Afes for solo violin

Join me for the full premiere of AFES for solo violin, performed by violinist Gabriela Diaz on the Arthur Berger Memorial Concert, Jordan Hall, Boston, MA. More info here.

About the Work

The work Afes, Greek for touches, explores particularly fine and fragile timbral gradations that result from different nuances of touch. Throughout the work, aspects of the instrument’s tactility that are usually submerged in the normal mode of playing are given protagonistic roles: the sounds of the left hand against the fingerboard, nuances of different pressure, and the drawing of the bow hair and stick against different parts of the instrument’s body are ever-present. In this respect, Afes reverses the normal hierarchies of violin sound production, highlighting esoteric aspects of the physicality of playing and inventing a new mode of viscerality in engaging with the instrument.

Afes is dedicated to the Greek violinist and composer Tania Sikelianou, who commissioned the work.         

                                                 – Stratis Minakakis

…hypnon apo glefaron skedasei glykyn…

for solo bassoon

Join me for the premiere of …hypnon apo glefaron skedasei glykyn…, performed by Ben Roidl-Ward at the National Hellenic Museum in Chicago, IL on Sunday, January 28th, 2024, 3-5pm. The piece is dedicated to bassoonist Ben Roidl-Ward and to Dr. Stavros Vlizos, the Director of the Amyklaion Research Project, an organization I care deeply about and hope you consider supporting.

More info about the work

The paternal side of my family comes from the village of Amyclae, Laconia. Although I grew up in Athens and spent the majority of my life in the United States, my connection to Amyclae has been a formative part of my identity. The long summers of my childhood were mostly spent playing at my grandfather's veranda, looking at the Taygetos mountain to the west, and the Temple of Amyclaeus Apollo to the east. These two images formed an indelible mark in my imagination and sparked a journey of discovery into the history, art, and literature that spanned the last four millennia between the two boundaries of my childhood horizons.

The title of my piece is a text fragment of the second Partheneion (“Maiden’s Songs”) by 7th century Spartan poet Alcman. These songs refer to performances by choruses of adolescent girls during the Hyacinthia festival, which was celebrated at the temple of Amycleus Apollo. In the beginning of the text, Alcman’s narrator expresses her longing to hear a beautiful melody that “will scatter sweet sleep from the eyes” (trans. Dr. Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi.) This fragment, transliterated in the title of the piece, provided the starting point of my own work. In “…hypnon apo glefaron skedasei glykyn…”, evanescent melodic lines combine with primordial sounds to compose a texture of sensations experienced in a state between sleep and wakefulness.