Yiorgis Sakellariou is a composer, lecturer and researcher based in Vilnius, Lithuania. Since the early ‘00s he has been active internationally, being responsible for numerous solo and collaboration projects, participating in artist residencies, having composed music for short films and theatrical performances, moderating soundwalks and workshops on environmental recordings and ceaselessly performing his music in various types of contexts and environments.
He completed his PhD at Coventry University (April 2018). His research drew inspiration from ethnomusicological and anthropological contexts and explored the sonic symbolism and socio-aesthetic settings in ecstatic religious rituals in relation to field recording, electroacoustic composition and acousmatic performance.
In October 2021, Yiorgis founded VARTAI an experimental/noise rock group that explores massive, wall-of-sound drones, elaborate textures and pounding rhythms.
In spring of 2025 he debuted his solo acoustic music where the songs employ only two fundamental elements, a voice and an acoustic guitar to reveal nakedness, vulnerability and imperfection. The music evolves around words emerging through spasmodic breaths and obsessive guitar strums.
Yiorgis is a member of the Athenian Contemporary Music Research Centre, the Hellenic Electroacoustic Music Composers Association and the Lithuanian Composers Union. Since 2004 he has curated the label Echomusic. He is currently an associate professor at Vytautas Magnus University (Faculty of Arts) and a lecturer at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre (Department of Composition).
– The spectator is immersed in some sort of a place or state where his threshold of awareness becomes more sensible and acute: the listener’s hearing is induced to a very responsive level where both the universal and the particular can occur simultaneously
(John McEnroe, Sonic Field – July 2012)
– Sakellariou’s composition feels like the world we live in, yet purposefully shifting slightly out of phase. Resulting in a sonic nudge, a gentle push to help us understand the complexities of the world we all try to simplify.
(Lost in a Sea of Sound – June 2018)
– After decades spent analyzing hundreds of releases supported by the intrinsic voices of our environment, the experience tells that Sakellariou is now one of the genre’s bosses.
(Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes – May 2017, Italy)
– The sense of Tarr-like poetry is strong here, the abstract washes of sound, the blurred rumbles, the cold harshness-very strong, very evocative. […] Something rings true, valid and worth contemplating.
(Brian Olewnick, Just Outside – March 2015, France)
-You have the impression of being buried alive and not able to see anything, no air to breathe, only dull vibrations comes from the outside, indicating your perception is still working.
(Dmitry Vasilyev, IEM magazine – June 2009, Russia)
-Sounds like they have been recorded near the sea, but then it could have been as easily hiss from cassettes or TV static.
(Frans De Waard, Vital Weekly – issue 666, – March 2009, the Netherlands)
-It sucks you in, wraps you tight and nearly stifles you.
(Dan Warburton, Paristransatlantic – April 2007, France)
