Greek Improvisational Musical Expert to Lecture, Perform at UA

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Dr. Danae Stefanou, a musicologist and pianist at Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, Greece, will present a lecture and concert on improvisational music as part of The University of Alabama’s Greece Initiative.

The concert, called “An Evening of Experimental Greek Music and Intercultural Improvisation,” will be at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 21, in the Moody Recital Hall in UA’s Moody Music Building.

She will perform with Dr. Andrew Raffo Dewar, assistant professor in New College and music, who will play the soprano saxophone.

Her public lecture, “Improvising Greece,” will be at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 20, in 205 Gorgas Library.

Stefanou will examine contexts for musical and mixed-media group improvisation in Greece, focusing on the scene in Athens and Thessaloniki, Greece’s two largest cities.

Stefanou studied musicology and piano performance at the Universities of Nottingham and London and worked at Royal Holloway, University of London as a visiting lecturer and project manager on the online Chopin presentations (www.cfeo.org.uk and www.ocve.org.uk).

As a pianist and improviser, Stefanou has given first performances of several verbal, graphic and open-form scores for solo piano and ensemble since 2005. She also improvises regularly with a number of groups and collectives, including the electro-acoustic duo Acte Vide (http://acte-vide.blogspot.com), which also leads an improvisation workshop in Athens since 2009, and the large-scale mixed-media ensemble 6daEXIt (http://6daEXIt.wordpress.com).

Listen to more music here.

The program is supported by UA’s College of Arts and Sciences, Asian Studies, the department of art and art history, the department of gender and race studies, the department of modern languages and classics, the department of religious studies, the Honors College, New College, the Creative Campus Initiative, the Diversity Committee of the College of Arts and Sciences, University Libraries, The UA School of Music and the Intercultural Campus Council.

UA’s College of Arts and Sciences is the University’s largest division and the largest liberal arts college in the state. Students from the College have won numerous national awards including Rhodes Scholarships, Goldwater Scholarships and memberships on the USA Today Academic All American Team.