{ Haralabos Stafylakis } - Composer profile picture

{ Haralabos Stafylakis } - Composer

About Me


... Haralabos [ Harry ] Stafylakis creates, performs, and produces music; that music can be defined by several complementary, contradictory, and wholly inappropriate terms, but the ones he adheres to most often are: contemporary, classical, metal.
...... Born in Montreal, Haralabos Stafylakis began his music education at the age of four with the piano and became enthralled with the electric guitar as a teenager.
Following collegial studies in the Liberal Arts, Haralabos turned his attention to music production and audio engineering, obtaining a technical degree from the Trebas Institue in Montreal. He went on to work briefly in radio, and now focuses his efforts in this domain producing and engineering classical recordings, notably the latest album by guitarist Patrick Kearney (..Impressions..), as well as albums by the classical guitar team of Jeffrey McFadden and Andrew Zohn (Duo Spiritoso), guitarists Tariq Harb and Timothy Dobby.
Haralabos eventually honed in on the field of contemporary classical music. He holds a Music DEC in classical guitar and composition from Vanier College, where he studied classical guitar with maestro Patrick Kearney, composition with Keith Tedman. He is now completing his B.Mus. in Composition (Honours) at the McGill University Schulich School of Music. He has studied composition under Jean Lesage, Chris Paul Harman, and John Rea, and orchestration with Nicholas Gilbert, Jean Lesage, and John Rea. He is also composer-in-residence for the McGill University Saxophone Quartet, under the direction of Abe Kestenberg.
Haralabos has twice been a scholarship and fellowship student with the European American Musical Alliance composition programme at the École Normale de Musique de Paris (2007 and 2009), where he studied composition and analysis with Philip Lasser, Narcis Bonet, and Robert Beaser.
He is the recipient of numerous awards and scholarships, including the 1st Prize in the 2008 Guitare Montréal Composition Competition for his piece for guitar ensemble, ..Waves Obsidian... The piece was premiered at both McGill University and at the 2009 Montreal International Classical Guitar Festival, with the composer conducting the McGill University Guitar Ensemble.
To date, his works have been performed in Canada, the USA, and France. He is published by Les Productions D’Oz. Les Productions D'Oz
Haralabos is co-founder of ..Designs In Harmony.., an annual contemporary music concert benefitting the Montreal Children's Hospital Foundation, held in the heard of downtown Montreal, Canada. Designs In Harmony
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Member Since: 28/04/2007
Band Members: ............................................................ ......................................................

'..Ubi Sunt..'
Ubi Sunt is a modern sonnet by the Montreal-based writer, Eliana Chilakos. Her poem is based on the anonymous medieval poem, The Wanderer, which scholars date back to anywhere between the 6th and 11th centuries C.E. The Wanderer conveys the meditations of a solitary exile on his past glories as a warrior, his present hardships, and his religious faith. Eliana Chilakos’s take on this iconic work is spoken clearly through a woman’s voice – a longing and idealization of this Wanderer character’s nobility, his introspection, his quest for meaning.
The term ‘ubi sunt...’ is a reference to a literary motif. Short for “ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt?” (“where are those who were before us?”), the phrase begins many medieval poems and announces a theme of nostalgia, a longing for ‘the good old days’ or ‘the golden years’.

My composition on Ubi Sunt begins with an arpeggio figure that combines two clashing harmonies: C minor and D minor. It is first presented in the vibraphone and immediately imitated by the harp. These instruments represent the cold, wintry forest through which both the poet (Chilakos) and the Wanderer travel; their coldly metallic resonance of these instruments help to depict snow, ice, a sharp wind, dead trees. The Wanderer character (the narrative voice in the eponymous poem) then makes his entrance, represented by the solo cello with a stolid, wandering whole-tone theme that is identified with the key of C minor. The theme appears in complete form twice in the piece (at different pitch levels), but motives extracted from it permeate the work. Soon, like a cold gust of wind, the women’s choir fades in and out, announcing the presence of another mind: the Poet’s voice. As the introduction comes to an end, the first line of text (“While empty streets have been a longest friend”) is heard in a slowly rising, chromatic theme identifying with the key of D minor. This – the Poet’s – theme is related to the Wanderer’s (solo cello) through common motives that have been altered into a new identity. Throughout the piece, we hear the Poet’s and Wanderer’s themes mingling and hinting at each other, their dissonant harmonic relationship clashing as a 21st-century woman tries to reconcile her worldview with that of a medieval man. Their identifying harmonies (respectively D minor and C minor) become juxtaposed, superimposed, and interleaved in various ways until they come together at the end of the piece in a painfully insistent climax.

The world premiere was given by the Lorelei Ensemble with Beth Willer conducting at the Brookline Parish in Brookline, MA (USA) on May 3rd, 2008.

This recording is from the Canadian premiere, given on November 21, 2009, at Christ Church Cathedral in Montreal. It was conducted by Michal Novotny and features soloists Ellen Gibling (harp), Amie Watson (vibraphone), and Eli Weinberger (cello), with voices and strings from McGill University.

The piece is dedicated to the memory of Peter Chilakos (1938-2007); a wonderful man, he is greatly missed.

'..The Keats Cycle..'
Composed in the summer and fall of 2007, The Keats Cycle, Book I: Outside Looking In represents an attempt to express the pure and introspective poetry of John Keats (1795-1821) through a musical discourse that would somehow be appropriate to both Keats’s 19th-century world and the composer’s 21st-century one.

