Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis
www.hstafylakis.com

Incinerate (2022) for percussionist & piano trio

Premiered by Dame Evelyn Glennie and the Land's End Ensemble, Karl Hirzer conducting, at Bella Concert Hall, Calgary, AB, Canada, on October 1, 2022. 

Recorded by Zana Corbett; edited & mixed by Adam Pietrykowski.

Commissioned by the Land's End Ensemble with the support of Walt & Irene DeBoni and the SOCAN Foundation. 

Program note
“The spread of civilisation may be likened to a fire; first, a feeble spark, next a flickering flame, then a mighty blaze, ever increasing in speed and power.” 
―Nikola Tesla, What Science May Achieve This Year (1910)

To be asked to compose a barnburner of a program closer for the great Dame Evelyn Glennie and the Land’s End Ensemble is unquestionably an honor – and also a challenge, one to which I rose with great joy. As a metal guitarist by training and temperament, I am inevitably inclined to try to write the most powerful, virtuosic, metal piece I can.

Incinerate takes its spark from a single groove, or rhythmic pattern, that haunted my thoughts and dreams for months. Its propulsive drive and angular, off-kilter profile insisted upon my consciousness with a persistence that I could not ignore or suppress: this had to be the heart of the piece.
 
Like Prometheus’s initial flame taking on a life of its own and leading to the spread of a civilization, this musical spark sets off tentatively at the top, presented first by the piano in abbreviated form amongst the kindling of the percussion’s steady patter. Quickly that spark cascades across the musical texture, becoming all-consuming as the piece’s narrative leads to dramatic crescendos, dreamy soundscapes, and violent breakdowns. 

My deepest thanks to Evelyn Glennie and to Vincent Ho for making this project happen and entrusting me with the metaphorical lighter with which to spark our shared conflagration.

—HS | www.hstafylakis.com

Incinerate (2022) | Evelyn Glennie & Land's End Ensemble (live)

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


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