Haris Kittos
After concluding his studies in music (solo piano performance, harmony, counterpoint, fugue and orchestration) and fine art (painting, etching, sculpture and photography) in his home town Thessaloniki, Greece, Haris Kittos moved to London in 1998 in order to study composition at Trinity College of Music at postgraduate level with Andrew Lovett and Daryl Runswick. Further study with Diana Burrell and full scholarship at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama led to MMus with distinction in 2001. In 2008, fully funded by the AHRC and under the supervision of Julian Anderson, Dr Darla Crispin and Edwin Roxburgh, Haris concluded the Doctor of Music program in Composition with his research on the Iannis Xenakis’ Sieves Theory at the Royal College of Music, where he is currently Composition and Academic professor.
Haris also studied briefly with Theodore Antoniou, Susan Bradshaw, Beat Furrer and Alexander Goehr. Also, as a participant of the Blue Touch Paper scheme of the London Sinfonietta, he was mentored by Georges Aperghis. His music has been performed in a wide variety of events and venues in the UK, Europe, USA and Japan by soloists, ensembles and orchestras of international calibre such as Arditti Quartet, dissonArt Ensemble, Ensemble Exposé, Ensemble In Extremis, ExplorEnsemble, Fukio Quartet, Kammerorchester Basel, Milos Karadaglic, London Sinfonietta, Jane Manning, Mise-en Ensemble, Sarah Nicolls, Ensemble Nomad, Novoflot, UMS‘nJIP and others. Participation in festivals has included the Born Creative Festival (Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre), Cheltenham Festival, Dartington International Festival, Ear London Festival, Forum Wallis, InTransit Festival, Mixtur Festival (Barcelona), Mise-en Festival (NYC), Park Lane Group (Southbank, London), Spitalfields Festival, Spoleto Festival, Xenakis International Symposium 2011 (Southbank) and Taukay Contemporanea Festival (Udine) among others.
As a visual artist, Haris took part in group and solo exhibitions while studying at the School of Fine Arts of Aristotle University. By moving to London and focusing into music composition, he kept his visual art as a private practice, which gave him time for furthering his research and artistic explorations in the stimulating dichotomy of being both a musician and visual artist. As his parallel processes of creating visual and musical artworks became increasingly intertwined over time, Haris started presenting his work in recent years as a visual artist as well, while also producing new interdisciplinary and multimedia pieces.