On Sunday, January 25, 2026, Piandaemonium takes the stage at the Athens Concert Hall, and every time such a moment approaches, I feel I am returning to something familiar yet open, to an experience that far exceeds the premise of an ordinary concert. It is a meeting of people who have consciously chosen to share sound, time, and the responsibility of interpretation in a way rarely encountered in the world of the piano.
Piandaemonium was born in 1998 from the inspiration of pianist Domna Evnouhidou, initially as a meeting between her and eleven former students. That original idea remains alive and absolutely relevant to this day. A need to break the loneliness of the pianist, to move the piano from its role as a purely individual instrument and give it a collective, almost symphonic dimension. Six pianos, twelve pianists, no conductor. Nothing like this exists elsewhere, and it is no coincidence.
From the inside, the experience is revelatory. When you play alone, you feel that time and the flow of music depend mainly on you. In Piandaemonium, this feeling is overturned from the first minutes of rehearsal. Very quickly you realize that if you don’t truly listen to the other, if you don’t trust the large musical body being created before you, the result simply doesn’t work. The concept of the soloist is consciously absent. Personal expression must recede, not to be lost, but to transform into something collective, into a common pulse that belongs to no one and belongs to everyone.
The absence of a conductor is perhaps the most demanding and at the same time the most enchanting element of this collaboration. Time is not imposed; it emerges. The pulse arises from glances, shared breaths, and imperceptible movements, from a subtle sense of coordination among us. This process requires great musical maturity and high technical readiness, but above all, the acceptance that your essential presence is not measured by intensity or projection, but by how deeply you integrate into the common sound and serve the collective movement of the music.
Rehearsals are long, often lasting all day. Yet, in the end, we leave fulfilled, with a calm sense of completeness that is hard to put into words and stays with us for hours afterward. It is food for the spirit and essence. I learn by observing my fellow pianist, the way they ‘hold’ time, how they interpret a phrase, how they handle silence. I adapt, change, rethink things I took for granted. Through diversity emerges a living, multi-layered sound, where each individual voice transforms and acquires meaning only as part of a broader, commonly shaped musical body.
There are, of course, comments, laughter, jokes, moments of decompression. These human cracks are an integral part of the process and make the atmosphere unique. The common goal is clear and keeps us all on the same page. To enjoy music through a different dimension that only this formation can create. The foundation of this collaboration is mutual appreciation and respect. Without these, nothing that happens on stage could exist.
During these days, I feel I am moving away from everyday life. I live in another time, where listening is constant and presence is meaningful. And I think this is the greatest gift of Piandaemonium: that music can function as a space of meeting, trust, and shared experience. Something deeply meaningful, starting from the keys and ending far beyond them. This feeling culminates at the moment of the concert, when everything that preceded finds its natural conclusion on stage. The moment we sit on stage, just before the first sound is heard, there is a kind of silence unlike any other. I know there are eleven more pianists around me, six pianos, yet what dominates is a common readiness, a concentration that belongs to no one individually. When the sound begins, I don’t feel it coming only from the keys in front of me, but from everywhere. As if entering a living organism that breathes, changes, corrects itself, and moves forward without a guide, only with trust. At that moment, I understand that what we experience in Piandaemonium goes beyond a musical experience. It is a way of being present, listening, coexisting, and surrendering to something greater than oneself.
