Christos Hatzis is becoming widely known as a leading figure in contemporary classical music. His music is inspired by proto-Christian spirituality, his own Byzantine musical heritage, world cultures and various non-classical-music genres including jazz, pop and world musics. He has created several works inspired by the music of the Inuit, Canada's arctic inhabitants, and these works, particularly the award-winning radio documentary Footprints in New Snow, have promoted Inuit culture around the globe. His strongest inspiration is his own religious faith, and a number of his religious works have been hailed as contemporary masterpieces by critics and audiences alike.The starting point for Hatzis' Arctic Dreams 1 (2002) is another of his works, Voices of the Land, the third part of his Footprints In New Snow (1996), a radio documentary/composition about the Inuit and their culture which the composer created in 1995 with CBC Radio producer Keith Horner. In the documentary, the foreground is occupied by the voice of Winston White, an Inuit Elder and broadcaster from Nunavut who speaks about the north and its inhabitants. In Arctic Dreams 1, this place is taken by the flute and vibraphone. Watch a performance of Christos Hatzis' Arctic Dreams 1 played by flutist Nicole Camacho and vibraphonist Clara Warnaar . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

. . . also check out Christos Hatzis in an Interview with "Your Greek News"  . . . our COMPOSER PORTRAIT for the week.

Frances White's Winter Aconites was composed in 1993; the part for tape being made at the Winham Laboratory of Princeton University. According to the composer, "Winter Aconites is the first of my "little bulb" pieces for instruments and tape. The instrument parts in these works are largely sustained tones; the tape parts are soft, chiming sounds with irregular attacks that create a space within which the instrumentalists perform. The winter aconite is a species of flowering bulb (Eranthis hyemalis). Its small, yellow, buttercup-like flowers are among the very first to appear each year; in the northeast it can bloom as early as February, while there is still snow on the ground. Like so many of the little early bulbs, winter aconites will naturalize -- they will propagate themselves and form large colonies. My piece, Winter Aconites, was commissioned by The ASCAP Foundation and the Bang On A Can Festival in memory of John Cage. Shortly after I began work on it (and before it had a title), I had a dream in which I brought a pot of winter aconite flowers to Cage. He was delighted -- he loved flowers and plants -- and later during my visit, we made sandwiches with some of the blooms (I have no idea whether the blooms of winter aconites are actually edible or not). Like the flowers in my dream, this piece is a gift for John Cage." Listen to a performance of Frances White's Winter Aconites  . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

Tony Caramia is Professor of Piano at the Eastman School of Music, where he is Director of Piano Pedagogy Studies and Coordinator of the Class Piano Program. He is a Contributing Editor for Clavier Companion Magazine and on the Editorial Committee of American Music Teacher. He has conducted numerous workshops in jazz piano for teachers at MTNA National and State Conventions; the International Association for Jazz Educators (IAJE) Teacher Training Institutes; the National Piano Teachers Institute, and the International Workshops. In addition, Caramia has lectured and performed at the European Piano Teachers Association International Conference in London, the Australian Piano Pedagogy Conference in Adelaide, and the Institute of Registered Music Teachers National Conference in New Zealand. He was a featured performer at the prestigious Rochester International Jazz Festival; the 2007, 2009, and 2011 National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy, and the 50th Anniversary of the New School for Music Study, in Princeton, NJ. He has been a guest on Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz on NPR, and has served as a judge for the American Jazz Piano Competition, sponsored by the American Pianists Association, the Crescendo Music Awards, and the Young Texas Artists Competition. Watch a performance of his Night Train Express (1985) played by "PianoNic" . . . it's this week's second FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS. And also check out our extensive list of Jazz & Blues for the Beginning Pianist, as well as Contemporary Piano Repertoire for Young Performers, and Contemporary Violin Repertoire for Young Performers.

