ninosgr
Kimon Emmanouil Grigoriadis
Composer · Sound Designer
"How we listen, and what happens to sound when technology stands between it and the ear."
ninosgr (Kimon Emmanouil Grigoriadis) is a Greek composer, sound designer and maker. His work moves between the loudspeaker and the live performer: acousmatic music made from recorded sound, works for orchestra and ensemble, pieces in which dancers and players shape interactive electronics, and sound installations. Running through all of it is an interest in how we listen, and in what happens to sound when technology stands between it and the ear. He is a selected artist of Phantomnesis, the international call from Cambiata Arts, and his work appears in the compilation Phantomnesis: Sites, Streets & Sacred Spaces.
He trained in classical piano and guitar from childhood and graduated from Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge in 2005. The decisive step came in Wales, at Bangor University, where he studied composition with Professor Andrew Lewis. Lewis supervised both his MMus, completed in 2010, the year he also received the University's Parry Williams Prize, and his doctorate, supported by Bangor's 125th Anniversary Scholarship in Digital Sonic Art. Through Lewis he came into contact with the British acousmatic tradition of Jonty Harrison and BEAST, and with the thinking of Denis Smalley and Francis Dhomont. His doctoral portfolio, An Invitation to Listen: Exploring Engagement in Technologically Mediated Music (2016), combines acousmatic compositions with a written commentary on how listeners engage with electroacoustic sound.
At Bangor he taught music technology as a graduate teaching assistant from 2010 to 2013. He also assisted in the electroacoustic studios and with the concert series Electroacoustic Wales and Risk of Shock, including sound diffusion over a loudspeaker orchestra. He served as technical coordinator of INTER/actions, the University's symposium on interactive electronic music.
His acousmatic works include Magic Marble (2009) and Peri-Phonis (2011) for eight channels, the stereo work 7Doors (2014), and Strings On The Rocks (2014). They have been presented at Electroacoustic Wales, Risk of Shock and INTER/actions in Bangor, and at the University of Leicester. 7Doors was premiered at Pontio Arts Centre in October 2024, at the concert marking thirty years of Electroacoustic Wales.
Movement and interaction are central to his live works. In Allilepidrasi, for violin and iPhone, the phone becomes an instrument in its own right. It was performed at the INTER/actions Symposium, and was also heard at the Oxford Playground Festival and at the Kos Festival, both as an installation and with a jazz trio. In Pandora, a dancer's movement, tracked by Kinect, shapes the electronics. Awakening, for violin and dancer, was performed at the Royal Academy of Music in London. His instrumental works include Ice for string quartet and clarinet, commissioned by Ensemble Cymru and premiered at the Bangor New Music Festival in 2012, and two works for large orchestra, Waves and Walking Tree (2010). In 2026 he created roundBloom, a generative sound installation shown alongside Milka Stojanovic's paintings at the Historical & Folklore Museum of Kos as part of the municipality's Hippokrateia programme.
Since his doctorate he has built software for music and beyond, working closely with artificial intelligence. moon.hands.core, a commercially released Max for Live device, is the first published part of the larger moon.hands family of tools. He is also developing Andorius, a platform of soundscapes for focus and calm. He is a woodworker and maker as well. Whether the material is sound, code or wood, he approaches it with the same craft. He lives and works in Kos, Greece.
Photo: Stella Mourtou
Highlights
Phantomnesis selected artist, Cambiata Arts; Featured in the compilation Phantomnesis: Sites, Streets & Sacred Spaces
7Doors premiered at Pontio Arts Centre, Bangor, at the 30th-anniversary concert of Electroacoustic Wales (October 2024)
Doctorate in electroacoustic composition and sonic art, Bangor University (2016), on the 125th Anniversary Scholarship in Digital Sonic Art
MMus, Bangor University (2010), and the University's Parry Williams Prize (2010)
Ice for string quartet and clarinet, commissioned by Ensemble Cymru
Generative sound installation roundBloom at the Historical & Folklore Museum of Kos (2026)
Works presented at the Royal Academy of Music, Electroacoustic Wales, INTER/actions, Bangor New Music Festival, Oxford Playground Festival and Kos Festival
Creator of the Max for Live device moon.hands.core
Selected works
7Doors (2014), stereo acousmatic
roundBloom (2026), generative sound installation
Ice (2012), for string quartet and clarinet
Allilepidrasi, for violin and iPhone
Pandora, for dancer, Kinect and interactive electronics
Awakening, for violin and dancer
Magic Marble (2009) and Peri-Phonis (2011), for eight channels
Strings On The Rocks (2014), acousmatic
Waves and Walking Tree (2010), for large orchestra
An Invitation to Listen: Exploring Engagement in Technologically Mediated Music (2016), doctoral portfolio and commentary
7Doors
Phantomnesis selected work
"What 7Doors recovers is not a sound but a way of listening."
ninosgr is one of the composers selected for Phantomnesis, an international call from Cambiata Arts for contemporary music, experimental composition and heritage-rooted works. His piece 7Doors is included in the compilation Phantomnesis: Sites, Streets & Sacred Spaces. The call sought pieces that explore the forgotten, the near-forgotten and the reimagined. It welcomed works that bring neglected musical systems, regional practices, extinct gestures or overlooked aesthetic pathways into today's listening.
An international jury of six professional composers, performers and researchers reviewed each submission. Their own careers embody the premise of the call. Each has spent years bringing overlooked musical systems, regional practices and reimagined traditions into contemporary listening. The jurors work in Toronto, Hannover, Skopje, Bangkok and Tehran, and across Vienna, Graz and Klagenfurt in Austria. Their practices range from electroacoustic composition and open-source technology to somatic voice and live electronics, traditional Thai instruments, artistic research and jazz scholarship. They considered each work for its engagement with forgotten or near-forgotten material, its compositional richness and its artistic conviction. The works in the compilation emerged from that process, and their composers are also invited to join the Cambiata Arts roster.
7Doors is a stereo acousmatic work made from the recordings of one ordinary day: a journey from Hastings to London. Road traffic, station announcements, water dripping in a bathroom, a baptism in a church, children at play, fleeting words of affection: these are sounds most of us stopped hearing long ago. They have not disappeared; we have simply learned to filter them out.
Not all of the recordings were made by the composer. At a restaurant along the way, he handed his recorder to children playing in the car park and let them record themselves. Their laughter became part of the piece.
The journey is imagined as seven doors, thresholds through which a familiar place opens onto a newly audible one. Each sound is first heard as it is, recognisable and unadorned. It is then bent through editing, layering, filtering, granular processing and time-stretching until the rhythm and pitch hidden inside it come forward as music, and then the real sound returns.
Within the call's theme of the near-forgotten, what 7Doors recovers is not a sound but a way of listening: being fully present to the places we pass through every day.
Premiered 17 October 2024, Pontio Arts Centre, Bangor, at the 30th-anniversary concert of Electroacoustic Wales.
ninosgr is a composer, sound designer and developer of music software. His main focus at the moment is Andorius, a platform of soundscapes for focus and calm, which is currently under construction. His Max for Live device moon.hands.core has been released and well received.
moon.hands.core is an Ableton Live device that automates and sequences events on a flexible, Gantt-style timeline, so that clips, recording and scenes can be planned and performed across tracks. It is the first published part of the larger moon.hands family of tools. Since his doctorate he has worked closely with artificial intelligence, and he approaches sound, code and wood with the same craft.