Strongylis, Aristides

Born in Athens in 1974, Aristides Strongylis studied guitar and music theory with Evangelos Boudounis and Panayiotis Adam in Athens, and composition with Siegfried Thiele and Dimitri Terzakis at the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy University of Music and Theatre in Leipzig. Masterclasses and encounters with composers such as Jonathan Harvey, Peter Eötvös, and Kaija Saariaho provided important inspiration for his compositional work.

His works have been performed at renowned venues across Europe, including the Gasteig in Munich, the Konzerthaus Berlin, the Megaron in Athens, and the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, as well as in France, Austria, Spain, Switzerland, and, most recently, the United States. He has composed works for, among others, ensemble amarcord, Tatjana Masurenko, Hatto Beyerle, the Apollon Musagète Quartet, the Leipzig Synagogue Choir, MDR Kultur, the Koblenz State Orchestra, and the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig.

Aristides Strongylis has collaborated with renowned conductors including Andris Nelsons, Garry Walker, Kerem Hassan, Florian Ludwig, Lin Liao, and Ivo Hentschel.

To mark its 275th anniversary, the Gewandhaus Leipzig commissioned an orchestral work from Aristides Strongylis. Entitled Engel der Hoffnung, the work was premiered in March 2018 by the Gewandhaus Orchestra under the direction of Andris Nelsons. In January 2020, the MDR Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Kerem Hassan, premiered Strongylis’s Equality at the Gewandhaus. The work was created as part of a collaborative commission involving students from the Goethe-Gymnasium Bischofswerda within the framework of the Beethoven Experiment 2020.

In May 2021, the Koblenz State Orchestra, conducted by Garry Walker, premiered the commissioned work 2020 at the Rhein-Mosel-Halle in Koblenz. Due to the pandemic, the performance took place without an audience and was recorded by SWR. The first public performance before a live audience followed in May 2026 at the Sayner Hütte in Bendorf as part of the International Koblenz Guitar Days, conducted by Ivo Hentschel.

For the 2026/27 season, the Gewandhaus Leipzig has commissioned Aristides Strongylis to compose a work for the Gewandhaus Orchestra’s Pasakas Wind Quintet. He is also working on a commission for the Athens Festival of Sacred Music for Easter 2027, a festival organized by the Greek Ministry of Culture in collaboration with the Greek National Opera.

Aristides Strongylis’s music is highly narrative and engages in an intense dialogue with other art forms, including literature, theatre, dance, and painting. Critics have described his work as energetic, immediate, and expressive.

Strongylis has received several awards in recognition of his long-standing work with children and young people. His educational activities focus particularly on composition in schools, innovative workshops, and international projects, including Kinder zum Olymp and the Junge Ohren-Preis. In this field, he collaborates closely with Leipzig Opera and the Gewandhaus Leipzig, the IFF Institute Hannover, and Forum Thomanum Leipzig, as well as with institutions in the United Kingdom and Bosnia and Herzegovina. He also teaches at the Institute for Music Education at the Leipzig University of Music and Theatre.

Aristides Strongylis is a member of both the Greek and German composers’ associations. His works are published by Edition Gravis.