Kournos Music Festival returns to Lemnos with “Excavation / Archaeology”, exploring the island before tourism

The sixth edition of the Kournos Music Festival will take place on the North Aegean island of Lemnos from 2 to 17 August 2026, inviting audiences to explore the island’s recent past through music, performance and site-specific artistic interventions.

Curated by the Rafi Music Theatre Group (Anastasia Kotsali and Lito Messini), the festival has established itself as Lemnos’ leading contemporary cultural event, creating a dialogue between artistic creation, local history and the island’s living traditions.

This year’s theme, “Excavation / Archaeology”, reflects on the social and economic life of Lemnos before the rapid development of tourism. Through concerts, performances and interdisciplinary projects, the festival asks what remains of a place’s identity as landscapes, livelihoods and communities evolve. What do we preserve from the past? What do we carry into the future? And how do tourism and modern development reshape an island’s collective memory?

Inspired by the discovery of the ancient city of Hephaistia a century ago, the programme draws connections between archaeological excavation and the act of uncovering more recent histories. From the collaborative excavations of the interwar years to abandoned discos, former thermal baths and industrial buildings, the festival traces a century of transformation, revealing the architectural and cultural layers that continue to shape Lemnos today.

A significant part of this year’s programme commemorates the 100th anniversary of the discovery of ancient Hephaistia, the largest and oldest historical city of Lemnos, once inhabited from around 1000 BC until the Byzantine era.

The festival brings together acclaimed Greek and international artists, including Elli Paspala, Adriano Adewale, Nikos Veliotis, and internationally renowned beatbox artist George Gargalas. Highlights also include the award-winning children’s opera Digging the Sea, recipient of the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung Prize, and a visual art installation by Konstantinos Vita.

Opening Performance

The festival opens on Sunday, 2 August, with “Ricordati che sei” (“Remember What You Are”), a site-specific musical performance staged inside the abandoned Sunrise Disco in Nea Koutali.

Set among deserted dance floors and forgotten lighting rigs, the performance draws inspiration from the life and work of Lemnian antiquarian Giovanni d’Athanasi, transforming the abandoned venue into a space where archaeology, memory and music converge.

Performed by Trio Sibilima, with electronics and beatboxing by George Gargalas, and featuring sopranos Lito Messini and Anastasia Kotsali, the opening event embodies the festival’s central idea: excavating forgotten places to uncover the stories they still hold.

Inspired by the Life of Giovanni d’Athanasi

Born in Myrina at the end of the 18th century, Giovanni d’Athanasi was one of the most fascinating-and controversial-figures of early archaeology. Best known for his work in Egypt, he played a significant role in excavations that helped shape some of Europe’s major archaeological collections.

Drawing on his life of constant travel, discovery and excavation, composer and beatbox artist George Gargalas-renowned for his research into the human voice, Mediterranean oral traditions and their transformation into contemporary soundscapes-joins Trio Sibilima, mezzo-soprano Anastasia Kotsali and soprano Lito Messini to create an alternative musical collage that moves through the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

The performance combines rarely heard works by overlooked Baroque composers, including Agostino Steffani, presented for the first time in Greece, alongside folk-inspired string traditions, transformed archival recordings and contemporary vocal experimentation.

Set inside one of the oldest abandoned discos in the North Aegean, hidden among fields beside the sea, the audience is invited to experience a dialogue between forgotten musical worlds and a site that itself embodies layers of memory and history.

Monday, 3 August

Heidi’s Dream – A Musical Animation

Former Dream Electric Blanket Factory, Moudros | 9:00 pm

Conceived and composed by GNOUS! (Michalis Moschoutis, Vassilis Tzavaras and Erato Tzavara), Heidi’s Dream is presented in a specially adapted version for the Kournos Music Festival, responding to this year’s theme, “Excavation / Archaeology.”

Staged in the courtyard of the former Dream electric blanket factory-one of the few surviving industrial buildings from the 1970s on Lemnos-the performance becomes an audiovisual exploration of worlds that usually remain beyond human perception.

Three musicians and a video artist create a live multimedia experience that combines music, projected imagery and scientific insights into the sleeping habits of animals. From dolphins that sleep with one eye open to Heidi the octopus, whose colours shift while dreaming, the work invites audiences into an imaginative landscape where music, science and fantasy converge.

Adapted specifically for the island, the performance engages with Lemnos’ natural environment and industrial heritage, redefining the notion of “excavation” as an act of attentive listening and observation of the more-than-human world.

