Portrait: Kyriakos Kalaitzidis
The composer and musician Kyriakos Kalaitzidis, artistic director and cofounder of En Chordais, is considered one of the most important musical scholars in the field of modal secular music of the post-Byzantine era. Born in Thessaloniki, Kalaitzidis studied Byzantine music from an early age and have a PhD in Byzantine musicology at the University of Athens. In 1986 he began a study of the oud and is one of the most distinguished performers and teachers of the instrument in Mediterranean today. He has composed and performed instrumental works and music for theater and cinema, for which he has received enthusiastic reviews. His latest composition “The Musical voyages of Marco Polo” was presented in Hong Kong, commissioned by the Silk Road Art Music Festival. He has also written many articles about the evolution of the learned musical tradition and its relationship to contemporary music. In 2002-2005 he was artistic director of the MediMuses project, which is dedicated to celebrating the Mediterranean’s shared classical musical heritage. He is Artistic Director of Thessaloniki World Music Festival and Artistic Advisor of Rialto Ethnic Festival – Cyprus.