Phos Duo: Antonis Ladopoulos - Sami Amiris

The music of Phos Duo is a journey into musical creativity through the eyes of the jazz improviser.
Musical subjects are molded freely, interchanged and turned into coherent forms with a melodic impetus, while the direct approach to silence makes the music three-dimensional and alive.

An improvisation recital that uses selected compositions by Antonis Ladopoulos and Sami Amiris along with music that comes into being on stage.

Phos Duo was created in 2008 by two of the most prominent jazz musicians in Greece, Antonis Ladopoulos and Sami Amiris.

Both had a vast experience in performing and teaching the jazz idiom and had also recorded extensively both as sidemen & leaders.

Their need for musical exploration combined with the intimacy and the freedom of expression given by small combos in improvised music, led them to form Phos Duo. “Phos” is the Greek word for “light” and the metaphor in the duo's name was indeed intended.

As Paul Klee once put it: “Light and the rational forms are locked in combat. Light sets them into motion, bends what is straight, makes parallels oval, inscribes circles in the intervals, makes the intervals active”. The music of the Phos' Duo is as transparent as to let all the minute nuances come forward and has such an inquisitive character to it, analyzing and decomposing the music much like the light does to material objects in random ways. Then, harmony and rhythm are put back together again in a slow but gradual process through improvisation, giving the form its original contour.

It's a complex soundscape creating images sometimes reminiscent of 20th century concert music, while at other times hard driving bop rhythms change the mood in unpredictable ways. Since 2008 Phos Duo has appeared at many concerts in theaters, conservatories and university halls. Their first cd entitled Phos was released and included in the September 2012 issue of "Jazz&Tzaz” magazine (Greece's premier monthly jazz magazine) along with an extensive interview of Antonis Ladopoulos and Sami Amiris. The material on the cd is all original. The “Phos” project is for both Antonis Ladopoulos and Sami Amiris an intuitive process of creativity and exploration. It's improvising at its best.