Tuesday 4 & Wednesday 5 August

Philoctetes by Heiner Müller

Archaeological Site of Kabeirio | 8:00 pm

The Kournos Music Festival presents Heiner Müller’s Philoctetes (1965) in a new production directed by Alexandros Efkleidis, marking the director’s first collaboration with the festival.

Müller’s play, his first major engagement with ancient Greek tragedy, revisits the myth of Philoctetes through a stark and uncompromising modern lens. The abandoned hero-left to suffer alone on Lemnos after sacrificing himself for the Greek cause-is brought back into the political arena by those who once condemned him.

Starring Simos Kakalas, Thanasis Akkokalidis and Pyrros Theofanopoulos, the production unfolds at the archaeological site of Kabeirio, creating a powerful dialogue between contemporary theatre, myth and one of Lemnos’ most historically charged landscapes.

Thursday, 6 August

Screening: The Buried Forest by Kōhei Oguri

Maroula Open-Air Cinema | 9:00 pm

As part of this year’s “Excavation / Archaeology” programme, the Kournos Music Festival presents a screening of Kōhei Oguri’s The Buried Forest (Mogari no Mori) in collaboration with the Lemnos Film Club and the Arvo Pärt Centre. The film’s evocative score was composed by the celebrated Estonian composer Arvo Pärt.

Suitable for audiences of all ages, the film follows Machi, a teenage girl living in a remote mountain village where everyday life remains deeply connected to the natural world. After a violent storm uncovers a long-buried forest, reality and imagination begin to merge, revealing how the hidden past of a landscape continues to shape the present.

Presented within the festival’s thematic framework, The Buried Forest becomes a form of environmental archaeology-an exploration of memory, landscape and the invisible traces embedded in place.

Friday 7 & Saturday 8 August

Lotus-Eaters or Responsibility

Prehistoric Settlement of Myrina | 9:00 pm

Composition, arrangement & live programming: Lina Zachari
Vocals: Elli Paspala
Musicians: Konstantinos Zigeridis (accordion), Stelios Papanastasis (viola)

Memory is more than a repository of events-it is the mechanism through which identity is formed. In Homer’s Odyssey, Ithaca represents not merely a destination but the very condition of human existence: a place of responsibility, choice and return. But what happens when those responsibilities are abandoned?

Composer Lina Zachari joins forces with Elli Paspala and the festival’s resident artists for Lotus-Eaters or Responsibility, a site-specific music and visual performance unfolding within the prehistoric coastal settlement of Myrina, forty years after its archaeological discovery.

The work follows the pathways of collective memory across Lemnos-its mythical “island of the Lotus-Eaters”-while reflecting on themes of obligation, remembrance and belonging.

At its heart lies The Island of the Lotus-Eaters (1990), composed by Stamos Semsis to poems by Vassilis Nikolaidis, a work forever associated with Elli Paspala’s interpretation. Thirty-five years later, as urban landscapes increasingly resemble isolated islands and islands themselves become urbanised, Paspala revisits the work through Lina Zachari’s contemporary musical vision, reaffirming art’s enduring power to transform memory into living experience.

Monday, 10 August

Digging / Sea – Children’s Chamber Opera

Archaeological Site of Hephaistia

Winner of the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung Composition Prize, Digging / Sea is a new chamber opera for children and young audiences commissioned through an international open call organised by the Kournos Music Festival in collaboration with the Ephorate of Antiquities of Lesvos.

Inspired by the archaeological excavations at ancient Hephaistia, the work was composed by Ioannis Panayiotou, with a libretto by Orphée de Corbière-Kalessis and a visual installation by Veneta Adamidi.

Written for bayan accordion, bowed tambouras and tenor voice, the opera presents archaeology as a living, imaginative process, connecting young audiences with Lemnos’ recent history and cultural heritage.

Performed at sunset within the archaeological site of Hephaistia, the production features tenor Vasilis Kavayias, accordionist Konstantinos Zigeridis and Stefanos Pourgianos on bowed tambouras.

Proceeds from score sales will be donated to the Lemnos Children’s Choir, supporting music education for the island’s younger generations.

Tuesday, 11 August

Therma

Abandoned Thermal Baths of Therma | 9:00 pm

Composer and sound artist Nikos Veliotis joins the Greek-British vocal ensemble Alkanna Graeca for Therma, a large-scale site-specific sound installation presented within the abandoned thermal baths of Therma.

