Increasingly rising to prominence on the contemporary music landscape, Christina Athinodorou (b. 24 April 1981, Paphos) is a Greek-Cypriot composer who is developing a profound and highly personal language.
Her music is marked by her strong preoccupation with pacing and refined orchestration, with the harmony of movement and the treatment of light, while it integrates an array of influences including contemporary approaches to timbre, extended techniques, and selective elements from the Mediterranean and Hellenic heritage, including drama, prosody and microtonality.
Her catalogue comprises of more than 70 compositions to date, written from solo to symphony orchestra, for vocal, instrumental and electronic forces, multidisciplinary projects, music for the stage and Opera.
Christina has received commissions from Radio France, Opera La Monnaie/De Munt, Musik der Jahrhuderte, Onassis Stegi, Pharos Arts Foundation, Amici di Sentieri Selvaggi, Code Modern Festival and Festival d’Aix-en-Provence among others.
Described as “atmospheric, strangely fascinating” and “captivating” by international press, her music been presented in important festivals including the Venice Biennale, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, MITO Settembre Musica, ISCM World New Music Days, Wien Modern, Grafenegg, Musikprotokoll, Time of Music, International Review of Composers etc, performed by ensembles and orchestras including the Tonkünstler Orchester, Athens State Orchestra, Orchestre National d’Île-de-France, Orchestre de Jeunes de la Méditerranée, St Petersburg Academic Symphony Orchestra, Jyväskyla Sinfonia Finlandia, Ensemble Aleph, Ensemble C Barré, Klangforum Wien, Het Collectief, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Elias String Quartet, Ensemble Reconsil, Zeitfluss, Oktopus, DissonArt, Nomos Ensemble de Violoncelles etc, and broadcast by BR Klassik, Ö1 Austria, CyBC, RAI3, ERT Trito and France Musique. Her works have been championed by conductors such as Pablo Heras-Casado, Pierre-André Valade and Jean Deroyer.
She is also the recipient of composition awards and honorable mentions such as the Île-de-Créations (France, 2013) for her symphonic “Intermède pour une mer jamais vue”; Sibelius (Finland, 2015) for her choral work “De l’Âme” (chair Kaija Saariaho); the Prokofiev competition (Russia, 2012) for her “Alma” for Viola and orchestra; the Aldworth Philharmonic Orchestra Young Composer’s Award (UK 2006-7).
A composer who also conducts, Christina is equally at home with the symphony orchestra and the contemporary ensemble. As a freelance guest conductor she has collaborated with the Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto, Nederlands Symfonieorkest, Tonkünstler Orchester, Cyprus Symphony Orchestra, Manchester Camerata, London Sinfonietta, DissonArt and others.
She is often invited to serve as artistic advisor, introducing project concepts, designing programmes, and initiating innovative interdisciplinary projects. She is also the founder and artistic director of the Ensemble Cyclamen having led creative artistic projects such as the cine-concert entitled “Re:Mains” with the animator Charalambos Margaritis, and the peripatetic concert-photo exhibition “Achroon-Aosmon” with eight photographers from Cyprus, Romania and Greece who based their contribution on her music.
Continuing her research independently, she is often invited by academic and art institutions, festivals and course organizers to give one-off or a series of seminars and composition workshops.
Christina began her musical training as a pianist and flutist in Cyprus and started composing from a very young age. She then entered the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London from which she graduated with a BMus and an MMus, and later she completed a doctorate in composition at the Royal Holloway University of London. She also took composition courses at the UNT, CNSMD de Lyon in France, Centre Acanthes, ΙEMA Frankfurt, and IRCAM, and read Byzantine music with which her work is deeply imbued. Her most important composition teachers were Julian Philips (GSMD 2000-5), Michael Zev Gordon (RHUL 2007-10) and Philippe Leroux (composition courses at Rieti 2013, Tel-Aviv 2015 and private lessons in Paris 2012-17). She also followed summer courses with Philippe Hurel, Unsuk Chin, Joshua Fineberg and others. In parallel, she studied conducting in the class of Alan Hazeldine, as well as with Mark Shanahan, Peter Eötvös, Sian Edwards, Lothar Zagrosek and Jorma Panula, in various masterclasses around Europe. She was also Composer-in-Residence at the CAMAC, la Monnaie, the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel, Belgium, and at the Cité des Arts in Paris.
For a number of years Christina lived in London, Paris and Athens. She relocated to Cyprus, where she maintains her composition studio and continues to work internationally.