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📀 Ο Ήλιος της Αυκής - Sol Aurorae

📀 Colourful Emptiness

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Colourful Emptiness

Release date: July 8 2022

Vassilis Philippou - piano, compositions

Odysseas Toumazou - guitar

Savvas Lagou - violin

Marios Takoushis - recording, mixing, mastering

Johnny Avraamides - artwork, album design

Listen to Colourful Emptiness here!
&
Order your copy of the album:


Please click here to complete a contact form or send me an email at vassilis.ph@gmail.com with your address.
(In a following email, payment will be sorted) 


Album price including download links:
€10 (+ shipping)

Thank you! 
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Studio promo video

Behind each composition that comprises Colourful Emptiness, lies the need to search for a sense of wholeness and serenity within the vastness of space and stillness of time. I wish the album will transmit this feeling to its listeners. 

 

These pieces have gradually taken form over the course of the past ten years. Born as simple ideas on the piano, they naturally grew through experimentation and improvisation; inspired by my relationship with the people I love.

 

In playing and listening to those ideas, repeated cycles evolved in which I found myself wrapped with music that radiated an emotion of fulfilment.

The final compositions for piano, guitar and violin hold the simplicity and honesty of the initial inspiration and its emotions. 

 

I am deeply grateful to be accompanied by two very close friends and talented musicians; Odysseas Toumazou on guitar and Savvas Lagou on violin, who embraced the music with love and approached these compositions artfully. I am also extremely thankful to Marios Takoushis who recorded and processed the sound with tasteful sensitivity, and Johnny Avraamides for his imaginative and detailed artwork and album design. 

 

To my beloved grandfather, Nicholas. 

Sol Aurorae - Released January 2021

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Album streaming:
  • Spotify
  • Bandcamp
  • Deezer
  • Amazon
  • iTunes

Studio promo video

Album Release Online Concert

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Musicians: 

Vassilis Philippou 

Michalis Kouloumis 

Giannis Koutis 

Meir Gassenbauer 

Michalis Messios 

Guests:

Efrén López 

Zacharias Spyridakis 

Marianna Philippou

 

 

-          voice, frame dr., tombak, req

-          violin, viola

-          oud, guitars

-          ney

-          double bass 

-          kopuz

-          lyras

-          narration

 

 

Album tracks: 

  1. Aura I

  2. Sol Aurorae

  3. Dark-skinned beauty

  4. Olive tree

  5. A few words about you

  6. The letter

  7. Across the river

  8. Yearning

  9. Aura II…Amphilyke

(click on scores & lyrics to view)

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score | lyrics

score | lyrics

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score | lyrics

score | lyrics

score | lyrics

score | lyrics

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The first album of Vassilis Philippou, entitled ‘Sol Aurorae’ (dawn sun), consists of nine compositions, of which six are based on poems written by him; five in the Cypriot dialect and one in Greek. 

For the composer, the dawn sun is a continuous reminder of vitality and of inquiry; it is contact and communication with our fundamental emotions. This album emerged from a deep need to record and to share a part of his music-making, that is rooted in the culture of Cyprus – in the sounds of which she is composed and the words that portray her. It consists of compositions influenced by the musical traditions of the eastern Mediterranean, in which he has immersed himself both as a musician and as a devoted listener. The Cypriot dialect is central to these pieces, giving both meaning to the sound and shape to its expression. 

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The music of the album could be described with the term ‘Contemporary Modal Music’, which refers to the relationship and the direct connection of ancient ‘modes’; musical scales and rhythms, with a geographical interest in greater Middle East. The shaping of these musical traditions is the result of bonding and interaction between people from various cultures who met, communicated and lived together artistically.  

Aesthetically, apart from the use of language, the music creation of the album has been accomplished in an idiomatic approach on composition and performance; in its structural material (scales, rhythms, forms) and its expression distinctiveness (melodic phraseology, improvisation).    

© Odysseas Toumazou

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