Symbol of Faith is an arrangement for solo baritone, 2-3 male vocalists and piano of his orchestral work Credo.
Credo is the fulfillment of a life-long dream: to have the opportunity to musically collaborate with George Dalaras, one of my favorite Greek pop singers, on a classical composition written especially for his voice. Arguably, George Dalaras is the one Greek artist whose singing career is inexorably connected with the history of Greece of the past 40 years. I first heard his songs while still a young man growing up in Greece during the repressive junta years and have kept in touch with his music for many years since. It is not an exaggeration to say that for all this time I had almost constantly the voice of Dalaras in my ears. During the sixties and seventies, most of Greece's folk/pop songwriters wrote their best songs for him. Ten years later, Dalaras pioneered all the new trends in Greek popular music, reaching at his peak stadium attendances of as many as 160,000 people for a single event and over 13,000,000 album sales, an all-time record for Greek music unsurpassed before or since. His musical tastes have encompassed various genres, such as rebetiko (Greek Asia-Minor blues), folk, pop, Latin, and rock, resulting in collaborations with internationally renowned artists, such as Sting, Paco de Lucia, Al Di Meola and others, frequent north American and European tours and, more recently, prestigious invitations by international luminaries such as Nelson Mandela, who asked Dalaras to sing for his birthday in South Africa, and His Grace, the Patriarch of Constantinople.
Having been introduced by our mutual friend, NY-based producer Kosta Kantzoglou, George Dalaras and I have known each other for quite a few years but our worlds were so geographically and stylistically different that the possibility for collaboration did not present itself until 2009. Kosta was asked by the Archangel Michael Greek Orthodox Church at Roslyn Heights, New York, to produce a concert at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center in November 2010 and he, in turn, asked George Dalaras and me to be the featured artists. I asked CityMusic Cleveland, a wonderful young orchestra with whom I had worked in the fall of 2009 on a different project to join us in New York City for this event. The concert, a fundraiser for a Greek Orthodox cause, connected us thematically: most of my music of the past three decades is based on religious themes and George, a supporter of Hellenic causes around the world, has in recent years publicly acknowledged religion as a strong contributor to Greek identity, particularly in North America. My own approach to my faith is trans-national, albeit deeply Christian, and seeks to define a wider human identity but, having been born and raised in Greece, I am deeply aware of the struggles of that country and its people which are continuing in our days. I thought, therefore, that the Nicene Creed could serve as a connecting thread between our individual journeys as artists and human beings.
I cannot think of any other text in the past two millennia which has been more influential in the forming and determining of European intellectual history than the Nicene Creed. It has defined the Christian faith from A.D. 325 to our days; wars were fought over it; heresies and schisms caused its wording or were caused by it; it has been the epicenter – the ground zero – of a belief system which has shaken the world and has indelibly influenced western civilization as we understand it. It is a difficult text to set to music: its language is more legalistic than poetic and it is meant to be spoken by a congregation of faithful, not sung. There are several settings of it within the musical traditions of western Christianity and that of several Eastern churches but, to the best of my knowledge, there are very few settings in the original Greek rarely heard (if at all) in Greece so this setting will likely have a startling effect on Greek listeners. The Creed and the Lord's Prayer are probably the two texts that every Christian knows by heart, and can follow them easily in a sung rendition. It is also a text which has been invested with such pronounced psychological and emotional energy over the centuries that, in a proper setting, it would feel right when set to music for, in the minds and hearts of the faithful, it already possesses poetic overtones. In composing the music, I was constantly mindful of the profound meaning and theological significance of the text but also of George Dalaras' idiosyncratic vocal timbre and technique which have defined him as a singer. Almost the entire vocal line (its melodic turns, ornamentation and cadence) feels as if it is something right out of Dalaras' existing repertory – this is how deeply his voice has permeated my ears and understanding of Greek rebetiko song. I wanted to write this composition for him and, in a sense, offer back to him the songs that he has given us (my generation) all these years. The vocal writing is prosodic, following closely the rhythmic and melodic profile of the spoken text and its syntax, in a style known in Greece as entechno laiko ("art popular"). The rhythmic pulse, notwithstanding frequent departures, is in the easily recognizable 9/2 meter of zeibekiko, a popular dance in Greece. Conversely, the orchestral writing travels a great distance, constantly commenting on the vocal writing but often juxtaposing on it a more ecumenical sound which crosses borders, genres and theological divisions.
