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Larkos Larkou "The first kingdom here was built by gods"

POETRY OF VASILIS MICHAILIDIS SET TO MUSIC

Theses on Vasilis Michaelides and the work set to music

Vasilis Michaelides is the figure who connects the folk with the literary spirit. With his poems he touches and engages people from the traditional popular strata to the highest offices of academic education. He wrote with inconceivable fluency in the Cypriot dialect, while at the same time expressing himself in a peculiar Panhellenic (demotic and katharevousa) language. Such a multifaceted personality should be a timeless ambassador of Cyprus worldwide. However, few people know about his work; And most people even know his name!

In the work of such a special and inspiring poet there are no divisions in quality grades. Vassilis Michaelides may not have had the academic education to render some linguistic achievements, but he had the genius to invent his own means of expression and to express himself in an unprecedented way in the local idiom he transferred to his being and in the Panhellenic language which constitutes the greater part of his creation.

My personal contact with the poetry of Vasilis Michaelides motivated me to externalize experiences and sounds of many years, which led me to very deep paths of the soul. With awe and anxiety I tried to maintain a common line compositionally and orchestrationally, through the versatility of the themes and stylistic elements of the poet. Thus, the retro element of the 1900s era and the Byzantine one are mixed in the same work. The traditional and the contemporary, which is why it took the interpretation of many different schools of performers in order to present as vividly and authentically as possible the multiple morals and styles of the "only Cypriot poet" of that time.

The first contact

The idea started from a theatrical performance of the Satiriko theatre about the life of the poet, in 2004, where, taking part as a composer and performer, I came into contact with the poetic words of Vasilis Michaelides. I was fascinated by his depth in the Cypriot idiom and I was impressed by his completely unknown to me, until then, Panhellenic writing.

With my instinct as my only asset, I reverently invested with sounds and melodies the poems that were fragmentary in Makis Antonopoulos' script, creating a simple, austere environment, so that they work with a lute and a guitar, as I was invited by the director Nikos Charalambous to perform them live on stage, as an alter ego of the poet.

The project

In all my compositions, the first concern was to present poetry, to hear the word. Anyone who comes into contact with this work, I want them to feel that they have experienced this poetry and gained knowledge and entertainment from this experience. Considering that singing is a direct way of conveying messages through entertainment, I believed in this work, seeking to introduce my fellow Cypriots and Greeks everywhere and people in general, to an unknown and neglected genius figure, through my personal musical perspective.

On the way to this difficult conquest I was not alone after all. I was joined by great artists, intellectuals, scientists, politicians, technicians and true friends, who, with their faith and their admirable knowledge and interpretations, contributed to the whole effort.

The publication in book and disc (CD)

Since March 2009, immediately after the first series of musical performances entitled "Vasilis Michaelides – the other side", everything performed in the concerts was recorded in the studio, with the Cypriot performers who participated in them. Then began an unexpected progressive process of recording performances by great singers, including EGreeks, who interpreted the poems set to music in the Panhellenic language, in an effort to communicate a significant part of the great poet's work to the wider public.

The new element that clearly emerges with this double edition is the setting to music of poems in Katharevousa, demotic and a peculiar mixed language. They come to the surface and bring to life aspects of the poet's personality beyond the established and clearly masterpieces of "national" content in the Cypriot dialect, which are also presented extensively. The human face of a genius is projected, A multidimensional and multifaceted creator, who lived in difficult times, having exclusivity in his genre as a folk poet and who at the same time was a scholarly bard with deep spirituality.

I would say that every performer with the ethos of his performance represents and promotes every aspect of Vasilis Michaelides' personality: the theatricality and vividness of his speech, the Dionysian and Apollonian element, his mockery and altruism, his frustration with the barrage of unfortunate circumstances in his life, his sensuality and eroticism that pervades almost his entire work either in a purely erotic poem about a usually idealized female figure or in relation to the divine or Cyprus itself as a historical and geographical area.

My orchestrations were based on a range of acoustic instruments, such as the traditional instruments of Cyprus (violin, lute, pidkiavli, tamboutsia), the Turkish-style clarinet in G, the bow string orchestra (violins, violas, cellos), the modern instruments as a base (guitar, bass, percussion) and the Byzantinechoir, in order to contribute sonorously, in combination with the interpretations of the singers and narrators, in the musical outline of his portray by Vasilis Michaelides.

Larkos Larkou