ann-kristin sofroniou

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Ann-Kristin Sofroniou (b.1983) is a Swedish/Cypriot pianist, researcher and educator that is currently based in Athens (Greece). 

Her work is characterized by explorations of piano repertoire in inventive ways by integrating elements of improvisation, interdisciplinary collaborations, diverse repertoire from various genres, and new media. Within her practice, she aims to explore the relations between research, piano performance and community engagement practices by creating collaborative, interactive artistic projects.

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The experience of displacement resonates in her artistic projects, which revolve again and again around the themes of identity, migration and movement, and aim to address these issues from a musical perspective through researching musical borrowing approached as a field of “musical migration”, but also by including participatory artistic workshops within her projects with the aim to engage, support, learn from and collaborate with local communities in diverse locations. Through her projects, she aims not only to create musical experiences that are constantly moving between present and past, familiar and unfamiliar environments at the same time, but also conditions in which societies are similarly stimulated to move between known and unknown and progress together in creating anew fair, respectful, diverse communities.

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As a musician, she regularly performs and collaborates with other artists and musicians, having performed in Greece (Ov Off Studio, Onassis Stegi, Greek National Opera, Parnassus Literary Society Concert Hall, Kournos Music Festival, Agios Lavrentios Music Village Festival...), and internationally (Barbican Curious Festival, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity/Canada, Fondation Beyeler/Basel, Université Concordia concert hall/Montreal, Casalmaggiore Music Festival/Italy...). She has recorded for the Greek National Opera, Plainsound Music Edition and Musikk-Husets Forlag and has published articles in the following journals/books: in the collective volume ‘Culture, Arts, Inclusion’ (Thessaloniki: Sofia Publications, 2023), Tandem Europe website (2020), and the ÍMPAR Online journal for artistic research in music, Vol. 2, Nº 1, 2018 Music for and by children.

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From 2018 until 2023, she held the position of ‘Coordinator of Research and Educational Design’ at the Learning & Participation Department at the Greek National Opera (GNO). Her main activities was to manage, implement and evaluate a vast number of diverse artistic and educational projects with the aim to familiarize audiences of all age groups, cultural and social backgrounds with opera and music theatre. She run several educational/artistic projects as music workshop leader at the GNO (composition co-creation with children of various ages, opera hub for young asylum-seeking refugees, etc), and created an interactive original music fairy-tale performance for and with children. Moreover, she was the project manager of a large number of workshops at the GNO over the years, with a special emphasis on intercultural artistic projects such as the ‘Intercultural Orchestra’ and ‘Co-OPERAtive: an intercultural opera hub for young people’.​​