
Stefanos Aristos Symeonidis
Born in April 1996 in Serres, he enrolled in 2014 in the Biology Department of the University of Crete for his undergraduate studies. He started his pursuit in music in 2015 by taking his first viola lessons from Agron Dalipi at the Municipal Conservatory of Heraklion, Crete. In 2016 he joined the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Crete shortly after its foundation and soon he became a student of Dimitris Handrakis, violin professor at the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki and a member of the New Hellenic Quartet. In 2018 he was also under the occasional supervision of Georgios Demertzis, founder of the New Hellenic Quartet and initiator of the New Cretan Quartet. After completing his undergraduate studies in biology in 2019, he began taking regular lessons from Odysseus Lavaris, principal viola of the Bergische Symphoniker and member of the Evenos Quartett. In 2021 he began his studies with Professor Werner Dickel at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln. He has appeared alongside renowned and important musicians, such as Georgios Demertzis, Vassilis Varvaresos and Helmut Lachenmann. He is a founding member of the New Cretan Quartet, with which -since 2018- he has performed in various cities in Greece, as well as in Cyprus, and which was recently selected for the pan-European platform for supporting new quartets MERITA of Le Dimore del Quartetto.