Once renowned since antiquity as a place of healing, hospitality and communal gathering, the baths flourished throughout the twentieth century before gradually falling into disuse. Rather than serving as a backdrop, the historic buildings become the very material of the composition.

Drawing on local testimonies, acoustic traces and the architecture itself, the artists activate the site’s silence, resonance and material presence through a performance unfolding across the entire complex. The result is an immersive sonic archaeology, where layers of memory, use and abandonment are experienced not through excavation, but through listening.

Water Workshop

Alongside the performance, the festival collaborates with the Medina Institute and the local environmental organisation Anemoessa on a public workshop exploring the future of water resources on Lemnos.

As the island faces increasing tourism and diminishing natural water reserves, the workshop addresses urgent questions of sustainability, environmental awareness and responsible stewardship of the landscape.

Thursday, 13 August

The Phoenix – Site-Specific Music Performance

Varos | 9:00 pm

A tribute to Lemnos’ lost open-air cinemas

Performers: Adriano Adewale, Kostas Argyropoulos, Marilena Striftombola

Brazilian percussionist Adriano Adewale, a leading figure on the European world music and jazz scene, makes his first appearance in Greece as part of the Kournos Music Festival, joining percussionist Kostas Argyropoulos of the State Symphony Orchestra of Thessaloniki and DissonArt Ensemble, alongside soprano Marilena Striftombola of the Greek National Opera.

Responding to this year’s theme, “Excavation / Archaeology,” the three artists present a hybrid performance where percussion, spoken word and contemporary music are woven together through fragments of rhythm, memory and sound.

The work takes as its point of departure the vanished open-air cinemas of Lemnos-Cine Maroula, To Kyma, Phoenix and Cine Hypsipyle-places that once brought cinema to village squares with portable projectors and makeshift screens before disappearing, burning down or being transformed into garages, supermarkets and other buildings.

Drawing on archival photographs, newspaper articles and local testimonies, alongside musical references ranging from free improvisation to the cinematic worlds of Tōru Takemitsu and Piero Piccioni, the artists create a new composition dedicated to the island’s lost summer cinemas. Today, only the Municipal Maroula Cinema survives, making the performance both an act of remembrance and a celebration of cinema as a shared cultural experience.

Monday, 17 August

Space and Memory

Museum of Maritime Tradition and Sponge Fishing, Nea Koutali – Shipyard

Artistic direction: Kournos Music Festival, Konstantinos Vita, Kika Kyriakakou

As part of this year’s “Excavation / Archaeology” programme, the Kournos Music Festival collaborates with Polygreen Culture and Art Initiative (PCAI) and the Museum of Maritime Tradition and Sponge Fishing in Nea Koutali to present the exhibition Space and Memory by musician and visual artist Konstantinos Vita.

The exhibition is conceived as the artist’s own “excavation” into previously unknown poems by Nikos-Alexis Aslanoglou, exploring memory, absence and the hidden layers of poetic experience.

Following a guided walk through the refugee settlement of Nea Koutali, audiences are invited to an intimate concert by Vienna-based violinist Irini Krikoni at the abandoned shipyard by the harbour. Performing among the skeletal remains of old vessels, Krikoni creates a dialogue between music, the museum’s collections and the maritime history of the site. An internationally active soloist, she is a member of both Oros Ensemble and Punctum Collective.

November 2026

Digging / Sea International Masterclass

Myrina | Music & Dance

Choreography: Chara Kotsali
Composition & piano: Antonis Anissegos

Extending the festival beyond the summer season, the Kournos Music Festival presents the international Digging / Sea masterclass in November 2026, bringing together acclaimed choreographer Chara Kotsali and composer-pianist Antonis Anissegos for an intensive week-long programme of creative improvisation in dance and music.

Inspired by the archaeological landscape of ancient Hephaistia, the masterclass takes place during the island’s off-season, reinforcing year-round cultural activity and strengthening connections with the local community.

Participants-both professional artists and emerging practitioners-will be selected by the two tutors and attend free of charge. Alongside studio sessions at the Municipal Maroula Cinema, the programme includes field research and the collection of oral histories from local residents, which will serve as documentary material for the creation of a new choreographic work.

The masterclass concludes with two public presentations, sharing the creative process with the wider community and continuing the festival’s exploration of archaeology as a living artistic practice.