Eight Winds

The Constantinopolitan lyre has a unique sound which, while singularly Greek and laden with cultural history and ‘Greekness’, still remains open to every contemporary approach or musical challenge. We’ve heard Sokratis Sinopoulos playing live and on recordings with Ross Daly, Eleni Karaindrou, Domna Samiou, Ara Dinkjian and Charles Lloyd, leaving his own expressive stamp on musical idioms ranging all the way from the traditional to the contemporary international repertoire. The first CD dedicated to his music was recently released by ECM; entitled "Eight Winds", the album was produced by the emblematic founder and director of that well-known German company, Manfred Eicher.

The musical winds, meaning the countless sounds, styles, genres and trends to which today’s music makers and lovers are exposed, can fuse into countless combinations spanning yesterday, today and tomorrow. The pieces on the album are partly improvised and partly notated, “black and white musical sketches which we colour differently each time”, in Sinopoulos’ own description of this unique creative process. He goes on: “In a way, the album’s title captures both our musical technique and our aesthetic approach”.

Although the music of “Eight Winds” clearly references the Greek musical tradition, it travels from there to the four corners of the earth, borne upon Sinopoulos’ Constantinopolitan lyre, Yannis Kyrimkyridis’ piano, Dimitris Tsekouras’ double bass and Dimitris Emmanouil’s percussion. Four musicians and four years of playing together. They started out reworking the Greek tradition, then moved on to focus on original themes by Sinopoulos, an experienced composer open to wide-ranging collaborations encompassing jazz and contemporary music.

Sokratis Sinopoulos was born in Athens in 1974. His musical career began with studies of traditional and Byzantine music as well as folk song. Although he studied a number of instruments, it was the Constantinopolitan lyre that won his heart at the age of 14. He has played with a number of ensembles in Greece and abroad and is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Musical Science and Art at the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki. He is the recipient of a Hellenic Ministry of Culture Young Musician Award.