Danae Stefanou

Born 1978 in Athens. In 1996 she graduated from the Athenaeum Conservatoire (class of Dora Bakopoulou) with a Piano Performance Diploma with Distinction.

She studied Musicology and Performance at the University of Nottingham, where, under a British Academy (AHRB) scholarship, she also completed her Master of Arts in Music with Distinction in 2000.

During her studies she won a number of prizes and awards, including the University’s Vladimir Ashkenazy Jubilee Scholarship and the Derby Arts Festival Senior Pianoforte prize. Highlights of her concert activities at the time included a performance of Bartok’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion at the Nottingham Contemporary Music Festival in 2000. Between 2000 and 2003 she completed a PhD in Music at the University of London under an AHRB doctoral scholarship, studying the idea of “landscape” in romantic, early twentieth-century and contemporary music, focusing especially on the work of John Cage.

In parallel with her academic research, Danae has studied piano with Brenda May, Sergei Dukachev, Graeme Humphrey and Rolf Hind, while in recent years she has also appeared as an actress with the Watt Theatre Company in London, with leading roles in the productions of Hamletmachine (2002) and Hérodiade (2003).

In 2003 she was awarded the Licentiate of the Royal Schools of Music with Distinction. Since then, she has worked as a Research Associate and Visiting Lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London, and continues to collaborate with a number of visual artists and directors on cross-disciplinary performances, installations and events.

As a pianist she specializes in the works of Cage, Feldman, Satie etc., and in the last few years she has frequently appeared in the U.K. (Purcell Room, Royal College of Music, SIPA Doncaster, John Hansard Gallery, The Warehouse, Southwark RC Cathedral), Greece (Apollo Theatre, Syros) and Cyprus (ARTE, Nicosia)