HARIS TSALPARA

How can the piano be the voice of a tradition? How does it communicate stories through rhythms that evoke memories and emotions?

The anniversary stage of TEDxPatras 2025 welcomes Haris Tsalpara and her unique performance, Pianolaterna – a musical journey where the keys of the piano and the melodies of the barrel organ come together to create a captivating fusion of Eastern Mediterranean and Western musical influences.

About the performer

Haris got involved with music at the age of four. During all her school years, she was constantly attending and studying music theory, harmony, classical piano performance, and many more. In 2004, she got into the University of Athens, Department of Music Studies. In the same year, she attended the annual Nordoff–Robbins Music Therapy Seminar. After completing the seminar, she volunteered for a year with a music therapy group at the Patriotic Institute for Social Welfare and Awareness.

She earned a degree in Harmony in 2008 and a bachelor’s degree in the UOA, Department of Music Studies (2010). During her undergraduate studies, she participated in a Community Music seminar under Dr. Christina Anagnostopoulou. Following the seminar, she practiced with a group at the “Heliotropio” Day Center for people with special needs for a year. In the same year, she earned her degree in counterpoint. In 2011, she obtained the Diploma in Classical Piano Performance. She has also studied Instrumentology, History of Music, Choir, Morphology of Music, Chamber Music, and Practical Teaching.

She has always been interested in finding the performative use of music among common people, and this need led her to folk music genres. Since 2005, she has discovered the popular Greek-speaking traditional music and the musical world of the Eastern Mediterranean through the old recordings of 78 rpm. In 2013, she started playing the accordion, which helped her find her way back to the piano from a completely different perspective.

For the last 15 years, she has participated in numerous concerts, social events, and performances both in and outside Greece. Since 2017, she has collaborated with the theatrical team bijoux de kant as a performer and composer.

One of the important moments of her career was definitely when she participated as a composer and pianist in the contemporary music project “Le piano a 13 queues,” led by Swiss pianist and composer Geraldine Schenkel, featuring an orchestra of 13 grand pianos.

Since 2017, she has been the CEO of APTALIKO NPO. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, I volunteered for nine months in the statistical survey “Mapping the community of musicians active in the field of popular culture” conducted by APTALIKO NPO. In the summers of 2021, 2022, and 2023, I volunteered as the lead project manager and Artistic Director at the Lava Music Festival, organized by APTALIKO NPO.

For the last 8 years, she has been teaching courses and seminars focusing on the artistic Mediterranean repertoire and the system of the folk modes. Simultaneously, she continues the project of PianOLAternA and works in various entertainment venues with partners in the informal community sharing a common interest in gramophone sound and traditional music from the eastern Mediterranean. Currently, she works at the Athens Concert Hall in the children’s show “Shadows on the Pentagram” and has just released her first personal album called Anadysi.