The cycle unites five posthumous poems by Keats, as well as the poet’s epitaph, in an order that creates a sense of philosophical unity and direction. The dramatic-musical interpretation of the texts traces a conceptual line from youthful idealism to self-doubt, self-realization, death, and finally to apotheosis.

The piece was originally written for baritone or bass-baritone and piano. It was premiered by bass-baritone Philippe Sly and pianist-composer Thomas Carr on February 10, 2010, at Vanier College, Montreal, Canada.

This recording was made in the MMR studio at McGill University, Montreal, engineered by Gonzalo Garcia. It features Philippe Sly (bass-baritone) and Thomas Carr (piano).

'..Waves Obsidian'..
..........This piece for guitar orchestra or quartet explores the more cinematic side of the classical guitar - a quality that is all too neglected. Composed in December 2008, ..Waves Obsidian.. took first place in the Montreal International Classical Guitar Composition competition, and is now published by Les Productions D'Oz
This recording features four members of the McGill University Guitar Ensemble: Timothy Dobby, Andrei Burdeti, Daniel Goldthwaite, and Adam Cicchillitti.

'..Scorched Earth' – Program Notes..
..........The concept of a post-apocalyptic Earth has been the source of countless stories in humanity’s history, appearing in various guises: as novels, films, scriptural/mythological passages, songs, comedies, etc. The idea that our species may meet with catastrophic extinction – whether through our own devices, through foreign (alien?) intervention, or through natural disaster – has often been associated with fear of technology and an obsession with certain moral conditions.
...........Inspired by the particular apocalyptic landscapes presented in David Lynch’s Eraserhead and Pixar’s Wall-E, this composition attempts to recreate the projected experience of witnessing – and surviving – just such a disaster. Scorched Earth begins with a series of violent events. As the proverbial smoke clears, two characters seem to emerge from the rubble, each represented by one of the live instruments (one might attribute gender characteristics to each). After a fragmentary introduction, the instruments combine to present a haunting melody, an expression of the nostalgia one might feel for the world as it once was. This memory is abruptly interrupted by the guitar in angry denial, and there ensues a passage of hypnotic dementia, in which the recorder loops an arpeggio ostinato over which the guitar solos in the manner of a raving lunatic. The instruments eventually combine in an out-of-phase dance as the world seems to reel in aftershocks from the apocalyptic events with which we began. In the calm aftermath, the two characters wander aimlessly through a radioactive wasteland until the nostalgia theme returns at the end in a more fatalistic form. The piece ends with the ‘tape’ and guitar suddenly cutting out while the recorder is left hanging on its penultimate word/note for a brief moment – and the rest, as they say, is silence.

Electric Guitar: Adam Pietrykowski (Izzy Slater from Top Johnny), Recorder: Rebecca Molinari

..........The '..3 Variations..' for solo piano are a slight departarture from my 'usual' style; in fact, they are a departure by about 125 years or so. They are my interpolations into Johannes Brahms's variations on a theme by Schumann.
Go Figure.
This performance was given at McGill University in March 2008 by the fantastic composer and pianist, Chris Goddard.

...........The images associated to the recordings on this page are creations of the multi-faceted artist Nicholas De Luca - also known as lossol............................................................ .......................................................
Influences: As a conscious being, I am influenced by every experience and thought that occurs; the following, then, reads more like a list of composers, musicians, thinkers, and writers whose work stimulates me most consistently:

Composers: Jacques Hétu, Kelly-Marie Murphy, Robert Beaser, Philip Lasser, John Corigliano, Rachmaninoff, Brahms, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Bartók, Holst, Mahler, Dvorak, Liszt, Schubert, Chopin, Beethoven, Gesualdo, Bach.
John Williams, Danny Elfman, Phillip Glass, Clint Mansell, Hans Zimmer, Alan Silvestri, Howard Shore, James Newton Howard, Nobuo Uematsu.

Bands: Symphony X, Nevermore, Spiral Architect, Opeth, Dream Theater, Control Denied, Death, Dimmu Borgir, Cradle of Filth, Ihasahn/Emperor, Zero Hour, Psychotic Waltz, Demons & Wizards, Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Porcupine Tree, Bruce Dickinson, FoH

Artists and thinkers: Nikolaos Kintzios, Frank Lloyd Wright, Ayn Rand, Frank Herbert, Dan Simmons, Will Durant, David Hume, Simon Blackburn, Nietzsche, Plato, Aristotelis, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Blake, Keats, Tim Burton, Charlie Kaufman, Darren Aronofsky.
Sounds Like: I have a fascination with Beauty - that is, the idea of 'beauty'. It must exist, because I perceive it and experience it constantly, yet it remains vague and intangible. My musical and literary output is an expression of this fascination.

My purpose in creating music is to provide myself with a mental environment within which my mind is constantly stimulated - intellectually and emotionally. In listening to any of my pieces, you're hearing exactly what _I_ find interesting and beautiful, at least to the extent of my compositional abilities at that point in time. This is my attempt at perpetual euphony...
I certainly don't always succeed, and the realm of contemporary music performance is a bit of a minefield, but this is the goal, in any case.

If you enjoy what you hear - or simply find something interesting in it - drop me a line. I'd like to know what it means to you, because it will most definitely be different from my own perspective. Isn't that beautiful?...
Record Label: INDEPENDENT
Type of Label: Unsigned