Lorenda Ramou

Pianist, researcher, educator

Lorenda Ramou’s repertoire includes compositions from the 18th c. up to our days. She has recorded for ECM, NAXOS, BIS, Spektral and Athens Music Society. She has performed in many European festivals, the USA, Chile and Morocco and has collaborated with composers George Crumb, Mauricio Kagel, Maurice Ohana and French writer Pascal Quignard.

Lorenda is also a dedicated researcher and educator. She has participated in many European musicological conferences, has published articles on Greek piano repertoire (especially on Nikos Skalkottas’s works) and a critical edition of Dimitris Dragatakis’s piano music. Since 2010 she collaborates with Onassis Cultural Centre on various large scale artistic and educational projects, especially promoting contemporary music.

She holds a piano diploma (Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Boulogne-Billancourt), a piano teaching diploma (Conservatoire de Paris – CNSMDP), an MA in Performance Studies with distinction (City University, London and a PhD summa com laude (Université de Paris-Sorbonne, CNSMDP). She has also been a fellow of the Fulbright Foundation, the French Government, the Academy of Athens, the British Council, Leventis and Meyer Foundations. She has attended master classes with Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Pierre Boulez, David Robertson and Ensemble intercontemporain. For several years she has been member of the Hellenic Ensemble for contemporary music, as well as co-founder and member of the contemporary music ensemble Palmós (Netherlands-Greece).  

Current research activities, areas of interest.

Her involvement in this musicological research group came as a natural consequence of her studies in France and her knowledge of the contemporary music scene both in Greece and France. She is particularly interested in working on Greek composers who are currently living and working in France (Georges Aperghis, Georgia Spiropoulos, Alexandros Markeas, Nicolas Tzortzis). As a pianist she has orientated her research on their piano works, starting with Alexandros Markeas and his Rallye concerto for piano and 12 musicians (2011). This work stems from Markeas’s multifaceted experience as a pianist, using four different types of pianos on stage, relating with « memories, sources of inspiration and sonic experiments ». Rallye concerto, as well as the rest of Markeas’s piano works are surprising, innovative and highly personal additions to the piano literature of our time, deserving a combined interpretative and musicological approach.

Concerts / concert organisation

  • “Femme disant adieu”, lecture-recital with French writer Pascal Quignard. The text is based on Quignard’s novel Villa Amalia (Gallimard, 2006); musical reductions, arrangements and works by J.S. Bach, François Couperin, Henry Purcell, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Joseph Haydn, Ludwig van Beethoven, Leoš Janáček, Nikos Skalkottas, Michèle Reverdy, Georges Koumendakis and Konstantia Gourzi played by Lorenda Ramou, piano.
  • Haute École de Musique, Geneva, 18.12.2014.
  • Pages en partage, Conservatoire du Grand Chalon, Chalon sur Saône, France, 11.4.2014.
  • Theocharakis Foundation, concert organised by Institut français d’Athènes, 18 .1.2013.
  • Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, 16.1.2013.
  • Festival Correspondances de Tanger, Morocco, 6.10.2012.
  • Festival Passages de témoins, Caen, France, 12.5.2012.
  • Salon Livres et Musique, Deauville, France, 28.4.2012.
  • Co-organisation of Institut français d’Athènes concerts “Miroirs sonores” on composer Alexandros Markeas, with works by Markeas, Philippe Hurel and François Paris (30.1.2012) and piano recital by Pavlos Antoniadis with works by Mark André, Pascal Dusapin and Nicolas Tzortzis (5.3.2012), as part of “Rendez-vous sur scène” series on contemporary music.
  • “Le basson dans tous ses états” – chamber music concert with works by Pierre Boulez, Henri Dutilleux, Roger Boutry, Sophia Serghi, Dimitris Andrikopoulos and Miguel del Aguila. Stefanie Liedtke bassoon, Lorenda Ramou piano, Institut français d’Athènes,  19.3.2001.
  • “Les héritiers de Debussy” lecture-récital by Lorenda Ramou  on Debussy’s influence on piano works  by Pierre Boulez and Maurice Ohana, Conservatoire National de Région de Boulogne-Billancourt, France, 4.5.1995.