Recording from 6 September 2004; Premiere by the Doelen String Quartet and New Trombone Collective as part of the Gaudeamus Music Festival 2004.

The idea for slow wave sleep came about from research I was doing about sleep and dreaming for a piece that I wrote in 2003 (lab fly dreams). Slow-wave sleep (also known as stage 3 and 4 non-REM sleep) is characterized by brain wave patterns with a frequency of less than 4 Hz and upper brain inactivity . The mind is ‘out cold’, but the body is free to move around. Sleepwalking, sleep talking and tooth grinding often occur during slow-wave sleep. The piece is based around EEG recordings I made of myself in this state of sleep. I use the sound of the raw data of the electrical activity in the brain and filter it to create rhythmic patterns that are connected with biological rhythms that occur in sleep.

The string quartet and trombone quartet walk in and out of the space as if they are sleepwalking, their sound is processed and distributed in the space. Pulse waves, filtered noise and granular synthesis are the main materials I use in this soundscape.

The idea for the instrumentation came as request from trombonist Koen Kaptijn, to write for the same instrumentation (minus the singer) as Stravinsky’s “In Memoriam for Dylan Thomas” (1954) for the project “Do Not Go Gentle” of the New Trombone Collective. This was then my starting point and reference point during the time I was composing the piece. It seemed to make some kind of sense to write a piece about sleep as an answer to Dylan’s poem “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night”.

Slow Wave Sleep (2004)

A live hörspiel by Saskia de Jong and Yannis Kyriakides, produced by WORM / Klangendum together with the Wintertuin in Nijmegen. The inspiration source of geluidhuiden / soundskins is ventriloquism, in the literal and metaphorical sense. In a raw and hypnotic soundscape, inner and outer voices compete to gain dominance, whispering and stuttering.

Geluidhuiden/ Soundskins (with Saskia de Jong)

Selves for bass clarinet, string orchestra, live electronics by Yannis Kyriakides. Premiere performance at the Warsaw Autumn Festival 2023 performed by Gareth Davis (bass clarinet) and AUKSO Orkiestra conducted by Marek Mos.

Selves (for bass clarinet, string orchestra, live electronics)

One of three soundscape interludes nestled between Debussy's orchestral music, composed for the Boston Ballet production La Mer, choreography by Nanine Linning.

Deadzone from 'Soundscapes for La Mer'

Premiere performance of Der Komponist performed by the Philarmonie Zuidnederland, conducted by Bas Wiegers at the November Music Festival in 's-Hertogenbosch.
The piece was commissioned to celebrate Helmut Lachenmann’s 80th birthday in 2015.

"Der Komponist, finde ich, hat nicht was zu sagen. Komponist hat etwas zu machen und das was er macht wird viel mehr sagen als was er sagen könnte... sollte auch ihm selbst was sagen...."

“The composer, in my opinion, has nothing to say, the composer must make something, and whatever he makes, will say more than he himself can...it should also say something to him”

(Helmut Lachenmann)

Der Komponist (for Orchestra & electronics)

Performed by Elisabeth Smalt. 
Released on the CD Subvoice - unsounds.com/shop/physical/subvoice

Music For Viola

Ein Schemen by Yannis Kyriakides -  a recomposition of Ein Deutsches Requiem of Johannes Brahms . Nederlands Kamerkoor and Remy van Kesteren(harp), under the direction of Peter Dijkstra. Live recording from Hertz, Tivoli-Vredenburg, Utrecht. Recorded by Wijnand de Groot (21st May 2017)

Ein Schemen (live recording)

for string quartet and computer, 2014
Hezarfen Ensemble.

Toponymy is a piece for string quartet and computer, that is made up of place names in Northern Cyprus that have both a Turkish and Greek name. These names are encoded in the music and heard simultaneously in the soundtrack, spoken by computer voices, Greek from one speaker, Turkish from the other. These names refer to villages or towns that were once inhabited by either one of the ethnic communities or were bi-communal, but have since the war in 1974, changed population profile and adopted a new name. Also encoded in the music, in the use of the noise bands in the computer as an indicator of whether the village was originally Greek, Turkish or bi-communal.

