The Buffer Zone
Yannis Kyriakides

voice: Tido Visser
piano: Marc Reichow
cello: Nikos Veliotis
electronics: Yannis Kyriakides

The Buffer Zone is the 3rd musical drama of Yannis Kyriakides to appear on UNSOUNDS.
It can be considered a sister piece to his ‘conSPIracy cantata’ (2000) as it deals in some way with the legacy of the cold war, and spaces that have arisen from those conflicts.

The Buffer Zone’ composed and presented in the theatre in 2004, is a work that explores boundaries of separation. It draws its material from the UN Buffer Zone in Kyriakides’s native Cyprus that runs across the island and divides the two communities. The central figure in the work is a UN soldier who guards the buffer zone and has to deal with his own dislocation and relocation in a desolate no man’s land where his main duty consists of reporting and turning away trespassers. Based on interviews and recordings from UN soldiers in Cyprus, the piece explores both the undercurrents of tension and inner and outer landscapes of the peculiar state of being ‘in limbo’, between two physical and mental states.

The sound world of the Buffer Zone consists of nature field recordings in the buffer zone, electronic sounds of military technology, piano, cello and voices. The cellist Nikos Veliotis who uses his special curved bow technique, creates a rich sound world of drones that heighten the feeling of suspended time, as does the pianist Marc Reichow playing with a refined inside piano technique that utilises precise string harmonics. Tido Visser (from the Kassiopea Quintet) portrays the UN soldier whose inner world unravels under the alienating effect of the bizarre landscape that he is watching over.