YS_09photo by Tomas Terekas

Yiorgis Sakellariou is a composer of experimental and electroacoustic music. Since 2003, he has been active internationally being responsible for solo and collaboration albums, having composed music for short films and theatrical performances, leading workshops and ceaselessly performing his music around the globe.

His practice focuses on the communal experience of listening and the communication between composer, audiences, performance spaces and the rest of the physical and supernatural world. He only performs in absolute darkness, fostering an all-inclusive and profoundly submerging sonic experience.

He completed his PhD at Coventry University (April 2018). His research drew inspiration from ethnomusicological and anthropological contexts and explored the sonic symbolism and socio-aesthetic settings in ecstatic religious rituals in relation to field recording, electroacoustic composition and acousmatic performance.

In October 2021, Yiorgis founded the experimental rock group VARTAI.

Yiorgis Sakellariou is a member of the Athenian Contemporary Music Research Centre, the Hellenic Electroacoustic Music Composers Association and the Lithuanian Composers Union. Since 2004 he has curated the label Echomusic. He is currently a lecturer at Vytautas Magnus University (Faculty of Arts) and at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre (Department of Composition).

– The spectator is immersed in some sort of a place or state where his threshold of awareness becomes more sensible and acute: the listener’s hearing is induced to a very responsive level where both the universal and the particular can occur simultaneously
(John McEnroe, Sonic Field – July 2012)

– Sakellariou’s composition feels like the world we live in, yet purposefully shifting slightly out of phase. Resulting in a sonic nudge, a gentle push to help us understand the complexities of the world we all try to simplify.
(Lost in a Sea of Sound – June 2018)

– After decades spent analyzing hundreds of releases supported by the intrinsic voices of our environment, the experience tells that Sakellariou is now one of the genre’s bosses.
(Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes – May 2017, Italy)

– The sense of Tarr-like poetry is strong here, the abstract washes of sound, the blurred rumbles, the cold harshness-very strong, very evocative. […] Something rings true, valid and worth contemplating.
(Brian Olewnick, Just Outside – March 2015, France)

-You have the impression of being buried alive and not able to see anything, no air to breathe, only dull vibrations comes from the outside, indicating your perception is still working.
(Dmitry Vasilyev, IEM magazine – June 2009, Russia)

-Sounds like they have been recorded near the sea, but then it could have been as easily hiss from cassettes or TV static.
(Frans De Waard, Vital Weekly – issue 666, – March 2009, the Netherlands)

-It sucks you in, wraps you tight and nearly stifles you.
(Dan Warburton, Paristransatlantic – April 2007, France)