This morning the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts released its latest OMNI on-Location video. Some readers may recall that the last release, which took place a little over a month ago, presented a song by Sergio Assad entitled “Fieto o mar” (like the sea), which he dedicated to the Greek guitarist Dimitris Soukaras. Today’s release features another Greek guitarist, Sotiris Athanasiou.
Screen shot from the newly released YouTube video of guitarist Sotiris Athanasiou playing “Athena and Ares”
The performance is a short one, not much longer than two minutes. The title of the selection is “Athena and Ares,” a reflection on Greek mythology composed by Benoit Mussard. Mussard is, himself, a guitarist; and this is far from the only work of his to have been inspired by the ancient Greek pantheon. Nevertheless, the music itself has a decidedly contemporary style that reminded me of much of the music I had encountered when I stopped off in Greece to the way back to Israel, where I was teaching computer science at the Technion in Haifa. (I was in the United States to deliver a paper entitled “Music Theory—A Programming Linguistic Approach” at the annual conference of the Association for Computing Machinery.)
What stuck me most about Athanasiou’s composition was the way in which it required percussive effects, as well as the more familiar finger-work, from the guitarist. Whether the composer had decided to depict Ares through those effects in contrast to the more lyrical passages for Athena is left for the individual listener to decide! Athanasiou had clearly conceived a composition of contrasts, and he delivered those contrasts with engaging clarity. With any luck, I shall have an opportunity to experience more of Mussard’s Greek explorations.
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