Contemporary Instrumental Music

A collection of pieces by Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis.

Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis' Works

Harry Stafylakis (b. 1982)

Orchestral works

• A Parable for End Times (2018) for choir & orchestra
• Holocene Extinction (2017) for orchestra
• Sun Exhaling Light (2017) for orchestra
• Never the Same River (2016) for orchestra
• Arc of Horizon (2015) for orchestra
• Brittle Fracture (2013) for orchestra
• Ashes to Light the Sky (2016) for string ochestra
• Become Legend (2017) for orchestra
• Something Wicked (2018) for orchestra

Stafylakis-Orchestral music

musc 100

Classical

Haralabos [ Harry ] Stafylakis (b. 1982)
www.hstafylakis.com

Holocene Extinction (2017) 
for orchestra
I. Eden
II. Arrival
III. Threnody
IV. Hammerfall

Commissioned by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.

Score and parts available for rental (PDF or hard copy) through my website: www.hstafylakis.com/contact


Program Notes:

The Holocene epoch, which spans the past 11,700 years, encompasses the totality of humanity’s written history. Our species’ staggering growth and development into Earth’s first global superpredator is unprecedented in the known history of the planet. An unintended consequence of this explosive rise is the pervasive impact humanity has had on the environment. Human predation’s effects on food webs, the destabilization of biodiverse habitats, industry’s role in climate change, overpopulation, and profligate consumption are among the principal causes of an increase in the extinction rate of plant and animal species to between 100–1,000 times higher than natural background rates.

The Earth has experienced five mass extinction events in its history, spread out over hundreds of millions of years. Humanity is the first species to have directly precipitated such a cataclysm – what has been termed the sixth mass extinction, or the Holocene extinction.

This work is a symphonic poem, a meditation on our unfortunate complicity in this ongoing mass extinction event. The narrative is set in four continuous movements.

The first, Eden, imagines an idyllic Earth before the growth of humanity. It seeks to capture the simplicity and balance of the world as depicted in our origin myths. Gradually, a sense of foreboding invades the dreamlike naivety of the opening.

In Arrival, humanity enters the scene. A frenetic increase in energy and aggression depicts our rapid proliferation and takeover of the ecosystem.

Threnody, from the Greek θρηνῳδία, or “wailing ode”, is an exercise in catharsis, a purely emotional response to this ongoing tragedy.

The finale, Hammerfall, evokes the massiveness and cold brutality of industry, an unstoppable force subjugating the musical landscape with mechanical implacability.

www.hstafylakis.com

Stafylakis - Holocene Extinction - II Arrival

Stafylakis - Holocene Extinction - I Eden

. conducted by Massimo Mazzeo
. recorded at Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, September 28th 2012
. Festival Jovens Músicos 2012
. awarded at SPA/Antena 2 Composition Contest 2012

o que será do rio without John Cage? - Divino Sospiro baroque orchestra

"I could not think of thee as piecèd rot"
for soprano and orchestra

conductor - Magnus Lindberg
soprano - Inês Simões
Gulbenkian Orchestra

composer - Nuno da Rocha
words by - James Joyce & Fernando Pessoa

Sleep now, O sleep now, 
   O you unquiet heart! 
A voice crying 'Sleep now' 
   Is heard in my heart. 

The voice of the winter 
   Is heard at the door. 
O sleep, for the winter 
   Is crying 'Sleep no more.' 

My kiss will give peace now 
   And quiet to your heart - 
Sleep on in peace now, 
   O you unquiet heart! 
(James Joyce)

I could not think of thee as piecèd rot,
Yet such thou wert, for thou hadst been long dead;
Yet thou liv'dst entire in my seeing thought
And what thou wert in me had never fled.
Nay, I had fixed the moments of thy beauty -
Thy ebbing smile, thy kiss's readiness,
And memory had taught my heart the duty
To know thee ever at that deathlessness.
But when I came where thou wert laid, and saw
The natural flowers ignoring thee sans blame,
And the encroaching grass, with casual flaw,
Framing the stone to age where was thy name,
    I knew not how to feel, nor what to be
    Towards thy fate's material secrecy.
(Fernando Pessoa)

premiere at ENOA's Concert - Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 12th September 2014.

recorded by Antena 2.
(photo by Márcia Lessa)

