NEW ROCHELLE, NY –“From the Byzantine ‘Echos’ to the Ottoman ‘Makam’” will be the featured concert in the Ossie Davis Theater of the New Rochelle Public Library on Sunday, April 3rd, from 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm. Byzantine chant and Ottoman Classical music will be performed by Eleftherios Eleftheriadis and Georgios Theodoridis, accompanied by an ensemble of instrumentalists. The free concert is made possible by the Axion Estin Foundation , with funding from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
The original idea of juxtaposing Byzantine Chant and Ottoman Classical Music was first realized at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2012. “From the Byzantine ‘Echos’ to the Ottoman ‘Makam’” will pay tribute to the genius of Peter the Peloponnesian, the 18th century Greek musician of Constantinople (modern day Istanbul, Turkey) who is credited with preserving the centuries-old musical traditions of the Eastern Christian Church, while serving at the Sultan’s palace as the top imperial musician. Petros was the quintessential “musical” figure idolized by Greeks and Ottomans alike for his service as a teacher, interpreter, and transcriber of both musical traditions. An anecdotal account of Petros’ own funeral is the focal point of the concert: Both the Greek Patriarch and Petros’ Ottoman music students creatively observed the funeral ceremony in parallel. From that point forward the concert will focus on Greek folk music exploring the theme of immigration ranging from voluntary migration in pursuit of a better life to the forced uprooting as in the case of the current refugee crisis. Contemporary images (November 2015) from the Greek island of Lesvos will be shared with the audience showing an outdoor funeral service offered by local Greek Bishops commemorating all the unknown refugee mothers and children who were drowned in their attempt to cross the Aegean sea. As in the unprecedented case of Petros’ funeral, Syrian refugees performed in Lesvos their own funeral service in Arabic, next to their Greek counterparts.