Medusa, the sublimely beautiful monster of antiquity. Mysterious, seductive, apotropaic and lethal. Ambiguity personified. Femme fatale, or the tragic victim of the desire and wrath of two gods? Living in exile in a desolate place after her purge, turning anything alive to stone with her gaze of death. Bearing in her belly the seed of her rape, the winged horse Pegasus, the lofty symbol of poetic inspiration. Killed while sleeping by Perseus. What she was dreaming? 
This piece is commissioned from and dedicated to Madeleine Shapiro. Many thanks to Ioannis Andriotis for sharing with me his SANDBox~ frame for the realization of this piece.

Medusa In Somno

This programmatic composition is inspired by the 12th Pythian Ode, written by Ancient Greek poet, Pindar, in honor of a formidable Aulos player: When Perseus aided by goddess Athena beheaded sleeping Medusa, the only mortal of the three sister Gorgons, the two immortal Gorgon sisters, Stheno and Euryali woke up, realized the crime and chased the culprit with terrible cries and laments. Athena listened to the Gorgons’ cries and created Aulos, a double pipe-double reed wind instrument to imitate them. 
In modern days, Archeomusicologists study fragments, or entire pieces of excavated Auloi from various sites and eras to recreate exact replicas to learn more about the sounds and performing techniques of this long-lost instrument. This piece is based on a Pydna aulos, an instrument entombed in Macedonia, Greece at about the 2nd half of the 4th century BCE. Melodic materials derive from the archaic Spondeion scale that was used to accompany certain religious processions. The computer alters the aulos sound in real-time based entirely on custom combinations of variable delay and FFT algorithms, without using any prerecorded materials. Gorgons’ Cry is the first composition in the modern repertory involving aulos and live electronics. 

This piece was made possible by funds of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Greek Diaspora Fellowship Program and the University of Oklahoma Research Council.

Acknowledgements
The composer wishes to thank Dr. Chrestos Terzes of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens for recreating a beautiful set of auloi; Mr. Callum Armstrong for providing technical insights, sound samples, recording and premiering the piece; Dr. Anastasia Georgaki for planting the seed of idea of a contemporary composition for aulos and live electronics.

Gorgons' Cry

The Piece for flute and electronics marks two personal firsts for me: it is the first piece I composed since my arrival in the New World and it is also my fist interactive work designed entirely for MAX/MSP, a real-time interactive computer music programming environment for the Macintosh. The computer is programmed to follow the flute’s pitches, envelopes and dynamics and its responses are related to the performer’s input. The rhythmic and melodic patterns of the flute, enriched by the sounds and the texture of the computer, create small sections of progressive climaxes. The Piece for Flute and Electronics has been awarded with the Residence Prize of the 27th International Competition of Electroacoustic Music and Sonic Art at Bourges (2000).

Piece For Flute & Electronics

Hekate is a Greek goddess associated with crossroads, gates, liminal places in space and time. The moon, fire, herbs and poisonous plants, magic, witchcraft, angels and ghosts are in her dominion. She rules over earth, sea and sky, and accompanies the souls of the deceased to Hades, holding torches in her hands. In late antiquity she is known as Savior who embodies the Cosmic Soul. 
The piece is written for Bendir, a special type of frame drum with snares, finger cymbal, and ankle bells. The frame drum is diachronically one of the oldest and most common instruments in the world. The sound of this simple instrument creates powerful images associated with shamanism, mysticism, rituals, ecstasy, healing, and femininity. The Bendir originates from the countries of the Maghreb and is played almost exclusively by women.
The piece showcases nocturnal and other field recordings captured by the composer over several years in Greece. The computer tracks the attack and the dynamics of the instruments and reacts by using various live processing techniques, which include multiple delays, phase vocoding, live sampling, frequency shifting, and harmonization among others. 
Hekate is commissioned by and dedicated to Patti Cudd. 


Hekate

Volatile, transformative, brutal, benevolent, chased and menacing, dismembered and resurrected, ceremonious, clamorous, mystic, inspirational, ecstatic, patron of tragedy and comedy. Dionysus is the god who embodies primitive instinctual forces of life, irresistible, inexorable, ever triumphing. 
The piece is written in MaxMSP. The software tracks the percussionist’s attacks, amplitude, rhythm and density. This information is used to trigger various real-time sound transformation routines and pre-recorded materials. The whispered texts are from Euripides Bacchae. Many thanks to Dr. Ricardo Souza for commissioning this work and for his enhancing suggestions. Dionysus was also made possible with the partial support of funds from the Research Council of University of Oklahoma.


Dionysus

Trittico Medιterraneo is a three-movement piece inspired by summer themes. 

The opening movement, Pastorale, is based on sheep and goat bell samples and related environmental recordings collected at a mountainous Greek village. The work is a personal sonic interpretation and response to the Renaissance and Baroque paintings of the same theme.

I am fascinated by old, spacious cobblestone squares, surrounded by tall buildings with swallows' nests, outdoor cafes and restaurants, ideal places for people to enjoy the community and for children to play. Most of the sounds used in Constitution Square at Evening are field recordings from Nafplion, Greece.

