Georgia Spiropoulos composes purely acoustic music, instrumental or vocal, but also electro-acoustic and mixed music where music technology is involved. She also creates video and sound installations. Her work is characterized by a composition "inside the sound" but also by her interest on temporality and form. She explores ideas about orality, transmission and perception, and the ubiquity of orality in musical text and performance. This research conducts her to work in proximity with the performer that she qualifies as a "vital encounter" for the creation. Her thinking on new instrumental and vocal techniques is influenced by the 20th century music and the traditional music, but also by the avant-rock, the free improvisation, the interdisciplinary artists, the performance art and turntablism.
She actually works on the projects Roll... n' Roll... n' Roll, for harp & live electronics (commissioned by IRCAM and Radio France) and Membranes, for 2 timpani players (commissioned by Ars Nova Ensemble). Both works will be premiered with The Bacchae, solo opera with live electronics in a concert-portrait of the composer at Centre Pompidou during the Manifeste Festival of IRCAM 2015.
Georgia Spiropoulos (Athens - Greece, 1965) studied classic and jazz piano, harmony, counterpoint and fugue in Athens. During 10 years she worked as performer, arranger and transcriber of Greek aural/oral-tradition music.
In 1996 she moved to Paris to study composition & electro-acoustic music with Philippe Leroux and form analysis with Michael Lévinas.
In 2000-01 she studies composition & computer music at IRCAM with Marco Stroppa, Philippe Hurel and Ivan Fedele. She holds an a M.A from the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences - EHESS where she worked with Marc Chemillier, Pierre Judet de la Combe and Francis Zimmermann. Jonathan Harvey, Tristan Murail, Brian Ferneyhough, Philippe Hurel Marco Stroppa and Ivan Fedele. She holds an a M.A from the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) where she worked with Marc Chemillier, Pierre Judet de la Combe and Francis Zimmermann.
Georgia Spiropoulos is the winner of the "Villa Médicis Hors-les-Murs Award" for the USA and has been working as a composer-in-residence in New York (2003-04). In 2013 she has been made a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters of the French Republic.
In 2008 Georgia Spiropoulos she worked at IRCAM as a composer in research with the project "Mask: Voice transformations and computer tools for live performance".
She has received commissions from the French Ministry of Culture, the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Culture, IRCAM-Centre Pompidou, French Radio, "Marseille Cultural Capital of Europe 2013", Sacem, Haus der Kulturen der Welt of Berlin, La Muse En Circuit.
Her works are performed internationally, in France, USA, Germany, Austria, Japan, Greece, Spain, Israel and Poland at Centre Pompidou, Cite de la Musique, IRCAM, Louvre Auditorum (Paris), Symphony Space (New York), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), Radial System V (Berlin), Gasteig Münchenn (Munich), AOI Concert Hall (Shizuoka), Felicja Blumenthal Music Center and Hateiva Hall (Tel Aviv), Concert Hall of the Academy of Music (Krakow), Onassis Cultural Center, French Institut, Goethe Institut (Athens).
She collaborates with many ensembles (Ensemble Intercontemporain, L'Itinéraire, 2E2M, Ars Nova, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Smashensemble, Aventure, Nikel, Smashensemble, Nikel, Bl!ndman, dissonArt, Aventure, Pulsar Trio, Zafraan, Octopus), choirs (Accentus, Les Cris de Paris, Le Jeune Chœur de Paris), saxophone quartets (Habanera, Prism, Quazar), and soloists such as Claude Delangle, Médéric Collignon, Vincent David, Theophilos Sotiriades, Hélène Breschand.
She has been performed at festivals such as Manifeste, Agora, Tenso Days, Présences - Radio France, Athens & Epidaurus Festival, In Transit - International Festival of Performing Arts - Berlin, Seamus, Extension, Musiques Libres de Besançon, Gegenwelten Festival Neue Musik, Futura, WhyNote, Aujourd'hui Musiques, Musiques de Notre Temps, Hateiva, Sinkro, ICEM, ICMC, SMC, WFAE, WOCMAT, Electroacoustic Music Days of Greece, The Electronic Arts and Music Festival of Miami, Boston Cyberarts Festival.
She gave lectures about her work at Columbia University (NYC), University of California Santa Barbara, IRCAM, Hochschule für Musik und Theater München, at Universities Paris 7 and Paris 8, at ICMC and SMC Conferences, at Tel Aviv Conservatory, Alte Schmiede-Vienna, French Institut of Athens.