Talking about his work The Horse with the Lavender Eye (1997), composer Stephen Hartke writes, "I've always been fascinated by non-sequiturs, and the way that sense can suddenly appear out of nonsense. I also find imagery derived from words and pictures to be a great stimulus to my musical thinking, even if the relationships between the images I seize upon are not necessarily obvious or logical. The sources for the titles of this trio are quite disparate [Music of the Left; The Servant of Two Masters; Waltzing at the Abyss; Cancel My Rumba Lesson], ranging from Carlo Goldoni to Japanese court music to the cartoonist R. Crumb, as well as 19th century Brazilian novelist Machado de Assis and Looney Tunes. A bewildering array of references, to be sure, but one that somehow whets my musical appetite." Watch a performance of Stephen Hartke's The Horse with the Lavender Eye, played by clarinetist Jerome Simas, violinist Anna Presler, and pianist Eric Zivian . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Parthenia, hailed by The New Yorker as "one of the brightest lights in New York's early-music scene," is a quartet of viols dedicated to the performance of ancient and contemporary repertoires. Parthenia has presented concerts across America, produced its own concert series in New York City, collaborates regularly with the world's foremost early music artists and ensembles, and has been featured on radio and television as well as festivals and series as wide-ranging as Music Before 1800, the Pierpont Morgan Library, Columbia University's Miller Theatre and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Yale Center for British Art, the Harriman-Jewell Series in Kansas City, and the Tage Alter Musik Festival in Regensburg, Germany. Parthenia's unique variety of performances range from its popular touring program, "When Music & Sweet Poetry Agree", a celebration of Elizabethan poetry and music with actor Paul Hecht and mezzo-soprano Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek of Anonymous 4, to the complete viol fantasies of Henry Purcell and complete instrumental works of Robert Parsons, as well as commissions and premieres of many new works by composers such as Phil Kline, Richard Einhorn, Brian Fennelly, Will Ayton, Max Lifchitz, Kristin Norderval, David Glaser, and Frances White. Read more about Parthenia and the new music they have commissioned . . . they're our FEATURED ENSEMBLE, and the subject of our FEATURED THOUGHTS & IDEAS.

Hailed as a "virtuoso" by the New York Times, "unique sound" by the Daily Star, and "engagingly flamboyant" by the L.A. Times, clarinetist and composer Kinan Azmeh is one of Syria's rising stars. His utterly distinctive sound is now fast gaining international recognition. Born in Damascus, Azmeh is a graduate of New York's Juilliard school, and the first Arab to win the premier prize at the 1997 Nicolai Rubinstein International Competition, Moscow. A Sad Morning, Every Morning (2012), Azmeh's collaboration with visual artist, Kevork Mourad is "a little prayer for home. Dedicated to all those who have fallen in Syria in the past year." Listen to Kinan Azmeh's perform his A Sad Morning, Every Morning, with visuals by Kevork Mourad . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

American composer George Tsontakis composed the movements of his Four Symphonic Quartets as follows: Other Echoes (1996), Perpetual Angelus (1992), The Dove Descending (1995), and Winter Lightning (1993). The title of each is based on one of the Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot, but not in the order of his cycle of meditative poems. Tsontakis does not attempt to set Eliot to music, either impressionistically or programmatically. In fact, he says he scarcely consulted the poems while writing his pieces. Instead, he sought to create aural landscapes that were somehow Eliotic in expanse and depth. This is much the same relationship as between Eliot's poems and the late Beethoven String Quartets, from which the poet sought to create in language a depth of meditative introspection and breadth comparable to the composer of the previous century. Whatever one may think of Eliot's craving for spiritual absolutes and his sometimes slippery mysticism, The Four Quartets are one of the most aurally sonorous and reverberant works of 20th century poetry in the English language. And any reader who has read them with absorption aloud must have found their rhythms and phrases impressed on the aural memory indelibly. The third Quartet, The Dove Descending, concerns potentiality in reserve - conservation and expectation. This is why Tsontakis says that even though it is the gentlest and most consoling movement it also hides a kind of terror. How it is able to hold potentiality together for such length without collapsing into exhaustion or erupting into climax is the mystery the ear revisits with each re-hearing [notes thanks to Don Mager/Making Time]. Listen to a performance of George Tsontakis' The Dove Descending (1995) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.