Hi friends,
Popping in one last time before the end of the year to share with you an early 2024 happening that I’ve been sitting on for a while:
ProMusica Detroit has commissioned me to compose a major new work
Another Shore, Another Country: a song set based on the poetry of seminal Greek-Alexandrian poet C.P. Cavafy.
Rising star baritone Constantine Novotny is premiering this piece alongside myself at the piano
San Fransisco-based flautist and director of the Greek Chamber Music Project Ellie Falaris Ganelin will perform songs by legendary Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis, alongside Constantine and myself
I’ll perform my solo piano composition Hold Tightly Your Vision of How Things Could Be (a piece which also recently got me thinking about my personal relationship to Hellenism)
And we’ll also hear some lovely chamber selections by Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, and Korngold
Why Cavafy?
If you’re familiar with Cavafy’s poetry, the answer is probably self evident — it seems that to know Cavafy is to love Cavafy. And if you’re not familiar, I’m so excited to be able to introduce you to his rare genius. As perhaps the most consequential Greek poet of the 20th century, Cavafy’s poetry embodies many things: he is enigmatic, private, urgent, personal, queer, and transgressive. He deals in the magnitude of myth, but his writing is grounded in the minutiae of the present. He is diasporic, global, and transcendent — carrying with him ghosts, ancestors, and wisdom.
But don’t take my word for it. Read Cavafy’s words yourself:
Body, remember not only how much you were loved,
not only the beds on which you lay,
but also those desires which for you
plainly glowed in the eyes,
and trembled in the voice -- and some
chance obstacle made them futile.
Now that all belongs to the past,
it is almost as if you had yielded
to those desires too -- remember,
how they glowed, in the eyes looking at you;
how they trembled in the voice, for you, remember, body.
Body, Remember (C.P. Cavafy)
Writing music to his poetry is a dream come true. It’s given me a chance to reconnect with my Greek heritage and allowed me to live in the “sumptuous mausoleum” of Cavafy’s works. I’ve been dreaming about this project for years, and telling anybody who would listen that this was one of my biggest dreams.
I can’t wait to share it with you. If you’re local, I’d really love to see you there. If you’re not local, I think it will be live streamed (definitely recorded.)
Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to you all. Wishing you all peace, health, safety, and thriving in the Earth’s next revolution.
-Michael