Children’s drawings of the son, a video created by the French Sagans and reminiscent of manga, a collage in which the “hot” spots of the planet “enter” the head of the composer Yiannis Markopoulos, five women from Africa – ubunts – who dance at a very slow pace.

Photographer Christos Sarris, creative director of the Onassis Shelter Foundation, “sees” such images in Markopoulos’ songs. Therefore, he undertakes to stage the musical performance “Beyond the Sea” as a story about a journey through space and time from West to East, and from the beginning of the world to the future. A future that he himself hopes will not be dystopian.

“I would like the performance to end with optimism,” says Mr. Sarris in our conversation about the preparation of this particular work, which will premiere on February 1 on the main stage of Stegi. With experience directing from a series of short and medium films about music, as well as STAGES A/Live, he closely links sound and image in his work. “I can’t edit a movie if it doesn’t have music,” he emphasizes.

A fan of science fiction as well as Kerouac and Cormac McCarthy, here he draws inspiration from Basquiat’s ingenious “baby” painting, the dance rituals of the Black Continent, and the anxieties of the modern world to give the futuristic nature of the composer we have. has hitherto been considered fully associated with Greece in the 1960s and the post-colonial period. “How can the songs of Markopoulos speak to the present and even more so to future generations?” we ask him.

“First of all, I think that Markopoulos’ music, when it was written, was already many steps ahead of its time,” the director replies, and then recalls the impression that the theme song to the series “Who Pays” made on him. Ferryman by the BBC, a 1976 composition by Markopoulos that fuses traditional Greek and at the same time international sounds.

“The lyrics of many of the songs are heartbreaking and, unfortunately, still modern – for example, “I talk about my children and I sweat” about immigration. But the language of the songs is no less valuable – who today pronounces, for example, the phrase “Swear words”? he adds.

For this particular performance, songwriter Pavlos Pavlidis selected 16 well-known and beloved songs from the composer’s classical repertoire and breathed new life into them, enriching them with electric and synth sounds, loops and polyphony, without departing, however, from the essence of the composition.

“I first heard certain songs before their final phase, one night at Pavlidis’ studio in Kypseli,” says Mr. Sarris. “I immediately told him that they were ‘shouting’ the photo. In their new soundscape, I heard trip-hop, gospel, traditional epirot music. In live performances on stage, these musical genres coexist with psychedelia and are constantly improvised. Therefore, we agreed with Pavlos that we will not make a soundtrack for “Beyond the Sea” and will not visualize the lyrics, but will create a story that will develop along with the music. The setting and lighting of the show are part of the same story.”

On stage, a billboard, a remnant of a damaged modern Western civilization, continues to project images. Beneath the tent-earth, life moves forward across the sea that separates East from West, seeking a safer and more fertile field to take root.