CV / Biography
Iris Skolidi, is a Greek architect and musician, born in Paris in 1994. She is currently based in the Netherlands specializing in interdisciplinary vocal projects and opera education. She serves as Repetiteur, rehearsal manager, and vocal teacher for the choir and the soloists of the ASPK Operette (Het Amsterdams Studentenprojectkoor). Her versatile nature and knowledge cover a wide range of disciplines such as music, architecture acoustics, and scenography. She has experience in theater productions, exhibitions, and concerts adopting various professional roles, as a singer, vocal coach, designer, and stage director. In 2023 Iris co-staged, together with the soprano Iris Keller Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice Opera, presented at the Conservatory of Amsterdam. She performed in Amsterdam’s Muziekgebouw festival An Evening of Today for the interdisciplinary performance womanhood created by the composer Anne Teikar and broadcasted by Dutch Radio. Iris's latest creation is Opera Bizarre, a unique combination of workshops and performances, designed for singers, focusing on the relationship of the Voice, the Body, and the Space. The reception has been enthusiastic after the premiere in Amsterdam 2024.
Music
Iris holds a Master's in Musical Leadership from the Conservatory of Amsterdam (2024), a hybrid program involving project management, musical creation, and socio-cultural context. Conducting her thesis “From Singing to Belonging, Voice as a Vehicle to Forge Communities” she investigated the relationship of the voice with someone’s body, language, emotion, and memory.
Implementing this theory, she developed the notion and practice of Educative Performance, a method of approaching vocal education through multimodal workshops, involving drawings and movement.
Being a lyrical soprano, she studied with Fotini Kostopoulos and holds a diploma in Monody, from the Orfeio Conservatory of Athens and is a graduate singer from the Center for Early Music of Athens Conservatoire(2022). Since 2017 she has been a member of the Renaissance Choir Capella Sancti Pauli directed by Iason Marmaras. She has performed as an ensemble singer, in collaboration with the early music group Ex Silentio under the direction of Dimitris Kountouras, in various institutions such as the Alternative Stage of the Greek National Opera, Megaron Athens Concert Hall, Sacred Music Festival, and the Mykonos Art Festival. She graduated from the Conservatory of Amsterdam after studying Early Music Singing with the soprano Valeria Mignaco.
Architecture
Iris holds a diploma in Architecture Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens (2019). She also studied Architecture in Italy at the Universita di Napoli Federico II, receiving an Erasmus+ Scholarship. She graduated with honors after designing Spatio Vibratum, an acoustic shell for operatic performances in ancient theaters.
Since 2017 she has been working as an assistant set designer for large-scale theater productions in the National Theater of Greece, Poreia Theater, and Athens-Epidaurus Festival. She has also collaborated as an architect in exhibition and museum design projects, both in Italy (Mostra di San Severo al Pendino by Studio La Nova Architetti), and Greece (Mikis Theodorakis Exhibition in Athens Megaron Concert Hall by The Office Architecture Studio).
Master Classes / Workshops / Seminars
Believing in a holistic and interdisciplinary approach to performance practices, Iris has participated in various Master Classes with famous singers such as Michael Chance, Jill Feldman, Dimitri Kavakos, and Dimitri Tiliakos.
She has attended summer schools such as the Sienna Early Music Academy and the Villa Pennisi in Musica, an architecture acoustics laboratory in Sicily, with a scholarship.
She is also a graduate of the Set Design Laboratory offered by the National Greek Theater where she created a scenography proposal for Ibsen’s play Dollhouse.
Most recently Iris attended the 6th SIMM - Social Impact of Making Music Symposium in Barcelona, a research network around Music Theater and Opera, where she presented her research and practice on alternative opera approaches.
Volunteering
In 2021, Iris co-founded the Open Orchestra, an inclusive activist initiative of more than 150 artists, based on the values of participatory music-making in the public space of Athens. She was co-managing and co-conducting the choir, the manifestations of which became a symbol of contemporary social matters in Greece such as the MeToo movement.
Languages
Iris has excellent organizational and communication skills in multiple languages.
She is perfectly fluent in Greek, French, Italian, and English and she is currently learning Dutch.