From the very first year of its operation, one of the main objectives of the Chios Music Festival was to involve in its activities residents, local groups and institutions that are artistically active, encouraging and creating the conditions for local artists to collaborate with internationally renowned artists from Greece and around the world. One of the festival’s stable partners is the Chios Music School, which participates every year in the festival’s activities, in collaboration with the festival’s guest artists. 

Within this framework, in October 2021, the Berlin State and Cathedral Choir visited the island of Chios, at the invitation of the festival, and it took part in concerts and music theatre performances along with the Choir of the Chios Music School. The collaboration of the Berlin State and Cathedral Choir with the Choir of the Chios Music School and child refugees from the annual educational programme of the Chios Music Festival concluded with the show “Singing Trees, What Times Are These?”.

Following this first meeting, the Berlin State and Cathedral Choir will in turn welcome the Chios Music School in Berlin from 6 to 12 March for a week of joint rehearsals, meetings, concerts and other cultural activities. 

The outcome of this collaboration will lead to the event that will take place on 11 March 2023 in the Joseph-Joachim Concert Hall of the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK), Bundesallee 1-12. 

The detailed programme is as follows:

15:00 Presentation on rebetiko song. A brief lecture by Michalis Pilavas and Faidra Giannelou, teachers of the Chios Music School, who will explain its history and its special characteristics, while students of the Chios Music School will perform rebetika songs.

16:00 Presentation of the educational program of the Chios Music Festival for child refugees, by Andrianna Neamoniti, the teaching coordinator, as well as similar initiatives in Germany by Kian Jazdi 

17:00 Music theatre performance “Singing Trees, What Times Are These?”

A collaboration of the Berlin State and Cathedral Choir and the Choir of the Chios Music School.

Admission Free

The programme is a collaborative project between the Berlin State and Cathedral Choir, the Berlin University of the Arts, the Sing-Akademie Berlin, the Chios Music School and the Chios Music Festival, in cooperation with the Allianz Foundation and under the auspices of the Embassy of Greece in Berlin.

The exchange programme is funded by the Hellenic-German Youth Foundation.