OCTOMBER 02

Este es el laberinto de Creta.

Este es el laberinto de Creta cuyo centro fue el Minotauro.

Este es el laberinto de Creta cuyo centro fue el Minotauro que Dante imaginó como un toro con cabeza de hombre y en cuya red de piedra se perdieron tantas generaciones.

Este es el laberinto de Creta cuyo centro fue el Minotauro que Dante imaginó como un toro con cabeza de hombre y en cuya red de piedra se perdieron tantas generaciones como María Kodama y yo nos perdimos.

Este es el laberinto de Creta cuyo centro fue el Minotauro que Dante imaginó como un toro con cabeza de hombre y en cuya red de piedra se perdieron tantas generaciones como María Kodama y yo nos perdimos en aquella mañana y seguimos perdidos en el tiempo, ese otro laberinto.

• • • •

This is the labyrinth of Crete.

This is the labyrinth of Crete whose center was the Minotaur.

This is the labyrinth of Crete whose center was the Minotaur that Dante imagined as a bull with the head of a man, and in its network of stone, so many generations were lost. 

This is the labyrinth of Crete whose center was the Minotaur that Dante imagined as a bull with the head of a man, and in its network of stone, so many generations were lost, just as María Kodama and I were lost.

This is the labyrinth of Crete whose center was the Minotaur that Dante imagined as a bull with the head of a man, and in its network of stone, so many generations were lost, just as María Kodama and I were lost on that morning, and we continue to be lost in time, that other labyrinth.

J.L. Borges - El Laberinto (The Labyrinth • Atlas, 1984)

Katerina Konstantourou, piano
Goethe Institute Athens 19·12·17

I avoided for years to write a piano solo piece, but my friend Katerina insisted and eventually convinced me to do it. The outcome is rather different from my previous pieces. The recording is from Katerina Konstantourou's recital in Goethe Institute of Athens.
https://soundcloud.com/k-konstantourou

Φλοιός / Cortex ·· 2016

dedicated to Peter Adriaansz

commissioned by the Shanghai Conservatory and Shanghai Symphony

recorded by David Yi and the Yale Philharmonia with the inimitable JX Yu singing.

Electronics by Patrick McMinn

Ascending for voice, orchestra, and sinewaves

A car accident inspired me to investigate acupuncture and Chinese medicine. In traditional diagnosis, the pulse is measured not only in a number of beats per minute. Three fingers assess the wrist at different depths of pressure to capture a fuller portrait of the pulse in action – sensing its strength at different depths and the character of its entering and leaving. There are 29 kinds of pulses described in pictorial imagery, including pulses that are wiry and taut like the strings of a musical instrument, and pulses that roll slickly like pearls in a dish. When researching this piece, I thought of these images in watching the skittering of marbles, and the variable rhythms, collisions, and pulsations they fall into when or circling harder surfaces like glass. Glass has hardness and transparency – it can preserve or protect, and also shatter and pierce. I thought about how we might move or pulse or come to feel in bodies made of glass.

performed by Curious Chamber Players at Bludenzer Tage Neue Musik
Martin Welander/percussion, Anna Christensson/piano, Karin Hellqvist/violin, My Hellgren/cello

Our glass bodies

Ensemble du Bout du Monde:
Noa Mick, soprano saxophone
Kay Zhang, alto saxophone
Quentin Darricau, tenor saxophone
Don-Paul Kahl, baritone saxophone

https://www.ensembleduboutdumonde.com/

Recorded at Baumstrasse Studios, Athens, November 25th 2017
http://www.dentra.gr/gr/

Lumineux (2017) for saxophone quartet

Ensemble Artéfacts
Recorded live at the Onassis Cultural Center, Athens,  May 26th 2017

“Treillis” was commissioned by the Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens, for the “Music for the New World” project and was first performed at the Onassis Cultural Centre by the Artefacts Ensemble in May 2017.

Spyros Tzekos, bass clarinet
Guido de Flaviis, baritone saxophone
Laertis Kokolanis, Violin
Ilias Sdoykos, Viola
Theodore Vazakas, Percussion
Kostas Seremetis, Percussion

Treillis (2017), for bass clarinet, baritone saxophone, violin, viola and two percussionnists

Genesis

CNSMDP (Vendredi 10 Mai 2019)

Note d'intention:

Il ne s'agit pas ici de caractériser cette musique par un adjectif, mais plutôt de capter les lignes de force émanant du terme « dépravés » et de les utiliser comme modèle afn de guider l'écriture des parties instrumentales. Au-delà donc de la défnition de ce mot, chargée de connotations sexuelles, réside sa force sémiotique qui est l'idée d'un principe dont on s'écarte. En l’occurrence ici, on part d'un principe d'écriture, appliqué à différentes échelles, duquel on va dévier, sur différents paramètres. En d'autres termes, le moteur de cette pièce est l'opposition, qui remonte aux premiers temps de la philosophie et aux «présocratiques» Héraclite et Parménide : celle de l'essence et du devenir. L'énonciation d'un système (essence), puis sa déviation à travers l'empirisme (devenir).

fsakagian

dépravés (2019) - for 7 musicians

Serendipity was written during my time as a fellow composer at the Bang On A Can Summer Festival in July/August 2019 in North Adams, Massachussets, USA. One of my personal goals when going to the festival was to write a short chamber piece inspired by the voyage and get it performed there. 