Toponymy

performed by Maryrozemarie (Mary Oliver, Rozemarie Heggem).
Full recording available on UNSOUNDS 21U: Antichamber

As They Step

from Affectio performed by Ayelet Harpaz (voice), Anne Faulbourn (harpsichord), Tatiana Koleva (percussion)
From the performance: Spinoza
and CD: The Thing Like Us (UNSOUNDS 11U)

Affectio [excerpt]

by Yannis Kyriakides
performed by Zephyr quartet.
released on UNSOUNDS 21U: Antichamber

Antichamber [excerpt]

by Yannis Kyriakides
performed by Anne La Berge (flute), Elisabeth Smalt (viola), Tatiana Koleva (vibraphone), Yannis Kyriakides (live electronics)
from CD Antichamber released on UNSOUNDS

Atopia [excerpt]

by Yannis Kyriakides performed by Icebreaker Ensemble (UK) 
composed in 1992 and released on CD: Cranial Pavement, Cantaloupe CA21024


Blindspot (excerpt)

by Yannis Kyriakides
for piano and soundtrack
performed by Reinier van Houdt


Legerdemain

by Yannis Kyriakides and Andy Moor from original 'Minores Manes' by
Stratos Pajiomdsis
as released on UNSOUNDS CD: Rebetika

Minores

by Yannis Kyriakides
performed by the Seattle Chamber Players with Tomoko Mukaiyama

Satellites (part12)

by Yannis Kyriakides
performed by Doelen Quartet and New Trombone Collective

Slow Wave Sleep [excerpt]

by Yannis Kyriakides
performed by Ayelet Harpaz, Stephie Buttrich (voices), Marion von Tilzer (piano),
Yannis Kyriakides (electronics)
from UNSOUNDS CD 01U

a conSPIracy cantata [excerpt from part 6]

by Yannis Kyriakides
performed by the Exmoor Singers of London, directed by James Jarvis.

by Yannis Kyriakides
Don't Buy Sugar / You're my Sugar 
performed by the Maarten Altena Ensemble and recorded on X-OR records

Don't Buy Sugar [excerpt]

by Yannis Kyriakides
performed by Tomoko Mukaiyama and ASKO ensemble
live recording at Paradiso, Amsterdam

Tinkling

by Yannis Kyriakides
part 1 from 'Wordless' suite
CD released on UNSOUNDS

Wordless (Pensioner_0496)

by Yannis Kyriakides
sung by Ayelet Harpaz

Fire of Myself

by Yannis Kyriakides
performed by the Roentgen Connection

Discophaisto [excerpt]

by Yannis Kyriakides
performed by Claron McFadden and the David Kweksilber Big Band
live at the Bimhuis, Amsterdam

Gershwin Baby [excerpt]

by Yannis Kyriakides
midi sketch of solo marimba piece Bee Cult

Bee Cult [sketch]

From the CD of La Mode by Tomoko Mukaiyama & Yannis Kyriakides 
https://yanniskyriakides.bandcamp.com/album/la-mode
Composition & Electronics: Yannis Kyriakides, PIano: Tomoko Mukaiyama. Opened the Metropolitan opera house in Taichung city, Taiwan, designed by Japanese architecture firm Toyo Ito + Associates.

La Mode

La Mode I: Catwalk

Ode to Man was written for 4 female voices (& electronics) from the vocal group Silbersee, for their production Homo Instrumentalis. It is based on the text from the chorus of Antigone by Sophocles (line 332-375) known as The Ode to Man. 

The music is set to the original Greek text, but my personal favourite translation is this one by Anne Carson:

Many terribly quiet customers exist but none more
terribly quiet than Man:
his footsteps pass so perilously soft across the sea
in marble winter,
up the stiff blue waves and every Tuesday
down he grinds the unastonishable earth
with horse and shatter.

Shatters too the cheeks of birds and traps them in his forest headlights,
salty silvers roll into his net, he weaves it just for that,
this terribly quiet customer.
He dooms
animals and mountains technically,
by yoke he makes the bull bend, the horse to its knees.

And utterance and thought as clear as complicated air and
moods that make a city moral, these he taught himself.
The snowy cold he knows to flee
and every human exigency crackles as he plugs it in:
every outlet works but
one.
Death stays dark.

Death he cannot doom.
   Fabrications notwithstanding.
Evil, good, laws, gods,
honest oath taking notwithstanding.
Hilarious in his high city
you see him cantering just as he please,
the lava up to here.

Ode to Man

An improvisation made in my studio in April 2020 on the modular synth. It is largely based on ethnographic cylinder recordings from the Kodaly archive, made in April 1914. These small fragments are sampled with oscillators controlling the grain, loop size and time points of the samples. Pitch and envelope followers on the samples in turn control these oscillators and other physically modelled sounds. Yannis Kyriakides, Amsterdam, April 2020.

A Ghost Of Spring

One Hundred Years for voices, orchestra and electronics (2020)by 
Yannis Kyriakides

Commissioned by Gaudeamus to celebrate its 75th anniversary 
Premiere 19th September 2020 by the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra & Silbersee conducted by
Karina Canellakis, NTR ZaterdagMatinee, Concertgebouw, Amsterdam. Live broadcast and recording by NPO radio 4.

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