus Arte) in Sankt Gallen for Tosca, Norma, and Hänsel und Gretel, at the Grand Théâtre de la Ville in Luxembourg with Il barbiere di Seviglia, and acclaimed performances of Puccini’s Il trittico in Modena, Ferrara, and Piacenza. He made his debut at Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Bruxelles with Elisabetta Regina d’Inghliterra.

  • In 1986, Julian Reynolds was appointed Assistant Music Director at the Netherlands Opera in Amsterdam, conducting Bluebeard’s Castle, Mitridate, Le nozze di Figaro, L’italiana in Algeri, Luisa Miller, and L’elisir d’amore, among others. During his tenure at the Netherlands Opera, he worked with other opera companies in the country, most notably in productions of Madama Butterfly and The Cunning Little Vixen for Opera Zuid.

    Julian Reynolds made his German debut with Otello at the Staatstheater Stuttgart, followed by a new production of Luisa Miller with the Staatstheater Mainz. He has been a regular guest conductor with the Kirov Opera in the Maryinsky Theatre St. Petersburg, making his debut with the company conducting La traviata, and went on to lead a new production of Verdi’s Don Carlos, followed by Samson et Dalila, and the Kirov’s first ever production of Le nozze di Figaro.

    He made his North American debut at the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto with L’italiana in Algeri. In the same season, he made his Wexford Opera Festival debut with Weinberger’s Svanda dudák, the recording of which is available on Naxos. He has led Carmen at both the Teatro Regio di Parma and at the Arena di Verona, and Adelina at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, and made his debut on the Sankt Gallen podium with La Cenerentola and Otello, and conducted Lucrezia Borgia at the Festivales de Musica de Castillon.

    Julian Reynolds has been a guest conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Aukland Philharmonia, Dutch Radio Philharmonic, Netherlands Philharmonic, Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, Melbourne International Festival, Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, and the orchestra of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, where he led his own orchestration of Lieder by Alma Mahler. He has recorded these with soprano Charlotte Margiono on the Globe label.

    A regularly requested recital accompanist, Julian Reynolds has worked extensively with Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Susan Graham, and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, both in recital and as conductor.

    His recordings include CDs of Rossini Overtures, Ravel’s Ma Mère l’Oye, Saint-Saens’ Le Carnaval des animaux and several Rossini rarities, for Globe Records. As a pianist he has recorded the complete works for piano and violin of Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann with violinist Johannes Leertouwer.

YIANNIS AND PANAGIOTIS GAVALAS

HYDRA POET & MUSICIANS

ArtCinema was honoured to present father-and-son musicians Yiannis and Panagiotis Gavalas, together with Makis Saratis, whose profound knowledge of Hydra’s traditional music inspired much of this year’s creativity during the special Boy on a Dolphin Tribute evening, shortly after Yiannis appeared in ArtCinema’s film he helped inspire, Hydra & Sophia: Echoes of a Dolphin.

Yiannis Gavalas -  a former shipping captain, marine teacher, and poet - has long been a devoted guardian of Hydra’s musical heritage.  He has championed traditional gatherings for decades, including the Almond Festival, where musicians perform the island’s cherished songs. Yiannis also vividly recalls Sophia Loren’s arrival in 1956 for the filming of Boy on a Dolphin, and is known for his moving rendition of “Τι είναι αυτό που το λένε αγάπη” (What Is This That They Call Love?). Born on Hydra, he served in the merchant marines before teaching at the island’s School for Merchant Captains. A prolific author, he has published seven books, with his latest celebrating Hydra’s achievements.

Panagiotis Gavalas, a beloved local pharmacist and accomplished bouzouki player, continues the family’s rich musical tradition.

JULIJA CASTELLUCCI

Julija Kasteluči returned to ArtCinema as a sonic patron, presenting a two-minute performance at Melina Mercuri Hall, with thanks to Hydra Municipality for providing the space. She is a conceptual and performance artist whose work spans the fields of time-based and spatial art through sonic, visual, and written forms. Her immersive approach integrates sound, voice, video, and spatial interventions. The veracity of her vocal expression stems from the distinctive timbre and frequency of her voice, through which she creates abstract emotional drawings, establishing communication with the audience in a continuous search for situational context. She explores the sculptural and emotional dimensions of sound, shaping situations as entities with singular contexts, compact structures, and ephemeral existence. 

MUSIC PERFORMANCE ARTIST

A STATEMENT FROM JULIJA ABOUT HER ARTISTIC PRACTICE:

My practice is a relationship to the ways of presenting what I want to express, and the modes of expression within that practice are not fixed - in fact, they are fluid. One could say it is a practice within a practice, in which my relation to traditional three-dimensional exhibition practices is in constant redefinition, while I am in continuous search for the situational. In searching for the situational, I extract the essence, abstract it, and transform it into a form that is placed within a specific context, time, and space. Yet sometimes the very act of searching nullifies both time and space, becoming a de-contextualized situation - or rather, one with its own singular context, which at times may not be entirely legible.

