Events
Read about our latest events and see what's coming up!
ITINERARY EVENTS
- Starting in Spring 2026-
FINAL CONFERENCE
Grand Mosque of Rome, Italy | Autumn 2026
Past events
8-10 September - Artistic Residency (Athens, Greece)
Artistic Residency (Athens, Greece)
From 8 to 10 September, our first Artistic Residency took place in Athens, Greece, providing the three selected composers, Maria Beatrice Orlando (Italy), Sakis Negrin (Greece) and Aaron Dan (Germany), with a space for musical, spiritual, and intercultural collaboration, as part of Polyverse’s co-creation phase.
The residency was organised by the Jewish Community of Athens, which arranged a series of icebreaker and improvisation activities to allow the composers to get started on the composition process and begin exchanging ideas about the structure, voices and style of the new interfaith composition.
The programme was also supported by Future for Religious Heritage (FRH), which provided composers with a background of the project and an overview of the cultural and spiritual traditions of Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
The different musical and professional backgrounds of our composers (which you can find here) will be key for the success of this cross-border collaboration which will reflect the rich and diverse tapestry of European religious and cultural heritage and convey the values of peace, respect and mutual understanding.
In the coming months, our consortium will focus on assisting the composers to refine and finalise the composition, which is expected to be ready by the end of 2025.
8 September 2025 - Third Transnational Project Meeting
(Athens, Greece)
Third Transnational Project Meeting in Athens (Greece)
On 8 September 2025, the Polyverse consortium met in Athens, Greece, for the Third Transnational Project Meeting, which focused on the next steps for the creation of the interfaith musical composition and the Polyverse Choir, officially inaugurating the creative phase of this innovative EU-funded initiative.
Apart from the participation of all project partners, this transnational meeting was a chance for the consortium to meet Maria Beatrice Orlando, Sakis Negrin and Aaron Dan, the three selected composers that will bring the spirit of the Polyverse manifesto launched in June to life through the co-creation of an interfaith composition uniting the musical traditions of Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
During the meeting, project partners also set the dates and discussed the programme of the three transnational events that will take place in spring/summer 2026 as part of the Polyverse Choir's international tour to Aquileia (Italy), Athens (Greece) and Lehnin Monastery (Germany).
The meeting was hosted by the Jewish Community of Athens who also organised for the group an interfaith tour of some the city’s remarkable places of worship, including the Beth Shalom Synagogue, the Etz Chagim Synagogue, the Holocaust Memorial within the Jewish Cemetery, the Church of the Holy Archangels, the ruins of the Acropolis, the Church of the Holy Apostle Philip at Vlassarous, the Church of the Pantanassa, the Tzistarakis Mosque and the Metropolitan Cathedral of Athens.
7-8 May 2025 - Transnational Seminar & Second Project Meeting
(Leuven, Belgium)
On 7 and 8 May, project partners of POLYVERSE met in Leuven (Belgium) for an insightful Transnational Seminar and the Second Project Meeting, which set the stage for further important developments in the creative phase of the project. The two events took place at the historic Park Abbey in Leuven, which today is operated by PARCUM, a museum and centre of expertise for religious heritage in Flanders.
The Transnational Seminar was held on Wednesday 7 May and explored the importance of the four religious heritage sites where the performances of the Polyverse Choir and local conferences of the project will take place from spring 2026: the Basilica of Aquileia (Italy), the Beth Shalom Synagogue in Athens (Greece), the Cistercian Monastery of Lehnin (Germany) and the Grand Mosque of Rome (Italy).
A crucial outcome of the seminar was the drafting of the Polyverse Manifesto 'Singing Across Faiths', which encapsulates the values and ambition at the heart of the project: intercultural and inter-religious dialogue. It also established the guiding principles for the co-creation of an interfaith music composition.
The Transnational Project Meeting on 8 May was attended by representatives of the five partner organisations (the Jewish Community of Athens, the Monastery and Church Community of Lehnin, Future for Religious Heritage, and the Mosque and Islamic Cultural Centre of Rome, under the leadership of the Società di Conservazione della Basilica di Aquileia) and served to assess the progress and define the next steps towards the first part of creative phase of the project: the artistic residency to create the new composition.
Transnational Seminar and Second Project Meeting in Leuven (Belgium)
30 January 2025 - Online Seminar
The Polyverse Online Seminar took place online on 30 January 2025 and brought together project partners and a wide array of external stakeholders, including theologians, musicologists, cultural heritage experts, and representatives from the Catholic, Protestant, Islamic, and Jewish communities to discuss the role of music in Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
The session featured music and heritage experts Alessio Screm, a writer, journalist, with an international Phd in Musicology, Franco Gismano, Priest of the diocese of Gorizia and Ph.D. in Theology, Christos Nassios, theologian and scientific collaborator at the Inter-Orthodox Centre of the Church of Greece, Gerhard Oppelt, conductor, harpsichordist and organist, Pilar G. Bahamonde, director of the Camino Lebaniego Foundation, Julie Aerts, religious heritage advisor at PARCUM. It also included the presentations of Rabbi Gabriel Negrin, Rabbi of Athens and expert in Electroacoustic Music Composition, Sound Design and Engineering, and Imam Dr. Nader Akkad, Religious Affairs Advisor at the Islamic Cultural Center of Italy - Great Mosque of Rome.
This event served a starting point for collaborative dialogue and for defining an investigative approach for the first phase of the project: context-oriented analysis and identification of best practices.
Online Seminar
14 January 2025 - Kickoff meeting in Aquileia (Italy)
With great pleasure we announce the start of the European project "Polyverse - Promoting Multicultural Dialogue and Religious Heritage by Creating a European Interreligious Choir", co-funded by the European Union Creative Europe - subprogramme Culture.
The kickoff meeting took place on 14 January in Aquileia (Italy) with the presence of all project partners: the Foundation "So.Co.B.A." (Basilica of Aquileia🇮🇹), the Jewish Community of Athens (Greece), the Protestant Monastery of Lehnin – Berlin (Germany), Future for Religious Heritage (European), and the Islamic Cultural Centre of Italy in Rome (Italy), this last as an associate partner.
In this meeting we talked about the creation of the first European Interreligious Choir that will see three different religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam) together, united by music, not only with the choir but also with a new composition written especially for the occasion that will blend different cultural and religious traditions acknowledging our rich European cultural tapestry.
This innovative experience will promote both the religious cultural heritage and the value of music within the different places involved in the project. A beautiful work that will put in synergy all these different realities to show that the places of faith are by vocation, and ever since, places of encounter and union.
Thanks to the expertise and organisational and administrative support of Argo – Progettare l’Europa, leading company in European projects, we will be facing two challenging but exciting years, that will allow us to show and take our cultural, religious and musical heritage out of our borders!
Next appointment: an online seminar on January 30th, which will explore the various religions featured, music as a vehicle of art and culture, and the places involved!
Stay tuned!
Kickoff meeting in Aquileia
