Text: Στην Καπαρη και το Θυμαρι (In Caper and Thyme) by Antigoni Gaitana
Duration: 15'
This is the second composition of mine that explicitly explores the Greek immigrant’s story. The first composition, New World Sketches written in 2000, is an orchestral piece that is a more personal work. It focuses on my own family’s immigration from Greece to the United States in the early 20th Century. Against the Sun and Sky’s Blue, commissioned by and dedicated to my good friend, the very talented baritone Eleftherios Chasanidis, takes a much broader view of the immigrant experience and life in the diaspora. The text, Στην Καπαρη και το Θυμαρι (In Caper and Thyme), was written especially for this composition by the wonderful author, librettist, poet, and dramaturg Antigoni Gaitana. The text paints a beautiful, dramatic, and sometimes haunting portrait of not only the immigrant’s life in the New World but also – and importantly – the lives of those relatives left behind in Greece for whom the immigrant works and sacrifices. As the text moves back and forth between various emotions such as nostalgia, urgency, tenderness, frustration, and reverence among others, so too does the music continually shift to reflect the changing perspectives. Musically, the composition is held together by a motive in the piano presented at the very beginning of the piece and recurring throughout. The work also contains an adaptation of a composition written in the style of a traditional monophonic Byzantine chant. This chant melody was composed specifically for the final portion of Antigoni Gaitana’s text by Eleftherios’s father, Ioannis Chasanidis, who himself is a renowned chanter and expert in Byzantine music. While a fragment of the chant is presented early in the piece, the melody is fully presented as the dramatic coda to the entire composition.
In the same way that an immigrant is always tethered to family and country of origin, so too is my work tethered to colleagues residing in my ancestral homeland. The collaboration between Eleftherios, Antigoni, Ioannis, and myself – representing aesthetics from both Greece and immigrants now living in America – was very rewarding and serves as a living embodiment of Antigoni’s beautiful words.