Sound of Color #5
A vibrant meeting place between musical improvisation and the visual arts, “Sound of Color” offers new audiovisual encounters and different dynamics between sound and image every month at KET.
Curated by Jannis Anastasakis and Natalia Manta, over the course of eleven years it has evolved into a unique forum for artistic exchange, with a decisive influence on the Greek experimental scene.
The fifth event of the season brings together the vocal trio Alkanna Graeca (Dunja Botic, Alexandra Achillea, Irini Arabatzi), Fausto Sierakowski on saxophone, Jannis Anastasakis on guitar, analog synths, and live electronics, and Natalia Manta and Alexandra Niaka on live visuals.
🔷 Alkanna Graeca is a vocal trio blending raw folk traditions from the Balkans, East Mediterranean, and Black Sea with improvisation and expansive soundscapes. Formed by Dunja Botic, Alexandra Achillea, and Irini Arabatzi, the trio’s music intertwines the cultural heritage of their homelands with a bold, boundary-pushing edge. Hailed as “rising stars of polyphonic singing”, they have been selling out venues and drawing audiences in across festival stages in the UK and Greece.
🔶 Fausto Sierakowski was born in Paris and grew up in Rome. He studied classical saxophone at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Italy and contemporary improvisation at the New England Conservatory. During his stay in America, he collaborated with musicians such as Matt Moran, Anthony Coleman, Joe Morris, Matt Darriau, Satoshi Takeshi, Hayden Chisholm, and Axel Dörner. He returned to Europe and settled in Greece in 2016. Since then, he has been a member of the musical ensembles of Evgenios Voulgaris and Yannis Dionysios, as well as the Fausto Sierakowski Trio and People of the Wind.
🔷 Through interactive installations, immersive technologies, and writing, Alexandra Niaka explores the relationship between humans and technology and how it shapes our interaction with the surrounding reality. She focuses on using cutting-edge technology to create virtual, mixed, and augmented reality experiences. She has worked at The Workers (inc.) and Jason Bruges Studio production studios in London. She participates as a creative developer and new media artist in dance, music, and theater productions. In 2020, she won the SNF Artist Fellowship Award in visual arts from ARTWORKS. She is a member of the artistic group Medea Electronique.
🔶 Natalia Manta is an artist based in Athens. Although clay is her primary medium, she also skillfully uses metal, wax, photosensitive chemicals, and video. Collaboration with various artistic disciplines is an integral part of her practice. From 2017 to 2020, she taught sculpture at the Athens School of Fine Arts, the same university where she earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees. For the past 10 years, she has been co-organizing and curating the audiovisual improvisational series “Sound of Color” with Jannis Anastasakis. Her works have been presented in exhibitions and institutions in Greece and internationally. In 2022, she was awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS and has participated in important residency programs abroad. Her creations can be found in private and public collections.
🔷 One of the most distinctive guitarists and musicians on the Greek improvisational scene, Jannis Anastasakis has developed a recognizable personal sound that moves between ambient and psychedelia, balancing melody and noise. He is the founder of JAM Pedals, a company that manufactures handmade pedals used by leading musicians (Bill Frisell, John Scofield, Daniel Lanois, John Medeski, Nile Rodgers, Lee Ranaldo, etc.). He has collaborated with important artists from the Greek and international music scene, such as Arve Henriksen, Eivind Aarset, Christian Fennesz, Giuseppe Doronzo, Savina Giannatou, Haig Yazdjian, Thodoris Rellos, Michalis Siganidis, Floros Floridis, Lena Platonos, Spyros Polychronopoulos, Dionysis Savvopoulos, Haris Lambrakis, and others. He is developing the audiovisual project “Sound of Color” with sculptor Natalia Manta on live visuals.