Institute for Mediterranean Studies - FORTH has published the musical publication "Smyrna 1875 - Impressions Of Melodies"
This is a unique trilingual musical publication (in Greek, English and French) by the Institute for Mediterranean Studies of the Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (IMS- FORTH), with the music ensemble Checkmate in Two Flats. The band members, Dimitrios Varelopoulos, Alexandros Kapsokavadis, Spyridoula Baka, Ioannis Tsioulakis, Kostis Tsioulakis, Yiorgos Kontogiannis and Petros Lamprides, put forth a novel reading of the songs that French composer L.A. Bourgault Ducoudray transcribed in 1875 in Smyrna and Athens, and later published in the book Trente mélodies populaires de Grèce & d’ Orient. In the context of the centenary from the Asia Minor Catastrophe, they seek in those Smyrna songs the Impressions that can be inscribed in the sensibilities of a group of musicians who live and create in 2022, in different countries, in the midst of a pandemic, new wars and new refugee crises, 100 years after the refugee crisis of 1922. They write words and record music, exploring, individually and collectively, the possibilities of a contemporary approach to musical sound with reference to questions that also relate to their own academic interests. The CD comprises 12 select songs from the Smyrna transcriptions, rearranged, orchestrated and performed by Checkmate in Two Flats.
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