I could not think of thee as piecèd rot - for soprano and orchestra

"Philippina"
double concerto for Trumpet, Accordion and Wind Orchestra

composer: Nuno da Rocha

trumpet: Marco Silva
accordion: João Barradas

conductor: Alberto Roque
orchestra: ESML Wind Orchestra

premiere
7th june 2014, Vianna da Motta auditorium, Lisbon - Portugal

audio
recorded by: Alexandre Gonçalves, André Alves, Martim Souto
edited by: André Barroso

"Philippina" - double concerto for Trumpet, Accordion and Wind Orchestra

Harry Stafylakis (b. 1982)
www.hstafylakis.com

Arc of Horizon (2015) for orchestra
2.2.2.2 / 4.2.3.1 / timp. + 3 / pno. / strings

Commissioned by the Lake George Music Festival
with the support of the New York State Council on the Arts

 

Program notes:

"When you grow up by the sea you spend a good deal of time looking at the horizon. You wonder what on earth the waves might bring - and where the sea might deposit you - until one day you know you have lived between two places, the scene of arrival and the point of departure."
––Andrew O'Hagan, The Atlantic Ocean: Essays (2008)

The title is drawn form the Greek "ὁρίζων κύκλος" (horizōn kyklos) – "separating circle" – which symbolizes the sliver of visible horizon that always remains in the distance no matter how much one tries to reach it.

As a resident of NYC hailing from Montreal, I have traveled between the two cities countless times since childhood. At the midpoint of that voyage, Lake George has always stood out as a landmark signaling my departure from one place and imminent arrival at another. This manifests itself tangibly as radio broadcasts dissolve, replaced by new ones ahead, but with significant overlap and signal crossing along the way. Unfailingly, this transition from one "home" to another evokes tangled and conflicting emotions of aspiration, longing, regret, fear, and nostalgia.

Musically, Arc of Horizon emerges from this symbolic personal transition between my past in progressive metal and my present in concert music – I seem to perpetually chase whichever horizon seems newest, and having arrived I turn back to chase it again.
–HS

Arc Of Horizon (2015) for orchestra

RESTART for orchestra
(commission by Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian)
Nuno da Rocha

Gulbenkian Orchestra 
dir. Joana Carneiro

recorded by RTP / Antena 2 (9th October 2015)
(premiered on 8th October 2015 at Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian)

audio edition: João Dionísio

program note:

RESTART é uma metáfora sobre a anarquia que percorre a minha cabeça. RESTART representa
a minha liberdade, de fazer, de pensar e de partilhar com os outros. De viver com os outros. É uma pergunta. E talvez não responda a nada. Eu creio que talvez seja uma afirmação política. O pensamento é anarca. Esta partitura é anarca. Embora uma partitura nunca seja anarca. Mas esta é quase anarca. RESTART é um pequeno coral de Bach numa tela do Francis Bacon. RESTART é uma tela do Francis Bacon que ele nunca chegou a pintar. São os músicos da Orquestra Gulbenkian que fazem a RESTART.
É deles. O primeiro acorde é deles e o último é de todos nós. RESTART foi escrita para o reiniciar deste palco nesta temporada. Nesta casa. RESTART é uma agressão à palavra, à linguagem verbal. Esta linguagem inventou a religião. Separou o Homem. A música só-música não.
É anarca como eu.

RESTART for orchestra

Harry Stafylakis (b. 1982)
www.hstafylakis.com

Never the Same River (2016) 
for orchestra

Commissioned by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.

Read by the Aspen Conducting Academy Orchestra, Felix Mildenberger conducting. Recorded live by Adam Borecki on July 20, 2016 in Harris Hall, Aspen, CO.

World premiere by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Alexander Mickelthwate, at the Winnipeg New Music Festival on January 31, 2017 in Centennial Concert Hall, Winnipeg, Manitoba. 

Score and parts available for rental (PDF or hard copy) through my website: www.hstafylakis.com/contact



Program Notes:

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.”
—Heraclitus

The above aphorism, attributed to pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus (quoted by Plato in the dialogue Cratylus), expresses a view of the universe as being in a constant state of change. A musical analogue to this concept of impermanence is the chaconne, a Baroque form wherein a constantly repeating pattern (e.g. harmonic progression, bass line, etc.) provides a foundation for a process of continuous variation, decoration, figuration, and melodic invention. 

