The primordial sound of the lyra meets jazz and contemporary music.
New compositions for the lyra and piano trio inspired by the Mediterranean musical traditions.
Sokratis Sinopoulos, Lyra
Yann Keerim, Piano
Dimitris Tsekouras, Bass
Dimitris Emmanouil, Drums
Children under 15 years of age - free admission.
Sokratis Sinopoulos Quartet - Metamodal
The combination of the lyra’s primordial sound with the piano trio, the obvious influences from Balkan and Mediterranean musical traditions, as well as the variety of improvisations based on both folk and jazz music, compose the special acoustic character of Sokratis Sinopoulos Quartet.
Sokratis Sinopoulos notes: “For me, the quartet is the ideal team with which I can explore new compositional ideas and new forms, while what I appreciate and enjoy the most is that we are able to keep the spark lit in such a way that each of our concerts looks like it’s the first time we’ve met to play music together”.
The quartet sets off in 2011, initially working with covers of pieces from the musical traditions of Eastern Mediterranean , and soon focused its work on original compositions by Sokratis Sinopoulos. This material was published in 2015 by Manfred Eicher from ECM records, titled “Eight Winds” (ECM 2407) and received excellent international reviews. It was followed by the second album titled “Metamodal” (ECM 2631) which was published in March 2019.
In their concerts around the world, Sokratis Sinopoulos and his partners present selections from the quartet's discography, with the special way they have through improvisation and their constant interaction with each other on stage to make every concert a unique experience.
“It’s easy to call Sinopoulos a painter, one who employs an arsenal of well-honed musicians and methodically selected scales like paints and brushes. But on the majority of his second ECM release, he seems more like a weaver. In his hands, the lyra resonates with the tonalities of instruments from China to Ireland, threading together various Eastern European, Western European, Asian, and American music traditions. It sounds fresh, but you can also hear the weight of centuries in it, if not millennia. It is hard to resist being swept up by that current.”
Sokratis Sinopoulos
Sokratis Sinopoulos is a contemporary master of the lyra. His playing is delicate and nuanced yet highly expressive, and his proficiency on the instrument has been widely acclaimed. Sinopoulos is equally comfortable crossing genre boundaries into jazz and classical, as he is staying true to folk traditions of Greece and Eastern Mediterranean.
We’ve heard him playing live and on recordings with Charles Lloyd, Jean Guihen Queyras, L’Achéron, Eleni Karaindrou and Loreena McKennitt, among others, leaving his own expressive stamp on musical idioms ranging all the way from the traditional to the contemporary international repertoire.
Born in Athens, Sokratis Sinopoulos studied classical guitar, Byzantine music and folk song before taking up the lyra at the age of 14, under the instruction of Ross Daly. Sinopoulos' remarkable talent was immediately apparent, and within a year he joined Daly's group, Labyrinth. He became highly prolific, contributing to recordings by countless musicians all around the world. Sinopoulos was awarded the Melina Mercouri award for young artists in 1999. In 2010, Sinopoulos started collaborating with American jazz musician Charles Lloyd and this experience had a profound effect on Sinopoulos, inspiring him to take his sound in new directions. It was then when he formed Sokratis Sinopoulos Quartet. In addition to his activities as a musician and composer Sokratis Sinopoulos has been involved in research and production for the Domnia Samiou Greek Folk Music Association, and he is a professor of music in the Department of Musical Science and Art at the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki.
THIS CONCERT IS MADE POSSIBLE BY THE EXCLUSIVE PARTNERSHIP AND SUPPORT OF THE HILTON HOTEL
