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about the music

Konstantinos Karathanasis:

"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 seventh player in the ensemble, and after a certain point it develops in to an all-inclusive ocean, where the instruments swim, 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.

"The piece was first presented in playback during the 2005 International Computer Music Conference in Barcelona, Spain, and received its live premiere in November of 2005 at the Imagine2 Electroacoustic Music Festival at the University of Memphis."

about the composer		back to top

Konstantinos Karathansis (b. 1975) is an electroacoustic composer who draws inspiration from various sources: the poetry of Rumi, Pablo Neruda, and Federico García Lorca; the cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky, Tom Tykwer, and Krzysztof Kieslowski; and mysticism, Eastern philosophy, and the depth psychology of Carl Jung. His compositional influences include Francis Dhomont, Helmut Lachenmann, Luigi Nono, Bernard Parmegiani, and Salvatore Sciarrino.

A native of Athens, Greence, Karathanasis studied at the National Conservatory of Athens and Ionian University in Corfu. In 1999 he travelled to Buffalo, New York to study composition with Cort Lippe and David Felder as a Presidential Fellow at the University at Buffalo. He served as visiting assistant professor at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York, and in 2006 was appointed assistant professor of composition and music technology at the University of Oklahoma.

Karathanasis' electroacoustic works have been performed throughout the world at International Computer Music Conferences in Barcelona, Miami, and Singapore; Australasian Computer Music Conference in Brisbane, Australia; Bienal Internacional de Música Electroacústica in São Paulo, Brazil; Festival International "SYNTHESE" in Bourges, France; and Seoul International Computer Music Festival in South Korea. He received first prize in the 2002 Student Commission Competition of the Society for Electroacoustic Music in United States (SEAMUS), and a special young composer prize at the 2003 International Electroacoustic Music Composition Competition Musica Nova in Prague, Czech Republic. Recordings of Karathanasis' music have been released by ICMA, Ionian University, Musica Nova, and SEAMUS.

related websites
http://music.ou.edu/bios/bio_kostas.htm

about the performers		back to top

The performers on this recording were a collection of professional musicians and graduate students in Buffalo, New York assembled by the composer.