From now through Tuesday, August 14th when LIVE IN GREECE: From Constantinople to California is released, you can stream Track 15: First Ode of the Canon by Michael Adamis in its entirety via SoundCloud! Take a listen today!
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Unique on this recording as the only composition for women’s voices alone, this selection is an arrangement of a beloved chant from the Great Supplicatory Service of the Mother of God. Set in three parts by Athenian composer Michael Adamis (b. 1929), this fairly straightforward harmonization of the first ode of the canon is drawn from the office sung during the fast of the first two weeks of August, just prior to the feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God on 15 August.
Two other selections by Adamis are featured on this disc, including the larger-scale work “Radiant Cloud,” a concert piece written specially for Cappella Romana, based on two hymns for the feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord on 6 August. In his transformation of the traditional melodies, Adamis sonically evokes through his superimposition of highly ornamented melodic lines both the divine radiance on Tabor—itself an important concept for the contemplative tradition of hesychasm (‘quietude’)—and the world of Greek cantorial practice.
ABOUT MICHAEL ADAMIS: Having served in his youth as one of the last directors of the Royal Chapel choir, Michael Adamis (b. 1929) has bridged the worlds of Byzantine and Western music throughout his distinguished career. After studying in university both theology and music, he subsequently taught Byzantine music at the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Brookline, Massachusetts, founded the first electronic music studio in Athens, published scholarly studies of Byzantine chant (including the first discussion of polyphony by Gazes), and for ten years (1975–85) served as president of the Greek Section of the International Society for Contemporary Music. In his mature works Adamis eschews Western functional harmony for a free approach to polyphony in which individual melodic lines owe much to the modes and ornamentation of Byzantine chant and Greek folk music.
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