yannis kyriakides

Hypnokaséta (2020-2021) is a continous set of 16 pieces for string quartet, improviser (playing cassettes and any instrument) and live electronics. The source material is based on dreams that I had during the first few months of lockdown, April-June 2020. Accounts of these dreams are encoded in the music that is played by the quartet and also encrypted in the sound textures that surround this. The pieces alternate between quartet as the foreground and electronic interludes, where solos or duos underpin the soundscape. The title of the piece (Greek for ‘sleep-cassette’) refers to a theory of dreams proposed by Daniel Dennett, that says that dreams are loaded into consciousness like a cassette tape during the night and played just before waking. The piece was first performed under the name 'Cassettes' by Quatuor Bozzini and Andy Moor in October 2022, in Montreal and other places around Quebec.

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Amiandos (or Amiantos) is the name of the asbestos mine in the Troodos mountains in Cyprus, operating between 1904 and 1988. It was also the birthplace of my father — my grandfather worked there as an electrical engineer. A village and community grew around the mine as it expanded to become one of the largest asbestos producers in Europe, producing in its history about 1 million tons. The gradual realisation through the 20th century of the darker side of asbestos has been well documented. Even though millions have suffered and died from cancers caused by the inhalation of the thin fibres of the rock, asbestos continues to be mined in many parts of the world, regardless of the safety of its workers. A beautiful and dangerous rock. I remember as a child receiving a box of stones of Cyprus for my birthday and being taken aback by the splendour of the chrysotile rock, the type of asbestos found in Amiandos. The seven pieces in this album relate to some strands of history of Amiandos.

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La Mode is a concert installation work conceived and performed by Tomoko Mukaiyama with music composed by Yannis Kyriakides. It was first performed in 2016 at the opening of the National Theatre in Taichung, Taiwan, and involved a close collaboration with the architect of that iconic building Toyo Ito. The CD of La Mode recorded four years later, in June 2020, in the midst of the first Covid-19 lockdown, marks the first time the music was re-interpreted since the premiere. It was sparked off by a new version of the music, that was made into a live-stream concert in the Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam with the collaboration of cinematographer Reinier van Brummelen.

La Mode on Bandcamp

Face is a multimedia composition for voice, violin, piano, recorders, live electronics and video, based around the use of facial and emotion recognition software. Face plays with how we see ourselves and each other by changing the familiar surface of the face with other representations, alternative portraits in image and sound. Face is the result of a search for poetry and beauty that, as so often, hides behind a questionable development. The piece navigates between the problematic practice of anthropometry in the early 20th century to the current use of emotional face recognition software, an ever-present aspect of our lives where the reading of the face is completely automated - stripped of ambiguity and removed from human intuitive perception.

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In 2017 Andy Moor and Yannis Kyriakides were invited to participate in Xavier Veilhan’s ‘Studio Venezia’ at the French pavilion for the 57th Venice Art Biennale. This was a space where a series of musicians were in residence throughout the six month duration of the festival, recording and performing there in an open environment. The two musicians had access to a variety of instruments and machines including Moog, Buchla and Vermona synths which were used for some of the recordings. The unusual situation here was that they were working in a studio, experimenting, trying out ideas while at the same time being a part of an ongoing art installation.

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Once There Was is a suite of pieces based on traditional nursery rhymes. Many of these rhymes have dark and historically significant themes, yet are used to foster emotion and cultivate language. In some cases, rhymes were censored to mask the political message that lie within.

The Collectors on TRPTK

Subvoice is a collection of nine recent works by composer Yannis Kyriakides for various ensembles ranging from single instrument to large orchestra, that represent an investigation into ideas of voice and language. The music is built on traces of voices and texts that seem to speak or sing in an intimate form of dialogue, either as text that is directly encoded into music, or in traces of voice that are embedded and dissolved into the musical fabric.

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Lunch Music is a set of pieces for voices, percussion and live electronics, inspired by the 1959 book Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. On this recording the virtuosity of percussionists Slagwerk Den Haag (recently heard on the recording of Michael Gordon’s Timber) and contemporary vocal specialists of Silbersee are embedded in a rich sonic environment of electronics, modulated voices, grinding pulses and hallucinatory noises.

The effect of one voice speaking through another, of mediumship and possession, is a central musical concept in the piece, and it is manifested in the way the live electronics, controlled by the percussionists, modulates the voices of the singers and the various fragments of samples heard: from the voice of Burroughs to snippets of 50s pop songs.

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“A Life Is A Billion Heartbeats” continues Yannis Kyriakides + Andy Moor's exploration and mining of the rich and mysterious terrain of Greek rebetika music from the early 20th century. In this new set of songs they have revisited similar elements but with a new approach in the combination and juxtaposition of rebetika elements with their own distinct sonic explorations. The music travels from more composed and arranged renditions of the old tunes, to completely improvised pieces that try to capture a sense of the gesture and tonalities of the source music, albeit with a contemporary edge.

