Koufonisia Classical Music Festival

The Koufonisia Classical Music Festival is an annual chamber-music festival held on Ano Koufonisi in the Cyclades, founded in 2016 by the conductor and pianist Kornilios Michailidis, whose family residence on the island serves as the festival’s home. Ano Koufonisi has fewer than four hundred residents and no car roads. The tenth edition ran from 20 August to 10 September 2025.

The 2025 programme ran to seven concerts, held in the courtyard of St George’s church, the schoolyard and the Michailidis house. Performers included the Polis Ensemble, the Harper Trio, the MusicAeterna Byzantina choir and the soloists Dimitris Tiliakos, Sokratis Sinopoulos and George Tabakis. The festival holds the patronage of the J. F. Costopoulos Foundation.

The tenth-anniversary season closed on the uninhabited island of Keros — a protected Early Cycladic sanctuary. The closing concert, directed by Michail Marmarinos, performed ancient Greek hymns including the Delphic Hymn to Apollo and the Epitaph of Seikilos on faithful replicas of the diaulos, the harp and the lyre.