From Sappho’s Lyre is a double CD of music by Constantine Caravassilis. There are five cycles for voice and various combinations of instruments, all, as the album title suggests, related to Sappho of Lesbos. The first is a setting of her Hymn to Aphrodite; the longest, extant work. It’s intended to be performed as a “spectacle” with dance, costumes etc. It’s scored for soprano (Lana Guberman-Chriss), mezzo soprano (Carla Jablonski), countertenor (Daniel Moody), narrator, chorus Jeffrey Duban), eight piece chamber ensemble (Tenth Muse Ensemble) and recorded sounds and it’s conducted by the composer. It’s sung and narrated in a mixture of Ancient Greek and English and it’s richly orchestrated. It’s complex but mostly tuneful music with quite dense textures and lots of percussive effects. It’s really a very distinct musical voice as becomes clearer as one progresses through the pieces on the records. Continue reading
From Sappho’s Lyre
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Over 200,000 women from across Asia were conscripted into sexual slavery by the Japanese army in WW2. They were euphemistically described as “comfort women”. In 2009 playwright Diana Tso met some of the survivors, heard their stories and wrote a play based on their testimony. The result was Comfort, currently playing at the Aki Studio in a production directed by William Yong with music by Constantin Caravassilis.
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