  • When I enter a work, that is, a world I am creating, as I walk through that world, the act of walking itself becomes my work, and that gives me a kind of structure. I do not focus on a specific medium, but on the idea, on the content, on research and experimentation. Through my work I also explore how we see, how we hear, how our biology, our history, our bodies influence our perception and our understanding of ourselves and the world. I am interested in the relationships we have with one another through immaterial aspects. I strive for my work to carry less narration and more of an emotional, sensorial landscape. The situations I create are in fact a kind of entity, whose time and space - the conditions in which that entity appears - are integral to its manifestation. In this sense, if I had to give a name or definition to what I do, for now I would say I am a situational artist: I create situations, sonic situations, sometimes sonic speculative fictions, unnamed fragments, environments, experiences. I move across fields, disciplines, and practices in search of my own language through which I communicate. Sometimes it takes me a long time to find the language, or rather, a dialect of a language I already know, which allows me to communicate with witnesses. Once I find the language/dialect through which I can communicate, I then use it in the same way I create situations - not so much objects (when I say “object,” I don’t mean only sculpture or painting; it can be something that has a certain compactness, an ephemeral form of existence, of living). I use a language that has multiple dialects; I don’t always speak in the same dialect, but I believe the root of the language is always the same - and that root is the one I discovered when I was 7 years old. I knew then that it was my language.

A POETIC MORNING OF READINGS

We were proud to honour Hydra’s rich poetry and literary heritage with A Poetic Morning of Readings at Hydra's famous Pirate Bar, co-hosted by local poet Yiannis Gavalas and American poet John L. Holgerson, along with Greek poet Michelle Houwers, who shared a poem and assisted with translation. For the past 30 years, Holgerson has spent at least a month or two each year in Hydra, inspired by Leonard Cohen, writing poetry and reflecting. He returned as an ArtCinema Poet Patron to co-host the morning, with Yiannis Gavalas. Our heartfelt thanks go to Wendy and Lily at the Pirate Bar for kindly allowing us to host this gathering there.

YIANNIS GAVALAS

Yiannis Gavalas, born in Hydra, is a retired merchant marine captain who now devotes his time to writing prose and verse, as well as singing and playing guitar. A distinguished member of the Greek Writers’ Union, he has published seven poetry collections, including Marine Vibrations (1995), Marine Disturbance (1999), and most recently Hydriot Achievements (2024). His works can also be explored at Hydra’s Historical Archives Museum.

We eagerly await his next poetry collection, set to be published in 2025, promising yet another brilliant contribution to Greek literature and culture.

JOHN L. HOLGERSON

For the past 30 years, John L. Holgerson has resided for at least a month or two each year in Hydra, inspired by Leonard Cohen, writing poetry and reflecting. He returns to Hydra as an ArtCinema Poet Patron to co-host the Poetry Breakfast and a surprise festival film about the life of a poet. 

His third and most recent poetry collection, Convictions of the Heart, includes a heartfelt tribute to Hydra and reflections on other places and people. John’s other two poetry collections are Broken Borders and Unnecessary Tattoo. He continues to write and publish poetry. 

Born in Taunton, Massachusetts, John studied poetry and law at the University of Notre Dame. Inspired by criminal law professor Robert Blakey and civil rights lawyer William Kunstler, he joined the Massachusetts Defenders Committee after graduation. As a trial and appellate attorney, John handled serious felony cases and argued before Massachusetts’ highest courts. These experiences shape his novel-in- progress, The Privilege.

You can visit John’s website HERE

A VETERAN OF TROY

PERFORMANCE AT GARDENIA OPEN-AIR THEATRE

As well as presenting his opening night film Dirty Boy, award-winning writer/director Doug Rao performed a 40-minute excerpt of his one-man play in development, A Veteran of Troy - a visceral one-man play in development, at Hydra's Gardenia Open-Air Cinema.

Reimagining the ancient Trojan War through the eyes of a modern soldier, A Veteran of Troy fuses Homeric myth with contemporary trauma to confront masculinity, grief, violence, and memory.

Part spoken-word performance, part shattered myth, the play merges the fury of Achilles, the cunning of Odysseus, and the pride of Agamemnon with the fractured psyche of a homeless veteran, wandering through the alleys of his own mind in search of himself.

Rao - whose feature film Dirty Boy also screened at Cannes - is an actor known for the Royal Shakespeare Company, BAFTA-winning The Bill, and the Emmy-nominated Netflix drama Zero Chill.

A poetic performance of mythic fire and mortal tenderness.