The closing movement, Violins of Summer, was inspired by a short poem by Yannis Ritsos: 
“Cicadas are thousands of little violins with wings
They make wooden sounds for they miss their bow
The summer knocks their belly with its finger.
These knocks are later translated – 
Little hammers pounding on a soft void.” 


Trittico Mediterraneo

The title refers to Jackson Pollock’s paintings using his dripping technique, which became the source of inspiration for this piece. Volatile environmental sounds captured around the University of Oklahoma, Norman campus underwent a condensation process through Max/MSP (including phase vocoding, and/or granular synthesis “freeze”, filtering, envelope shaping, pitch shifting, among others) to be transformed in to liquid pigments. The liquefied sounds were then arranged in to the canvas (Pro Tools) and balanced dynamically through spontaneous real-time processes. This piece was made possible with the support of funds from the Research Council of University of Oklahoma.

Pollock's Dreams: Liquefied Sounds

This piece is about light.
Light as flux of photons.
Light as flux of energy.
Frequencies as colored light.
Light enveloped in darkness.
Matter as condensed light.
Light that cannot be seen.

The following excerpt from an old Greek text of the 7th century AD encapsulates the central idea of the piece: …And as all things come from the One, from the mediation of the One, so all things are born from this One by adaptation. … There is one pitch (B), which as a single ultra-concentrated beam of light penetrates the vacuum, the silence. The instruments and the electronics act like lenses and prisms that slowly change the color of this single B and magnify it to the neighboring pitch areas. Since this process is gradual, like wine fermentation, special attention is given to various subtle changes, in the micro-intervals and their beatings, attacks and dynamics, colors and textures. Once the magnifications of the single pitch expand to its partials, the fermentation process is accelerated and new dimensions open up that at some point incorporate even chance. 
The role of the electronics is to unify the instrumental fragments and thus to provide coherence through the piece. Although obscure at the beginning, progressively the computer becomes the 7th player in the ensemble, and after a certain point it develops in to an all-inclusive ocean, where the instruments float, like exotic fish. The electronics are based in various real-time techniques in Max/MSP, mostly live phase vocoding and sampling, infinite decay reverbs, flangers, harmonizers and granular synthesis.


Obscuritas Luminosa, Lux Obscura

From the first moment, when I was recording the sound material for the piece, I had the feeling that there was something allegoric about it, something beyond its sonic nature. After reading Umberto Eco's "Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages", I realized that my sense of the possible allegoric existences was remotely related to the medieval belief that everything in nature carries an allegoric meaning beyond its materiality. 
The piece is based on sounds derived from a grand piano excited by a small copper bar. The sounds are used both in an unprocessed and processed state, manipulated by custom-made algorithms in Max/MSP, and finally mastered in ProTools. Allegoriae Sonantes has received the first prize in the SEAMUS/ASCAP Student Commission Competition and it is released by ICMA CD series (vol. ICMC2003).


Allegoriae Sonantes

Here are the ingredients necessary for the recipe of the piece:

Steel Wood Hair
Fire Sulfur Quicksilver
        Mercury 
Dionysus Mars Sisyphus
Initiation Sacred Dance Sparks
        Caltinatio
Trance Chaos Katharsis
Night Crickets Stars…

All the sounds used in the piece were derived from a cello, processed by custom-made algorithms in Max/MSP, and finally mastered in ProTools. The composer wishes to thank ASCAP and SEAMUS for commissioning this work. The piece has been awarded with the Residence Prize of the 30th International Competition of Electroacoustic Music and Sonic Art, Bourges, France and the Special Prize for Young Composer of the Musica Nova International Electroacoustic Music Competition, Prague, Czech Republic.


DeLignoChalybeque

Ode to Kitchen is an homage to Neruda’s collection of Odes. The poet wrote 225 Odes on common, everyday objects, such as bread, artichokes, his socks, etc., to celebrate life as expressed through myriads of sounds, colors, smells, and emotions. Hundreds of sounds of kitchen objects were classified according to their gestural archetypes and substances, and later processed mainly through the classic tape manipulation techniques. Complex textures were created by reading fast and randomly the contents of folders with similar sounds. The resulting thousands of sound objects were orchestrated with the intention to create a highly energetic and kaleidoscopic amalgam.

Ode To Kitchen

Violins of Summer, was inspired by a short poem by Yannis Ritsos (my translation):

“Cicadas are thousands of little violins with wings
they make wooden sounds for they miss their bow
the summer knocks their belly with its finger.
These knocks are later translated – 
little hammers pounding on a soft void.” 

The piece is the last part of a Triptych inspired by Mediterranean themes. It was finalist in the 2013 Musica Nova competition in Prague, Czech Republic. It was made possible with partial support from the Research Council of the University of Oklahoma.


Violins Of Summer

Konstantinos Karathanasis is an electroacoustic composer who draws inspiration from modern poetry, artistic cinema, abstract painting, mysticism, Greek mythology, and the writings of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell. His compositions have been performed at numerous festivals and received awards in international competitions, including Bourges, Musica Nova, and SEAMUS/ASCAP. Recordings of his music are released by SEAMUS, ICMA, and Musica Nova. Konstantinos holds a Ph.D. in Music Composition from the University at Buffalo, and is currently an Associate Professor of Composition & Music Technology at the University of Oklahoma. More info at: http://129.15.77.24/oukon/

Konstantinos Karathanasis

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