Written in 2012-2013 for Katerina Konstantourou.

My repetitive music. Essentially the same thing though actually changing constantly; each time in different context. 
A short visit to Frank N.; and looking at a single bar out of his Tribal Triads through the looking-glass...

Katerina headlong on the piano: live in Athens!
Athenaeum Conservatory, October 19th 2013.



Looking in (on Frank N.)

Written in February 2014.

The piece was commissioned by the Royal Conservatory of Ghent on the occasion of 500 years from Andreas Vesalius Bruxellensis's birth; it was performed during the Week of Contemporary Music, which I was curating, by G.A.M.E. (Ghent Advanced Masters Ensemble) under the bâton of Daan Jaansens.
http://whm.schoolofarts.be/home/en
General instigator: my friend Régis Dragonetti.

Vaesanus (= madman in Latin) was how people called Vesalius in the 16th century for his blasphemous delving into the human body. Accordingly, a slowly evolving music is twice interrupted by an "all fools' intermezzo" (announced by a gong) demonstrating a shattering of all earnestness.
Vesalius's stand against intolerance and obscurantism stays always in season...

TETTTIX rocks, at the hands of Konstantinos Terzakis!
"Ambient Pressure"
Onassis Stegi, Athens;
December 7, 2018

Vaesanus!

Written in January 2014.

A commemoration of the outbreak of WWI; a short, non-realist essay about death and loss, after texts by Edgar Allan Poe & Guy de Maupassant. 
The title alludes to Die Dreigroschenoper; a landmark of an era equally pregnant with danger to ours (do we hear the distress signal?)...
Can't we retain spirituality in our lives?

Hans van Kerckhoven, male soprano
Machteld Timmermans, actress
Niels Hap, clarinet
together with Prosperus4 string quartet.

A loving collaboration with fantastic and very devoted musicians.

Performed twice during the Festival Voorwaarts Maart/En avant Mars in Ghent:
Muziekcentrum de Bijloke, March 15th 2014.

You can also watch the première here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALLeoJ_tmG4

mich nicht. in den fremden städten.

My 3rd and last (I hope) attempt to set to music the scene from Homer's Iliad (Book VI) where Hector meets Andromache. Two more pieces have preceded it since 2009, each time with different lineup and sound-world. This time, Hector sings, too.

Premiered by TETTTIX in Athens during Subset Festival on June 24 & 25, 2023.
Andromache: Natasa Tsakiridou
Hector: Michalis Paraskakis

Recorded by Brian Coon and mixed by Giorgos Chanos.

there she met him/ΗΟΙΕΠΕΙΤΗΝΤΗΣΕ

Written in September 2014.

The piece takes rebètiko as a starting-point, and particularly the mortal song "minòre manès" recorded by Stràtos Pagioumtzìs in 1936.
In a way, it's my musical version of a "katàbasis" (= descent): a trip to the Underworld.
The soprano says in Greek «Χτυπώ, νεκροί, ανοίχτε μου» (= "I knock, you deceased ones, open up").

No doubt I'm not interested in superficial folklore, but rather in transfusing (and transmuting) elements of this peculiar (though one-track) genre to something broader, richer, and (why not?) stranger.

Olga Romanko, soprano;
Raf De Keninck leads the Vlaams Sinfonietta (fka Emanon Ensemble).
Highlights: a solo on the natural trumpet by Steven Bossuyt!

Heist-op-den-Berg;
cc Zwaneberg, October 3rd 2014.

[This was not the optimum performance (especially for the singer's part), since there was scarcely any rehearsal time...
But still, it makes its point.]

οπού θα κατοικήσω/where i'll stay

Written in February 2015, on the initiative of Ruben De Gheselle and the collective The New What Now.

Two bars out of another piece (already 10 years old) popped up and asked for a brand new start... And so it happened.

While
- contemplating the dubious case called heterophony; 
- asking myself whether expecting to be lyrical can be of any relevance today; 
- and at the same time commemorating the spirit, sincerity, and musicality of Iannis Xenàkis.

The young & restless Pianotrio Lysesco  delivered the première in Ghent:
Domzaal Vooruit, April 1st 2015.

A very nice collaboration!

[This piece is semi-improvised and it incorporates stage action, thus it would make sense best while being watched... 
Here's the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1BSAo7mU2I

In its audio version though, like a "radio play", it also works somehow.]

perhaps you're right: i'm devoid of lyricism/δεν έχεις κι άδικο: στερούμαι λυρισμού

Written in December 2015-January 2016.