Never the Same River is a texture-based composition that attempts to embody Heraclitus’s philosophy of simultaneous constancy and flux. The work is propelled by a 26-note melody that outlines a perpetually-repeating harmonic progression, serving as the chaconne theme. First presented by the harp and percussion, the theme serves as a vehicle for the gradual textural development of the musical surface. The orchestra slowly emerges as captured harmonic resonances of the harp and percussion theme accumulate and gradually take over the texture. 

Throughout the work, the instruments of the orchestra act as semi-independent musical streams whose ever-shifting interactions conspire to effectuate a large-scale rhythmic, melodic, articulative, registral, and dynamic intensification. At the peak of this textural crescendo, the music buckles under its own weight and breaks off into disconnected fragments that struggle to rekindle the musical flow in fits and starts. Although the chaconne theme has been looping almost continuously, as the music winds down to its calm conclusion there is a sense of having traversed a great distance.
— HS

www.hstafylakis.com

Never the Same River (orchestra)

Never the Same River (2016) for orchestra

para comprar o disco / to buy this album:
nunodarocha.bandcamp.com
www.mpmp.pt

"Mesmo que faça frio"
Ciclo de Canções para 8 vozes femininas e Piano Preparado / Songs for 8 female voices and Prepared Piano

album "Mesmo que faça frio"
Nuno da Rocha's works for Children's Choir

Instituto Gregoriano de Lisboa Children's Choir
conductor. Filipa Palhares

piano. Pedro Ferro
voices. Carolina de Andrade, Madalena d'Oliveira Martins, Sara Megre, Mariana Rodrigues, Raquel Rebordão, Ana Varela, Rita Miranda, Beatriz Ferreira

text by J. Tolentino Mendonça

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

production. Tangente
audio. Cláudio Carvalho | Estúdio SantaRosa | Underdog Music Solutions 
cover & layouts. Guilherme Campos Gil

recorded at Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa (June 2013, October 2016)

supported by 'Antena 2' and 'mpmp'

Mesmo que faça frio

Harry Stafylakis (b. 1982)
www.hstafylakis.com

Sun Exhaling Light (2017) 
for orchestra

Commissioned by the Victoria Symphony with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.

Score and parts available for rental (PDF or hard copy) through my website: www.hstafylakis.com/contact


Program Notes

“[...] But let’s not start with tears, 
or the flashing lights, the sirens, nor the faint voice 
over the cell phone when you heard ‘I love you …’ 
for the very last time. No, let’s ease our way into this, 
let our first lines praise the plenitude of morning, 
the sun exhaling light into the clouds. [...]”
—Richard Blanco, from “One Pulse – One Poem”

On June 12, 2016, a man shot and killed 49 people and wounded 58 others in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

Richard Blanco’s “One Pulse – One Poem”, a stirring reaction to this atrocity, depicts the poet–observer trying to come to terms with the reality of the event. Inviting the reader to join him in calm commiseration, he counsels us to first take stock in our surroundings – in the quiet beauty of our natural and built environment – before joining him in attempting to find the words to express the horror that such an act of violence elicits.

Sun Exhaling Light takes this premise as its starting point. Solar wind is a stream of charged particles emitted by the Sun. It buffets our planet constantly, Earth’s magnetosphere our only protection against the intense radiation that would inflict severe damage on all life. One can imagine these competing forces as a metaphor for the conflict between the drive to aggression and the protective shield that is human civilization. The piece envisions scenarios in which our culturally constructed defences are eroded, bursts of violence tearing through, leaving us stunned and deeply mournful.

—HS (www.hstafylakis.com)

The title Sun Exhaling Light is taken from the poem "One Pulse – One Poem" by Richard Blanco, used with permission of the author. Excerpt from the poem reprinted with permission; (c) 2016, Richard Blanco.

Sun Exhaling Light

Sun Exhaling Light (2017) for orchestra

Harry Stafylakis (b. 1982)
www.hstafylakis.com

A Parable for End Times (2018) 
for choir & orchestra

Score and parts available for rental (PDF or hard copy) through my website: www.hstafylakis.com/contact



Program Notes:

A Parable for End Times is a setting of an excerpt from Canadian author Steven Erikson’s novella “The Devil Delivered”. The story depicts a near-future Earth ravaged by nuclear fallout, depleted natural resources, and an ozone hole the size of the Great Plains. In this dystopia, a young boy’s painfully naive question – “what did I do wrong” – is met with a scathing diatribe on humanity’s complicity in its own planet’s destruction, resulting from a myopic preoccupation with ephemeral comforts and exploitative indulgence.

