ephatha / open up
2003
There are so many and so little a composer/creator can say for his/her work. I will not challenge you with the many. Rhythm always gives me the drive for continuation in this work. I utilize important elements from my Greek heritage and personal elements as well when it comes to form. That is why my music takes its shape and develops itself via a trip. It starts with optimism, moves to an impulse and dizziness of the moment and souls nostalgia, the simplicity of the youth, the pain and salvation of Death and again returns at this optimistic feeling that was lost for a while.
The procedure of composing is very simple when I walk through it step by step. Everything is so clear, ceremonial, related like a pray. Whatever I offered I should receive back. Nothing more.
This work is for my mothers memory that returned to meet my father in a better place.
There some people brought to him a man who was deaf and could hardly talk, and they begged him to place his hand on the man. After he took him aside, away from the crowd, Jesus put his fingers into the man's ears. Then he spit and touched the man's tongue. He looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh said to him, "Ephatha!" (which means, "Be opened!" ). At this, the man's ears were opened, his tongue was loosened and he began to speak plainly.
St. Mark 7, 32-35
This work of mine is a scream of faith. It is the Impossible, possible. It is the needed effort for the realization of something. It is the thought behind every success and every failure. It is the extra step we took and succeeded or the one we didnt take and failed. In all my works since 1992 the aspect of Death is the primarily energy and initiative energy in my musical thought.
In Epphatha I try to offer to faith the first step and to myself a chance for a salvation in this level of creation. The title of the work comes to me from the St. Marks Gospel 7, 32-35 from where I took most of the realization of the work.
Of course as a western educated composer I used material I found in front of me in those years of exploration in the music world and I didnt conceive the work under a tree, an image that most of us maybe had for creators over the years.