Vassilis Chatzimakris is a composer, sound artist, performer and improviser. His compositional practice combines Indeterminacy, Open Forms and Extended Notations, while his compositions encourage the interdisciplinary engagement of the participants. He is currently a PhD candidate in Composition at Bath Spa University, School of Music and Performing Arts, conducting practice-based research in indeterminate composition for interdisciplinary performances under the supervision of Prof. James Saunders. Before starting his PhD, he has completed his studies in Performance Design and Practice at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, and a Joint BA and MA in Music Composition at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He has taken composition lessons, workshops and seminars by James Saunders, Michalis Lapidakis, Dimitri Papageorgiou, Alexis Porfiriadis, Gerhard Staebler and Kunsu Shim.

 

The focus of Vassilis Chatzimakris’ compositional research is laid upon building structures and interfaces for people deriving from diverse (artistic or not) backgrounds to devise intermedial performances using scores as means to stimulate this process.

 

He has been awarded with the 2013 Bath Spa-Porthleven Prize, having the opportunity to collaborate with artists deriving from diverse backgrounds (fine art, performance art, installation art) in order to produce work for exhibitions in Porthleven, Bristol and Bath, following a ten-day residency in Porthleven, Cornwall.

 

His work Principia Actionum I  has been one of the winning compositions of AUT's Open Call 2014: [Open Scores]. Exhibition of the score and premiere by Apartment House Ensemble in Aarhus and Copenhagen, Denmark in January 2015.

 

He has participated in Tony Conrad’s and Jennifer Walshe’s opera The Signing (Nuit Blanche, Canada) contributing three short films.

 

Vassilis Chatzimakris is the artistic director of the In(s)core, a group dedicated in the performance of open notation which can be interpreted using more than one performing means. He is also a founding member of the improvisation and performance group 6daEXIt and the open notation performance group Open Score Project. Working with these groups he has co-directed, curated and participated in several concerts and performances of historical and contemporary compositions, including his own. Highlights of this practice would include the first Musicircus (John Cage) ever realized in Greece, a one-hour Fluxus performance, a series of open notation performances and discussion with the audience, and many other cross-arts projects.

 

Vassilis is currently a contracted Music Lecturer at the Department of Folk and Traditional Music, Technological Educational Institute of Epirus.

 

His compositions have been performed in Greece, UK, Canada and the USA in several festivals, concerts, exhibitions and intermedia performances. He has been part of the “Next Generation” program of the Donaueschinger Musiktage Festival 2014.