Eleven people with hearing impairment will perform music while accompanying the Thessaloniki State Conservatory's Youth Orchestra on June 20-21, through instruments that convey sounds they perceive through their bodies.

"Rhythm, our common language" is the title of the original concert at the Conservatory, based on an effort begun in December 2024 through June 2025 that is funded by the Recovery Fund. Conservatory director Georgios-Ioulios Papadopoulos said the new work performed "will particularly benefit people with hearing loss who up to now did not have any substantial access to music and similar cultural actions."

The young people were trained on percussion instruments by prominent professor of percussion instruments at the Conservatory, Alexandros Ioannou, and Conservatory graduate and music teacher Marianna Erkekoglou, with the help of sign language interpreter Konstantina Papageorgiou. Students with deafness are trained to perceive rhythm through the vibrations produced by instruments such as drums and cymbals, as well as through visual stimuli (watching the professor's hands as he plays instruments too).

"I had no problem because students were deaf - it was the same as having beginner students, and that was the only difficulty, that we had little time for them to learn to play relatively well and perform this concert," Ioannou said. He is also the one who arranged the musical pieces that will be performed, of classical and rock music. The toughest part, he said, was to coordinate the group with the Conservatory's Youth Orchestra.

Several associations for hearing-impaired people helped in the project.

The performances will take place at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki's Ceremonies Hall (Ethoussa Teleton) on June 20 and at the courtyard of the Byzantine Museum of Thessaloniki on June 21. Both concerts will start at 9:00 pm, and both are free to the public, but reservations are necessary.

(File photo, Athens, ANA/Akriviadis)