This piece is my response to how timely and prescient Erikson’s words feel in the current cultural landscape.

Text
What did I do wrong?

You were born, son, with the added misfortune of surviving it. You were new and helpless and you trusted — my, how you trusted. You never learned the lessons of withholding that trust, of relying upon your judgments, of mastering healthy skepticism. Your gods took you in hand and led you into Hell. Regular folk, the kind that hosted parties, backyard barbecues, but to you they were gods, and like God Himself they laid a judgment upon you, that you should suffer, that you should know the anguish of a guilt you never earned. They gave you life, and you lived their definition of it.

It's a parable, in its own way. Analogous to the horror visited upon the sons and daughters by the fathers and mothers. They give you life: a world poisoned, its earth blasted and ripped open and breeding deadly diseases, its waters turgid and tossed with dead creatures, its air foul with invisible gases and holed like gauze letting the rays burn down the holy message of cancer and blindness.

We needed those cars, son, to speed up our pursuit of unachievable and unworthy dreams. We needed those forests stripped away, to plant food to feed our weeping multitudes. We needed that plastic that gave you tits and made you infertile. We needed those antibiotics, those televisions and their vital programming, those bloodless cameras that never blinked nor turned away. We needed all those wars to feed our technocratic utopia. We needed those prison ships, we needed segregation, calling in those bank loans, national lotteries, millionaire athletes, movie stars, white hoods and burning crosses, doctors gunned down outside abortion clinics, walled neighborhoods with private armies, pedophiles, serial killers, terrorists, fundamentalists — we needed all those things, son, and you will, too. They're our gift to you, given out of love because we tried to better your lives. At least, that's what we kept telling each other. Can't you see how much better we've made your lives?


Text excerpted from "The Devil Delivered" by Steven Erikson, used and reprinted with permission of the author. Copyright ©2005, Steven Erikson.


www.hstafylakis.com

A Parable for End Times (2018) for choir & orchestra

Harry Stafylakis (b. 1982)
www.hstafylakis.com

excerpts from:
Sun Exhaling Light (2017) 
for orchestra

Commissioned by the Victoria Symphony with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.

Score and parts available for rental (PDF or hard copy) through my website: www.hstafylakis.com/contact

Program Notes

“[...] But let’s not start with tears, 
or the flashing lights, the sirens, nor the faint voice 
over the cell phone when you heard ‘I love you …’ 
for the very last time. No, let’s ease our way into this, 
let our first lines praise the plenitude of morning, 
the sun exhaling light into the clouds. [...]”
—Richard Blanco, from “One Pulse – One Poem”

On June 12, 2016, a man shot and killed 49 people and wounded 58 others in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

Richard Blanco’s “One Pulse – One Poem”, a stirring reaction to this atrocity, depicts the poet–observer trying to come to terms with the reality of the event. Inviting the reader to join him in calm commiseration, he counsels us to first take stock in our surroundings – in the quiet beauty of our natural and built environment – before joining him in attempting to find the words to express the horror that such an act of violence elicits.

Sun Exhaling Light takes this premise as its starting point. Solar wind is a stream of charged particles emitted by the Sun. It buffets our planet constantly, Earth’s magnetosphere our only protection against the intense radiation that would inflict severe damage on all life. One can imagine these competing forces as a metaphor for the conflict between the drive to aggression and the protective shield that is human civilization. The piece envisions scenarios in which our culturally constructed defences are eroded, bursts of violence tearing through, leaving us stunned and deeply mournful.

—HS (www.hstafylakis.com)

The title Sun Exhaling Light is taken from the poem "One Pulse – One Poem" by Richard Blanco, used with permission of the author. Excerpt from the poem reprinted with permission; (c) 2016, Richard Blanco.

Sun Exhaling Light (2017) for orchestra - Excerpt3

Sun Exhaling Light (2017) for orchestra - Excerpt2

Sun Exhaling Light (2017) for orchestra - Excerpt1

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