Mediterranean Trio

The Mediterranean Trio:

This unique chamber music ensemble, composed by Cyprian saxophonist Yiannis Miralis, Greek violinist Miltiades Papastamou and Dutch/Israeli multi-keyboardist Michael Tsalka, gives a fresh perspective on the merging of tradition and modernity. It combines the postmodern and improvisatorial; encompassing classical, jazz, folk and medieval styles. Most of the pieces in the program were commissioned by the Trio, written by Greek, Cyprian and Israeli composers.

In the Geelvinck Salon on February 1 2015, they will also perform a world premiere by Gene Pritsker (New York).

The Mediterranean Trio was formed in 2014, and has given its first performance at the Gasteig Theatre in Munich last March.
At the moment, new pieces were commissioned by composers in Finland, Denmark, and the U.S.A.
The Trio recently performed at the Beethoven House in Bonn and at the European University in Nicosia.

 

Geelvinck Salon

The Mediterranean Trio will perform on Sunday 1 February 2015 at the Geelvinck Salon

 

Musicians:

Michael Tsalka: early keyboard
Keyboard performer Michael Tsalka (Netherlands/Israel) has won prizes and awards in Rome, Bayreuth, Bonn, Paris, Genoa, Calabria, Tel-Aviv, Chicago, Minneapolis, Berlin, Mexico City and Philadelphia. A versatile musician, he performs repertoire from the early Baroque to the contemporary on the modern piano, harpsichord, fortepiano, clavichord, square piano and chamber organ. Dr. Tsalka performs throughout Europe, the USA, Canada, Asia, Israel, Russia, New Zealand, Australia, and Latin America.

Recent engagements included the Boston Early Music Festival, the Forbidden City Hall in Beijing, Bellas Artes Theater in Mexico City, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, St. Denis Festival in Paris, the Gasteig in Munich, and interviews and live performances for radio stations in Hong Kong, Chicago, Buenos Aires, Berlin, Munich, St. Petersburg, Beijing, Stockholm, Brussels, Amsterdam, and Jerusalem.

Together with Anna Maria McElwain, he is the co-artistic director of the Nordic Historical Keyboard Festival in Kuopio, Finland (August, 2014). Dr. Tsalka is the Artistic Director of the Geelvinck International Fortepiano Festival (Netherlands, October 9-25, 2014), and of Fanfares and Ornaments, a mini-festival for the Dutch Embassy in Stockholm (December 2-4, 2014).

Current and future recording projects include CDs dedicated to keyboard works by J. S. Bach, D. G. Türk, Johann Baptist Vanhal, Carl Dittersdorf, Ferdinand Ries, Johannes Brahms, Viktor Ullmann and Leonardo Coral. Dr. Tsalka presented 65 master-classes and lectures in academic institutions around the world. Six of his scholarly articles have been published by musicological journals, including Clavicordio VIII (Italy), Piano Bulletin, EPTA (Netherlands), Early Keyboard Journal (USA), and Early Music America.

Dr. Tsalka studied in Israel, Germany, Italy, and the US, concluding his doctoral studies at Temple University in Philadelphia. His teachers include Lambert Orkis, Dario di Rosa, Joyce Lindorff, Sandra Mangsen and Harvey Wedeen. Michael Tsalka often collaborates with contemporary composers: In 2014-2016, he will perform 17 world premieres, which were composed for him.

 

Dr. YIANNIS MIRALIS – saxophone
Yiannis Miralis is Associate Professor of Music Education and Saxophone at European University Cyprus. He holds music education degrees from Michigan State University (PhD), Bowling Green State University (MM) and Lawrence University (BM), where he was a Fulbright scholar. His primary saxophone teachers were Steve Jordheim, John Sampen and Joe Lulloff.

As the first Cypriot classical saxophonist Miralis has given numerous solo and chamber performances in Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Lebanon, Switzerland, Spain, Serbia, Canada, and the USA, including performances at a number of national and international saxophone conferences. He was the first saxophone soloist with the Cyprus State Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Ayis Ioannides. He also appeared as soloist with the Macedonian Saxophone Quartet, the Ensemble Philharmonia under the direction of Spiros Pisinos and the Cyprus State Orchestra under the direction of Miltos Logiades and Sasha Makila. He has been a member of the Macedonian Saxophone Quartet with which they performed at the Cultural Olympiad of Athens 2004 and at a five-concert tour of Switzerland with the Orchestre de Chambre de Neuchâtel. As a member of the acclaimed Transcontinental Saxophone Quartet (TSQ) he was a prizewinner of the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) National Collegiate Chamber Music Competition and the prestigious Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. They have collaborated for a series of concerts with the Cultural Services of the Ministry of Education and Culture and the Cyprus Tourism Organization. They have also performed at the renowned Ravenna Music Festival in Italy and they appeared as soloists with the Royal Belgian Air Force Band in Minneapolis. Their first CD “Mountain Roads,” (Albany Records) received outstanding reviews. He is also a member of the Mediterranean Trio, a chamber music group with saxophone, violin and piano, with which he performed at such venues as the Beethovenhouse in Bonn.

