About the Performance
Night is the time of confession, desire, solitude, and truth. It is the moment when social roles soften, hidden emotions emerge, and stories long kept silent find their voice.
Drawing on its experience in polyphonic singing and narrative performance, Nefes Vocal Ensemble presents My Story, a polyphonic music-theatre performance inspired by iconic songs of the Greek urban folk repertoire. Through a cappella vocal arrangements, poetry, movement, and collective storytelling, the performance explores the human experiences that lie at the heart of these songs.
The dramaturgy is built around works by composers such as Manolis Chiotis, Giorgos Zampetas, and Akis Panou, which are interwoven with excerpts from the poetry and literature of Pablo Neruda, Nikos Karouzos, Bertolt Brecht, Maxim Gorky, and others. Together, these voices create a dialogue around themes of love, loneliness, desire, poverty, identity, memory, and the individual's place within society.
Performed by twenty-five voices, the songs are stripped of their conventional musical form and reimagined through polyphonic arrangements, revealing the human body as the primary musical instrument. Poetry and literature acquire a sonic dimension through original musical settings, functioning as commentary, reflection, and an additional narrative layer.
My Story approaches folk song as a living social narrative, reinterpreting it through a contemporary lens and inviting audiences into a collective journey through memory, emotion, and human experience.
🎥 Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghyMyL4mqpY
About Nefes
Nefes Vocal Ensemble was founded in Thessaloniki in October 2019. The ensemble explores the expressive power of the collective voice by combining polyphonic singing techniques with elements of music, theatre, and movement. Its artistic practice focuses on the interpretation of contemporary arrangements of traditional melodies as well as original compositions inspired by musical traditions, with the aim of creating cohesive interdisciplinary performances.
Since its formation, Nefes has presented the music-theatre performances The Mediterranean Sings and From Love to Death at festivals and cultural venues including Tentart Festival (Drama), Cosmopolis Festival (Kavala), the 3rd Handmade & Recycled Theater Festival (Athens), and the Folklife and Ethnological Museum of Macedonia–Thrace.
In 2023, the ensemble recorded its first album and premiered Untamed World – A Motet for Versions of Voices, a sound performance presented within the framework of the Open Theatre Stage of the City, organized by the Directorate of Culture and Tourism of the Municipality of Thessaloniki.
During the summers of 2024 and 2025, Nefes presented A CAPELLA – The Suite of Imaginary Beings at music venues and open-air theatres in Thessaloniki, as well as at Verdant Festival.
Beyond its performance activity, Nefes also functions as a creative laboratory for artistic research and collective vocal practice. Its methodology has been presented at the Music Village in Pelion (2023, 2024), with the En Dynamei Ensemble, and in Sicily as part of the international Ursino Buskers Festival.
Since 2025, Nefes has participated in the educational programme Songs of Shame, implemented within the framework of the European project POWER, which focuses on the prevention of gender-based violence through artistic and educational practices.