The word serendipity means an unplanned, fortunate discovery; a happy accident. One day at the festival somebody who now, by a beautiful accident, is a close friend of mine, brought this word up in a conversation and I fell in love with it. There are things we can plan out and control and there are things that happen as a by-product of our actions. So often the unplanned, lucky accidents seem much more significant and meaningful than the initial reason for doing something. The three weeks I spent in North Adams were full of beautiful accidents each of whom have fuelled this piece with joy and inspiration.

Performed by:

Kyla-Rae Ashworth (flute)
Phoebe Bognár (alto flute)
Ellie Harrison (viola)
Francesca Masel (violoncello)

recording of a rehearsal in December 2019 in Brisbane, Australia

Serendipity

Convex (2019-2020) 
for large ensemble of 13 players

Flute (Alto Flute, Piccolo)
Oboe (Cor Anglais)
Clarinet in Bb (Bass Clarinet)
Alto Saxophone (Baritone Saxophone) 
Horn in F
Harp
Percussion1
Percussion 2
Piano
Violin I 
Viol II 
Viola 
Violoncello

composed for Grossman Ensemble 

Program note:
The uncanny secret about the experience of falling apart is
 that one can—even if only for seconds—capture the image
 of the day just the way light is broken up into a hundred
 shattered shades and bended hues when it passes through
 a prism.

Grossman 20200312 vs 0501

Convex (2019-2020)

Born in Athens, studied and worked as a graphic designer, while studying accordion and piano. After lessons with Costas Varotsis, he shifted entirely to music and moved to the Netherlands to study composition at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. His teachers were Yannis Kyriakides, Martijn Padding, Cornelis de Bondt and Diderik Wagenaar. At the same conservatory he studied classical singing, while taking lessons in medieval and renaissance polyphony singing by Rebecca Stewart. He has taken masterclasses by Franck Bedrossian, Christian Wolff, Klaus Lang, Mark Andre, Dimitri Papageorgiou and Orestis Toufektsis.

He has won the impuls composition competition where his piece "Kāma" premiered on 2017. He has collaborated with musicians such as Klangforum Wien, ASKO|Schönberg Ensemble, Ensemble dissonArt, Nieuw Ensemble, Momenta Quartet, Slagwerk Den Haag, Ensemble KLANG, Enno Poppe, Ilan Volkov, Bas Wiegers, Ben Roidl-Ward, Katerina Konstantourou, Theodore Antoniou, Yorgos Ziavras, Konstantinos Terzakis and many more. His music has been presented in venues and festivals like Muziekgebouw aan ‘t Ij Amsterdam [NL], MATA Festival New York [US], impuls Festival [AU], Onassis Stegi [GR], Greek National Opera [GR], Athens & Epidaurus Festival [GR], REACTOR Vienna [AU], Korzo Theatre [NL] Tehran International Electronic Music Festival [IR] etc. 

As a singer/performer, he focuses on challenging and demanding singing and music-theatre works, including “Kassandra” by Iannis Xenakis and “Anaparastasis I” by Jani Christou, Recitations by George Aperghis, Maknongan by Giacinto Scelsi, as well as polyphony from Medieval and Renaissance era. He has performed together with the ASKO/Schönberg Ensemble, ASKO Kammerkoor, the Ballata Ensemble, the Athens State Orchestra and the Greek National Choir. Additionally, he participated in several premieres by composers or artists including Kate Moore, Kriests Auznieks, Nikos Ioakeim, Maya Verlaak, Nikos Galenianos and more.

He is the founder and artistic director of the new music ensemble TETTTIX in Athens, which already shapes an important presence in the music scene of Greece, staging music theatre or interdisciplinary performances.

His interest for music-theatre started with performing J. Christou’s works and with participating in Karyn Benquet’s choreography “Ensuing” in Nederlands Dans Theater. His first opera "Strella", was commissioned and premiered by the Greek National Opera in 2023, repeated on the next season due to its great success.

From 2019 his is a PhD candidate on music-theatre, under the guidance of Dimitri Papageorgiou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) and Franck Bedrossian (University of Music and Performing Arts Graz).

Φλοιός / Cortex ·· 2016

Michalis Paraskakis

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