Aurélie Saraf
Harpist, performer
Aurélie Saraf is a harpist and performer committed to a creative approach (contemporary music, improvisation, musical theater). A graduate of the CNSMD in Lyon in Fabrice Pierre's class, she also studied with Frédérique Cambreling and completed an advanced cycle with Ursula Holliger at the Freiburg Hochschule. She has performed on major French and international stages with the Klangforum Wien, Ensemble InterContemporain, Orchestre des Champs-Elysées, Musiciens du Louvre and Mahler Chamber Orchestra. She is regularly invited to play with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and the Orchestre National de France.
She has performed as soloist at the Salzburg Mozarteum, Bogota Teatro Mayor, Cologne Philharmonie, Paris Philharmonie, Radio France and at festivals such as Darmstadt, Rainy Days, Archipels, Impuls, Festival d'Automne, Musica, Why note...
Harpist with the Ensemble Multilatérale and the New Gates Trio, she has collaborated with numerous composers and is the dedicatee of over 70 pieces. In the theater, she has created the shows Le Savon by F. Ponge and Écrire by M. Duras (Cie Petits Formats), L'Instruction by P. Weiss (Cie de la Lune Blanche), Kiosk by Aperghis (Singulière Com- pagnie), Chants d'Est with Sonia Wieder-Atherton, Une saison en enfer by A. Rimbaud (l'Oblio). Rimbaud (l'Oblio di me), Trois Somme Eberluée by C. Tarkos (Musiques de Notre Temps), Emile dans la nuit (Cie Azabache).
She collaborates with Musiques à Ouïr in various improvised performances and in the shows Ô Brigitte, Poulpes et Diatomées, L'Enfant et les Sortilèges and Comme ça.
Aurélie Saraf holds a CA, and teaches at the CNSMD de Lyon as part of the Formation à l'Enseignement Musical for the Didactique de la Musique Contemporaine and at the Hochschule de Bâle for the Master de Musique Contemporaine. She teaches harp at the Pôle d'Enseignement Supérieur de Musique de Bordeaux.

Alexandros Markeas
Composer
Alexandros Markeas was born in Athens in 1965. He studied piano and composition at the Greek National Conservatory, then at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris. He specializes in improvised music, and gives numerous concerts as a soloist or in a group. At the same time, he devoted himself to composition. He attended the writing, analysis and composition classes at the CNSMDP with Guy Reibel, Michael Levinas and Marc-André Dalbavie. He won first prizes in piano, writing and composition, a discipline in which he is now following the advanced cycle. He was also selected to take part in Ircam's annual composition and computer music course, as well as the Académie de composition at the Aix-en-Provence Festival.
Over the past 30 years, his works have been performed in France and abroad by ensembles such as Ensemble InterContemporain, Ensemble Modern, Proxima Centauri, Court-Circuit, l'Itinéraire, TM+, Ars Nova, Musicatreize, Sequenza 93, the Habanera Quartet, the Arditti Quartet, the Diotima Quartet, the Percussions de Strasbourg, the Philharmonic and National Orchestras of Radio France, the Orchestre National de Lorraine and the Orchestre National de Lille.
His work is marked by his desire to decode and modify the mechanisms of musical perception. He often draws inspiration from pre-existing music to reinterpret and deconstruct its aesthetic references, creating forms that alternate freely between references and pure sound abstraction. Traditional Mediterranean music, the Renaissance repertoire, rock and jazz are essential sources of inspiration for him. He also draws inspiration from various fields of artistic expression, such as architecture, theater and the visual arts (installations, events, video, web) to seek alternatives to the traditional concert and create special situations for listening to music. His pieces are marked by a theatrical spirit and the use of multimedia techniques.
Since 2004, Alexandros Markeas has taught improvisation at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris.