Composer of contemporary music. Heavily influenced by prog metal. 

www.jocmusic.com

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkD_BiP9kW3pagkOrAzIC9Q

New York City-based, JUNO-nominated composer Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis (b. 1982) hails from Montreal, Canada. "Dreamy yet rhythmic" (NY Times), with a “terrible luminosity” and “ferociously expressive” (Times Colonist), his concert music is “an amalgamation of the classical music tradition and the soul and grime of heavy metal” (I Care If You Listen). With an intimate background in progressive metal and traditional Greek music, Stafylakis has developed a unique conception of musical temporality and rhythm, infusing his compositions with a propulsive vitality that “favors doomsday chords and jackhammer rhythms” (The New Yorker).

Since 2016, Stafylakis is the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra's Composer-In-Residence and Co-Curator of the WSO's Winnipeg New Music Festival. His works have been performed by orchestras including the Toronto, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Ottawa, Regina, Québec, Victoria, PEI, Spokane, Stamford, Longueuil, FSU, and Greek Youth Symphony Orchestras, Norwegian Radio Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, Orchestre Classique de Montréal, and Israel Chamber Orchestra. 

He has collaborated with artists and ensembles including Animals As Leaders, Dame Evelyn Glennie, Roomful of Teeth, JACK Quartet, Bent Knee, Decoda Ensemble, ShoutHouse, Raphael Weinroth-Browne, Contemporaneous, Vicky Chow, Hard Rubber Orchestra, Alexandre Da Costa, and Philippe Sly, among others. 

His works have been featured at venues and festivals around the world, including Carnegie Hall and the NY Philharmonic Biennial. In 2018–19 he collaborated with progressive metal pioneers Animals As Leaders on the symphonic adaptation of their music for metal band & orchestra, and in 2020–21 collaborated with Courtney Swain and members of Bent Knee and ShoutHouse on the prog metal & chamber music fusion dontwaitforme. Hard Rubber Orchestra’s 2022 album Iguana earned Stafylakis a JUNO nomination for his metal–big band fusion composition Source Code, featuring the composer on guitars.

Recent recordings featuring his music include albums by the Norwegian Radio Orchestra & Miguel Harth-Bedoya (Naxos), Jenny Lin (Sono Luminus), the Cicchillitti-Cowan Duo (Analekta), Patrick Kearney (Contrastes), and the Hard Rubber Orchestra (Redshift).

His music has been recognized with the Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, ASCAP’s Leonard Bernstein Award, SOCAN’s Classical Composer of the Year Award, four SOCAN Foundation Awards for Young Composers, and grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, FACTOR, SSHRC, and New Music USA. He serves on the board of directors of GroundSwell (Winnipeg), is an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre, and a founding member of the NYC composer collective ICEBERG New Music.

Stafylakis holds degrees from McGill University and The Graduate Center, City University of New York. He lectures at the City College of New York (CUNY) and Purchase College Conservatory of Music (SUNY), and is a guest lecturer at Nazareth College in Rochester, NY. His research examines the conception of rhythm and meter in progressive metal.

www.hstafylakis.com


current as of Apr. 9, 2023

New Amsterdam Records is built for the diverse musical landscape of our time. We support the projects and careers of ground-breaking post-genre composers and performers, beginning with their records and expanding out to concert presenting, network building, and a variety of other services. Your generous support of New Amsterdam, a 501(c)(3) non profit, makes our mission possible.

Michael Lanci is a composer and educator currently residing in Brooklyn, New York. His music is viscerally engaging, stylistically diverse and draws from a wide range of influences. Recent projects include a collection of 5 protest songs dedicated to late nineteenth century singer-songwriter and labor rights activist Joe Hill, that was awarded the American Prize along with a new commission as part of the  Beth Morrison Projects Next Generation Competition that will be premiered at National Sawdust in February of 2019.

Michael’s works have been performed at festivals such as the Cortona Sessions,  Edmont Fringe Festival, Orford Festival, Detroit Bureau of Sound, Midwest Composers Symposium and the Vox Novus Festival. He has received commissions from the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Beyond Pluck, Unhread-of//Ensemble, Klangpar2, and the Vive! Ensemble. His works have been performed by the University of Iowa Symphony Orchestra, Contemporaneous, Hypercube, All Of The Above, Buffalo Chamber Players, Duo d’Entre Deux, and the Decho Ensemble. 

Michael holds a B.M. in piano performance from SUNY Albany, where he also studied composition with Max Lifchitz and a M.M. in composition from SUNY Fredonia, where he studied with Rob Deemer and Karl Boelter. Michael completed his D.M.A. in composition at the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati where he studied with Michael Fiday.

Liam Ross Gibson is a composer, pianist, and electronic musician currently based in Nanaimo BC

Made up of six of Vancouver’s most sought-after musical multitaskers, Standing Wave is dedicated to commissioning and performing contemporary chamber music by Canadian and International composers. The group’s six members—flutist Christie Reside, clarinettist Anne-Katherine Coope, violinist Rebecca Whitling, cellist Peggy Lee, pianist Allen Stiles, and percussionist Vern Griffiths—venture into a wide array of musical worlds with passion and assurance. From the intricate complexities of the music of Howard Bashaw and Chris Paul Harman, to the bold avant-garde jazz of Tony Wilson, and the anarchic electroacoustic imaginings of Giorgio Magnanensi, the ensemble has commissioned and premiered over 80 works in its 25 year history.

Since its formation in 1991, Standing Wave has presented an annual season of concerts in Vancouver, has toured across Canada, and been featured as part of the Vancouver New Music Festival, the Victoria Symphony’s New Currents Festival, and the Vancouver International Jazz Festival.  In 2014, 2015 and 2016, Standing Wave performed the opening concerts of the annual VSO New Music Festivals; the ensemble performed the festival’s closing concert in 2017.  In 2011, Standing Wave was the ensemble in residence at Vancouver Pro Musica’s Sonic Boom Festival, and was featured over three nights at Vancouver’s International PuSh Festival, performing ALL, the ensemble’s multimedia collaboration with award-winning filmmaker Mina Shum.  Standing Wave has released four CDs: New Wave (2017),  Liquid States (2013), Redline (2007), and a self-titled recording (1991). The ensemble has been recorded many times for CBC Radio; the ensemble’s November 29, 2010 and May 31, 2011 concerts were each broadcast on CBC’s The Signal.  Since 2003, Standing Wave has been an Ensemble in Residence at the UBC School of Music.

Hailed by the press as “...a burning torch for the next century ..stunning ..superb” (The New Music Connoisseur, New York), “…melodicism and rhythmic buoyancy” (The New York Times), “…astonishingly virtuosic” (Soundboard Magazine), the music of Octavio Vazquez has been performed throughout the US, Europe, and Asia, and broadcast by radio and TV stations such as PBS, PRX, New York's WQXR, and Spanish, Russian and Chinese national networks. He has also collaborated with Grammy Award winner Cristina Pato as an arranger, orchestrator and producer. A winner of numerous national and international prizes, recent recognition includes I-Park Foundation and MacDowell Fellowships. Professor Vazquez teaches at Nazareth College School of Music in Rochester, NY, where he directs the composition program.

David Chisholm is internationally recognized as a composer defined by diverse and hybrid collaboration and a curator and producer of vision and courage. He was composer in residence for Philip Adams’ BalletLab and an Associate Artist for Malthouse Theatre, before becoming the founder and director of the highly acclaimed Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music and its roster ensemble Argonaut. David has been an artist in residencee at HIAP in Helsinki, EMPAC in New York, Centre Intermondes in La Rochelle and Camargo Foundation in Cassis. He was the first Australian composer to be a featured guest of the Encuentro Internacional de Compositores in Santiago, Chile. David was an inaugural recipient of the Victorian Government’s Creator Grants. He holds a PhD from University of Melbourne and is currently Urumatua o te whare o ngā pukōrero pūoro|Head of the School of Music at Waipapa Taumata Rau|University of Auckland, Aotearoa|New Zealand.  A member of SOUNZ and the Australian Music Centre, David is published by Babel Scores, Paris.

Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis is following