"Once upon a time..." Musical fairytales for narrator and string orchestra

This year’s "Unknown Hellenism" cycle focuses not on some form of high art or literary creativity, but on an art-form brought into being by anonymous Greeks down the centuries.

Though traditional Greek fairytales have been recorded and published in various versions, they aren’t nearly as well-known as the tales of Hans Christian Andersen or the Brothers Grimm. The same is true of their heroes: the homegrown Greek thumbling, who’s the size of a chickpea, isn’t as well known as Tom Thumb, for instance. And yet folk tales can draw their listeners into impressive imaginary worlds where magic objects are a fact of life, the elements can take on human form, animals can speak, wild beasts, dragons and other fantastic creatures come to life, and people can understand the language of the animals or change their form at will; worlds which are both surreal and describe a harsh reality.

It is this aspect of Greek folk culture that the Hellenic Project chose to focus on: the creations of the storytellers whose tales have been handed down from mouth to mouth, from grandmother to grandchild, from generation to generation and from place to place.