{"id":653,"date":"2007-11-02T02:26:47","date_gmt":"2007-11-02T06:26:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/s265039441.onlinehome.us\/philpaine\/?p=653"},"modified":"2018-08-15T20:23:41","modified_gmt":"2018-08-16T00:23:41","slug":"christos-hatzis%c2%a0-%e2%80%9cconstantinople%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=653","title":{"rendered":"Christos Hatzis \u201cConstantinople\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

For my eigh\u00adteen-thou\u00adsandth first lis\u00adten\u00ading, I want\u00aded to pick some\u00adthing at least a lit\u00adtle spe\u00adcial, so I chose Chris\u00adtos Hatzis\u2019 90-minute work for sopra\u00adno, mid\u00addle-east\u00adern vocal\u00adist, piano trio, and dig\u00adi\u00adtal audio. When I lis\u00adtened to it, my reac\u00adtion was \u201cwow\u201d \u2015 not a word that comes up very often, con\u00adsid\u00ader\u00ading my jad\u00aded lis\u00adten\u00ading experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

About five (maybe six) years ago, I heard a frag\u00adment of music over the radio that struck me as very beau\u00adti\u00adful. It was clear\u00adly a mod\u00adern piece, but unlike most of the mild\u00adly inter\u00adest\u00ading, but blood\u00adless items ground out by the con\u00adser\u00adva\u00adto\u00adry crowd, it was suf\u00adfused with intense emo\u00adtion. Tech\u00adni\u00adcal\u00adly, it could have been by any of the eclec\u00adtic com\u00adposers of today, but emo\u00adtion\u00adal\u00adly, it could have been by Rach\u00admani\u00adnov! What\u00adev\u00ader it was, it was pro\u00adfound\u00adly mov\u00ading. But I was inter\u00adrupt\u00aded, and didn\u2019t learn what it was or who com\u00adposed it. Two years ago, I heard anoth\u00ader piece, very sim\u00adi\u00adlar, per\u00adformed by the Gryphon Trio. It was labeled \u201cOld Pho\u00adtographs\u201d, by the Toron\u00adto com\u00adpos\u00ader Chris\u00adtos Hatzis. I liked this almost as much as the first, and it was clear\u00adly con\u00adnect\u00aded to the mys\u00adtery piece I had heard before, part of a suite or some\u00adthing. I sub\u00adse\u00adquent\u00adly found a num\u00adber of his choral pieces, all of them enjoyable.<\/span><\/p>\n

I even\u00adtu\u00adal\u00adly picked up a copy of Hatzis\u2019 Con\u00adstan\u00adtino\u00adple, not\u00aded that it was a mul\u00adti-media work on a large scale and that \u201cOld Pho\u00adtographs\u201d was one of its move\u00adments, so I set it aside to play when I hit the approach\u00ading item 18000 mark. I dis\u00adcov\u00adered that the piece that had so moved me half a decade ago was the move\u00adment enti\u00adtled \u201cOn Death and Dying\u201d. The entire work main\u00adtains an aston\u00adish\u00ading degree of involve\u00adment and inten\u00adsi\u00adty, though the first part I heard remains my favourite. I don\u2019t say this about many works: lis\u00adten to it in dark\u00adness, or in some oth\u00ader con\u00adtem\u00adpla\u00adtive set\u00adting. There is no snob\u00adbery in this work. It weaves mid\u00addle East\u00adern, Greek Ortho\u00addox, clas\u00adsi\u00adcal, jazz and even some pop com\u00adpo\u00adnents togeth\u00ader with\u00adout the \u201cwink-wink\u201d poseur atti\u00adtude that many eclec\u00adtic com\u00adposers indulge in. Every ele\u00adment there is to serve the musi\u00adcal dra\u00adma, not mere\u00adly to estab\u00adlish \u201cpost-mod\u00adern\u201d credentials.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hatzis has carved out a place as Canada\u2019s most dynam\u00adic com\u00adpos\u00ader, draw\u00ading huge crowds and stand\u00ading ova\u00adtions from an audi\u00adence as var\u00adied as his influ\u00adences. If I had been pay\u00ading more atten\u00adtion to the local con\u00adcert scene, I would have known this. Hatzis has an exten\u00adsive and well-designed web\u00adsite, here<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/u>
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For my eigh\u00ad\u00adteen-thou\u00adsandth first lis\u00adten\u00ading, I want\u00aded to pick some\u00adthing at least a lit\u00adtle spe\u00adcial, so I chose Chris\u00adtos Hatzis\u2019 90-minute work for sopra\u00adno, mid\u00ad\u00addle-east\u00ad\u00adern vocal\u00adist, piano trio, and dig\u00adi\u00adtal audio. When I lis\u00adtened to it, my reac\u00adtion was \u201cwow\u201d \u2026<\/p>\n

Read more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[947,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c-listening","category-ct-listening-2007"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=653"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8798,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653\/revisions\/8798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}