Miralis has a genuine interest in expanding the saxophone repertoire and has commissioned numerous saxophone works by such composers as J. Harbison, B. Rands, D. Maslanka, L. Bell, R. Borel, Ph. Dymiotis, G. Karvellos, C. Stylianou, H. Sofocleous, D. Constantinides, T. Stylianou and C. Papageorgiou. He has given world premieres of a number of these works in Chicago, Appleton and Nicosia.

Yiannis has taught at the University of Cyprus, ARTE Music Academy, University of Windsor, Flint Institute of Music and Michigan State University Community Music School. From 2001-2004 he served as Assistant Professor of Saxophone and Music Education at the Lionel Hampton School of Music at the University of Idaho. He is a member of the Clarinet and Saxophone Society of Great Britain, founding member of the Hellenic Saxophone Association (HSA) and president of the Cypriot Saxophone Association Saxophonia.

 

Miltiades Papastamou, violin
Miltiades Papastamou was born into a Greek musical family in Memphis, USA, in 1966.

He studied the violin at the Hellenic Conservatory (Athens, Greece) under professor Stelios Kafantaris, at the Guildhall School of Music (London) under professor Mark Knight, and at the Manhattan School of Music (New York) under professor Albert Markov, with scholarship awards from the Greek Government, the Onassis Foundation, The Prizewinners Performers Trust, the Musigetis Foundation and the Manhattan School of Music.

The violinist won two competitions: the Artists’ International (New York, 1994) and the Greek American Music Contest (Chicago, 1995).

Mr. Papastamou soloed in venues which include the Athens Concert Hall and the Acropolis Theater (Athens), the Lincoln Centre and Carnegie (New York), the Queen Elisabeth Hall (London), the Berlin Konzerthaus, the Beethovenhaus (Bonn), and the National Estonian Hall, presenting, among other works, the world premieres of five concertos for violin and orchestra, all of which included improvised cadenzas and were dedicated to the soloist by the composers.

As a concert soloist, Mr. Papastamou performed with the Absolute Ensemble, The Bavarian Radio Symphony, the Opera of Sofia Symphony, the Athens State Symphony, the Athens Symphony, the National Radio Symphony, the Greek Radio Contemporary Music Ensemble, the Thessaloniki State Symphony, the Cyprus Symphony, and the Camerata String Orchestra among others.

The artist toured in Greece, Cyprus, Germany, Austria, UK, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Andorra, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, USA, Bolivia, Brazil, Australia, China and Japan.

A former Artist-in-Residence for New York’s Grammy nominated Absolute Ensemble, an amplified chamber symphonic group which crosses the traditional borders in music, Mr. Papastamou repertoire and music style expands from classical to contemporary, rock, ethnic and improvised music.

He recorded two personal CD’s: “Dialogue Blue”, with pianist Marcos Alexiou -a mixture of classic, cool, and ethnic jazz (CCn’C, Germany, 2000) and “West to East”, with singer-songwriter Alkinoos Ioannidis – a contemporary version of old and ancient music and songs from Cyprus (UNIVERSAL Greece, 2006).

CRITIC’S REVIEWS:

“…he has more sensitivity for the jazz sound than classical soloists such as Perlman and Mullova…What others try to achieve, he has got it from intuition.”

“Dialogue Blue” CD review,

Rondo Magazine, Germany, October 2000

“…he has removed the bounds of the conventional repertoire long ago…His pose is evident in both his classical and non classical repertoire…Going beyond traditional hermeneutics and bridging old antinomies. He brings into music fresh blood and new audiences…drawing them in a frenzied outburst of applause…”

Yiannis Svolos,

Eleftherotypia Newspaper, January 28, 1997

“He is at ease, confident, with extremely rapid fingers and a very stable bow, rich, warm and flexible sound; qualities that allow him to overcome in a mundane manner the obvious and not so obvious trappings of this (Prokofiev’s 1st Concerto) very stylized work…”

Kostas Charalambides,

Niki Newspaper, January 18, 1995

“A performance that was both musically and technically of very high order…superbly insightful and lyrical playing… an artist of enormous poise”.

James Wiersbicki,

St. Louis Post Dispatch, USA, February 1, 1994

Miltiades Papastamou vioolMiltiades Papastamou – viool
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