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In “Resorts & Ruins”, a set of three recent sound works, Kyriakides deals with several themes in both a physical and narrative sense. All the pieces use source material that highlight specific vocal traditions, namely Turkish pop music, Cypriot epic song, and Baroque opera, but they also all make extensive use of other forms of speech and vocal acts. In “Varosha (Disco Debris)”, a narrating voice is our tour-guide in the ruins of the Cypriot ghost town Varosha. “The 100 Words” is made up entirely of voices synthesized with electronic sounds. Commissioned and created at the GRM studios in Paris. “Covertures” consists of walls of sound made up from frozen moments from opera convoluted with the sounds and voices of crowds.

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First DVD release of music text films series that will eventually comprise about 15 pieces. “Dreams” brings together 3 pieces recorded by Ensemble MAE and ASKO : dreams of the blind, the arrest and subliminal: The Lucretian Picnic.

dreams of the blind was awarded the Willem Pijper Prijs by the Johan Wagenaar Stichting. The prize was given on December 10th 2011 at the Korzo theatre in Den Haag, as part of the Dag in de Branding.

Limited edition release of 250.

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Mazagran releases CD of airfields (trojan light) from the live performance by musikFabrik made in Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam in Feb 2011. This is a 12 part suite for ensemble and electronics.

This work has been nominated for the Toonzetters Prize 2012.

Mazagran mz005.

This 2-CD set collects ten pieces by Yannis Kyriakides composed between the late-1990s and the present, spanning some thirteen years of work. It offers a view of a world that is rich both musically and conceptually. These compositions are small-scale in terms of the number of performers required, but large and imposing in sonority, idea, and emotional intensity. For want of a better term we could call them chamber music: the chamber music of a new century.

Antichamber won a Qwartz electronic music award in 2011.

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Andy Moor (guitar) and Yannis Kyriakides (computer) lovingly deconstruct and reassemble their favourite rebetika music in a set of 9 pieces that encompass a wide scope of musical vision. This is an unusual and original take on the so called ‘blues’ music of the Greek diaspora of the early 20th century. Originally recorded and released as an exclusive download for Seven Things, this live set recorded in Glasgow's CCA in 2006 is a re-release on CD with two additional tracks.

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“Folia” is the third CD collaboration of Andy Moor (guitar) and Yannis Kyriakides (computer) created in 2009 and performed in numerous festivals and concerts that year. It is an epic reworking of the famous tune from the 16th and 17th centuries called “La Folia”. Fusing influences from this and South American folk music, they create a unique sound world of slowly evolving soundscapes, fluctuating beats, and rich oscillating harmonies.

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Trumpet virtuoso Marco Blaauw, known for his pioneering performances of contemporary classical music has been working with composer and sound improviser Yannis Kyriakides in numerous projects including a multi-media perfomance “co-inc”, and several projects for the ensemble musikFabrik in Cologne. “Play Robot Dream” is a set of improvisations for trumpet(s) and computer. At times playful, at times meditative, they fuse a haunting melodic tendency with a provocative mix of drum machines and analogue electronic sounds.

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Electronic suite of 12 portraits based on interviews from the BBOT-BNA archives.

Recieved honorary mention in ARS electronics 2006.

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Tido Visser (voice), Marc Reichow (piano), Nikos Veliotis (cello), and Seamus Cater, Mara Tomanek, Mark Morse, Ayelet Harpaz (additional speech).

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Electronic music theatre piece based on Spinoza performed by the Veenfabriek. Ayelet Harpaz (voice) , Anne Falbourn (hpschd), Tatiana Koleva (percussion), Carola Arons and Bert Luppes (actors), directed by Paul Koek.

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Improvised duos by Andy Moor (guitar) and Yannis Kyriakides (live electronics). The opening chapter in a blossoming collaborative partnership.

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The CD features 3 works performed by Ayelet Harpaz, Stephie Buttrich and Marion von Tilzer.

• a conSPIracy cantata (45′) 2 voices, piano, radio, electronics
• hYDAtorizon (15′) piano, sine waves
• tetTIX (14′) voice, insect sounds, drum machine

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CD featuring works by 6 composers for the Maarten Altena Ensemble including Yannis Kyriakides' don't buy sugar/you're my sugar.

X-OR Records

Turkish classical and gregorian chant performed in an eastern style by the Al Farabi Ensemble of Wouter Sweets. Kyriakides appears as an Ud player. Released on Pan Records (PAN2073) in 2001.

Collected European festival recordings made between July and November 1997 by this all-star elec(tron)ic improvising ensemble led by AMM's resident 'flat guitarist' Keith Rowe. Also featured: Mego's Christian Fennesz (sampler) and Peter 'Pita' Rehberg (computer), Gert-Jan Prins (electronics, radio), Phil Durrant (violin, electronics), Jerome Noetinger (electronics, tapes), Richard Barnett (computer, sampler), Justin Bennett (analogue synthesizer), Cor Fuhler (piano, electronics), Yannis Kyrakides (violin, electronics), and Thomas Lehn (analogue synthesizers).

32 compositions for music box by Dutch composers, including mobylette by Kyriakides.(EW 9413); Label/Year: VPRO, 1994.