An 'operatic' scene for period instruments after a libretto by Johan van Cauwenberge, interspersed with my selections from Federico García Lorca's "Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías". 
The story-line reproduces the events round the famous photograph by Robert Capa, supposedly taken at the very moment of the soldier's death.
This piece is not about the soldier, however; it's rather about the fall: the fall of poetry; the fall of humanism; the fall of democracy... 

Can we retain these in our lives? THAT'S the question.

Moritz Kellner | 'Robert Capa'
Lucía Caihuela Jimenez | 'Gerda Taro'
Rutger van Oeveren | 'Federico Borrell García'

A collaboration of the Flemish ensemble il fondamento with the Sweelinck Barokorkest of Amsterdam, under the hands of Paul Dombrecht. A wonderful production!
http://www.ilfondamento.be/index.php/eng/news

Live at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels;
February 28th 2016.

You can also watch the video from this performance (in a semi-scenic form under the direction of Mien Bogaert) here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEQddjWq66I

The falling soldier

Written in 2016, for prepared piano; in two parts.

After a tiny musical gesture that is haunting me since 2005: it jumped last year in another piece, and here we are again! In a way, I pick up right where I had left off.

Of all instruments! is dealing with a. "heterophony" (the manner of various voices saying essentially the same thing but not quite, which attracts me truly) and b. the concept of the "continuum", whether that means transition through repetition or revolving round a single note...

Katerina Konstantourou (for whom I wrote it) at the piano.
Goethe-Institut, Athens, December 19th 2017.

...of all instruments!

Written in early 2012.

After coming to read Hermann Hesse's swan song "Das Glasperlenspiel" (which is about a higher intelligence game of the same name) I thought of writing a piece consisting of numerous short sections, unrelated to each other except for the fact that each time a component of the running section would provide me with the stimulus (almost as an uncontrolled association) upon which I would proceed to the following section – exactly as the players of the Glass Bead Game were called to find connections on the spot between seemingly unrelated topics.

Challenging values proper such as meaningfulness of rhetoric, preconception of form, coherence – in other words, challenging the necessity of making sense.
Hence the ironic title (a phrase scraped off the book).

Nonetheless, however 'durchkomponiert' it might have been, the piece doesn't sound so surautomatist in the end...!

Performed wonderfully by
Tille van Gastel/flute & Frederik Martens/piano
during the Festival Voorwaarts Maart/En avant Mars;
Muziekcentrum De Bijloke Gent, March 1st 2012.

You can also watch the première here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXzPOYVobWI

mit sämtlichen Inhalten und Werten unserer Kultur

Two songs after poems by C. P. Cavafy.
I. Grey/Γκρίζα II. Far away/Μακρυά

I tucked into setting these poems to music in 1998; I finalized pen to paper in early 2012 though. Don't know exactly why it took so long.
It was, inter alia, the perennial issue of how to do justice to the poem and at the same time transmute it into something else. 
Why coat something that didn't ask for clothes? 
Can you be yourself in somebody else's body?
Why grate on the constantly mangled one? 
Why sing anyway? 

The exquisite
Miranda Driessen/soprano & Katerina Konstantourou/piano.

Performed during the Kamermuziekfestival Almere.
Almere Haven, May 13th 2012.

Memory songs

Written in early 2013.

I felt I would come up with something...unheard of and unclassified, thus the oxymoron in Yiannis Ritsos' verse fitted like a glove for a title.

At the zero hour Robinson Crusoe utters words (coined by Andreas Embirikos) that are exclusively his, in harmony with the universe...

Katerina Konstantourou, celesta;
Hans van Kerckhoven, male soprano;
The Emanon Ensemble (by now Vlaams Sinfonietta) under the wizard Raf De Keninck.

A most warm and fruitful collaboration that resulted in a magnificent performance during the Festival Voorwaarts Maart/En avant Mars in Ghent.
Muziekcentrum De Bijloke, March 2nd 2013.

You can also watch the première here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuYDRh3tUok

Τόσο θετική σαν μεταφυσική/So real as though metaphysical

How shall I put it?

With an affirmation?
I can only write the music I want to write.
Or with a negation?
Nothing's forbidden as soon as I make head or tail of it.

Listen carefully!
nikosioakeim@gmail.com

(Linocut: Lidwien Dister © 2010)

nikos ioakeim

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