Panagiotis Liaropoulos is an Associate Professor at Berklee College of Music and the Artistic Director of The Greek Music Ensemble, a Boston-based group committed to the performance of various genres of Hellenic Music. A few weeks before the Ensemble's much anticipated live concert in Washington D.C., ‘Greece in America” had the pleasure to speak with Prof. Liaropoulos about his commitment, through his work and many other initiatives, to promoting Hellenic music in the United States.

You have recently received a Fulbright Scholar Award. Would you share with us some information about it?

It was an honor for me to receive the Fulbright Scholar Award. It is one of the most prestigious academic distinctions worldwide for scholars in the US. My activities as a Fulbright scholar include:

- The recording, videotaping, and digital archiving of instrumental and vocal Folk music of the Small Cyclades, as performed today by at least three different generations of musicians currently living there. My goal is to preserve the collective history of the islands’ rich folk music tradition through the creation of an audiovisual archive where new, highly valuable, folk music field-recordings will be stored and preserved. 
- Teaching a seminar at the Music Department of the National University of Athens on the topic of the Greek National School of Music, and
- Editing the manuscript collection of Giannis Konstantinidis (1903-1984), one of the most important Greek composers of his generation, whose work was immensely inspired by Greek traditional and folk music.

Needless to say, I can’t wait to be in Greece in the Fall and start working on these projects.
 

There exists a notion of historical continuity of Greek music. Could you share your thoughts about it?

The question of the historical continuity of Greek music is a loaded one. It seems that simple notions of “continuity” and “discontinuity” are inadequate to describe the true state of affairs regarding Greek musical tradition as well as other aspects of Greek culture. Our understanding today of Ancient, Byzantine, and more recent folk and Urban music in Greece, centers on the fact that there is no single thread of continuity running through two and a half thousand years of musical history and practice, and that there exists no collective unity or diachronic common characteristics. 

The existing research regarding expressions/representations of the concept of "tradition," as well as regarding the perception of the continuity or not of a specific cultural tradition are influenced by two factors: a) the existence or not of historical record and scientific facts, and b) the historical period that the discussion is taking place. In my view, the theory of cultural continuity is a 19th and early 20th century ideological construct that was developed when the main stake for the Greek nation was exactly the problem of unity, continuity, and the creation of a national consciousness. There is consensus among several music historians today, that what defined the evolution of Neo-Hellenic music were the ideologies that were imposed on it, in order to create and develop a modern Greek identity. It is not an exaggeration to suggest that major trends of Greek Art music of the 20th century are the result of the formation of the ideological construct of "Greekness” and its imaginary identities.
 

Composer and Poet Manos Hadjidakis (1960 Academy Award for Never on Sunday) has been a prominent figure in Greece's art and intellectual history of the 20th century. In retrospective, how important do you consider his study on rebetiko to the evolution of Greek Art-Popular music?

The cultural, intellectual, and aesthetic context Manos Hadjidakis and other composers of the period after the second World War were living in, was dominated by a fundamental demand for unification of the fragmented universe of Greek music. Hadjidakis, in his theoretical, poetical and musical work, tried to integrate Art music with the Greek popular folk and ethnic tradition. Hadjidakis though, understood tradition outside its strict “moral portrait,” that is, in its entirety, including even the most rejected elements of it (rejected politically, musically, aesthetically and ethically) and he created a new amalgamation of all these elements. Before 1948, the year when he gave his legendary lecture on rebetiko, rebetika songs had flourished in Greek cities, after the Asia Minor refugee influx in 1922, and had heavy underworld and drugs use connections and were consequently looked down upon and marginalized. Hadjidakis not only drew inspiration from rebetiko, but, among others, he proclaimed it to be the only “true” music to express Modern Greek life. He focused on the economy of expression, the deep traditional roots and the genuineness of emotion displayed in rebetika and he became an admirer of composers like Markos Vamvakaris and Vassilis Tsitsanis. According to Hadjidakis, Rebetiko was the only music able to express Greekness, with the capacity to bring together ancient, medieval‐byzantine and modern Greece. In my view, this re-establishment of rebetiko and its consequent legitimization as a popular Urban culture musical style, had both aesthetic and political imperatives, and it set the stage for the genesis of the contemporary Greek Art-popular Song.

At Berklee College of Music you have launched an inspiring summer program in Greece (Athens and Amorgos island) that focuses specifically on composition. Share with us some more info about this project.

Since the summer of 2015, I have been leading a group of Berklee students from all over the world, in a one-month Composition Summer program in Greece. We spend half of our time in Athens and the other half in Amorgos. The goal of this Summer program is the creation of an original composition for String Quartet, which is then performed, and recorded in Athens in a concert open to the general public. While intensely focusing on composing, students have the opportunity to get inspired by their immersion to Greek culture, past and present. The program also seeks to introduce students to Greece's rich historical heritage, as well as to the vibrant world of contemporary Greek culture, musical and other, offering them a unique cultural experience that will remain with them for the rest of their lives. Students end up developing really strong bonds with Greece.
 

As a Greek Composer, what are the most inspiring factors that trigger your artistic expression through music?

For the past two and a half decades, I have been composing works of several different styles and mediums. I have drawn my inspiration and creative ideas from both the Western and the Eastern musical traditions, and I have established a compositional style that is based on the dramatic interaction of diverse musical elements deriving from these traditions. This compositional approach has led me to the creation of a distinctive musical “language” founded on the sophisticated integration of Western contemporary compositional theories, techniques and processes with elements drawn from the musical legacy of Greece, Byzantium, the Balkans, and the Eastern Mediterranean, and with principles drawn from the ritualistic character of the ancient Greek drama. 

Speaking in a more personal manner, and bringing back the discussion to Manos Hadjidakis and other artists of his time, I believe that my musical personality, similarly to other composers of my generation, has been inspired and influenced, among other things, by Hadjidakis’ musical “ethos.” In this sense, I consider myself as one of the descendants of his musical / cultural legacy, not necessarily regarding the individual characteristics of our musical language, but regarding the approach to more fundamental issues and questions that a composer faces – most of them related to his/hers own “musical identity.” I still remember vividly the words of my mentor Theodore Antoniou, when he was encouraging me to develop a strong, visible/audible “identity” in my music. This identity has to do with the cultural, ethnic, and national origin of it and has been one of the major driving forces in my music.

Panagiotis Liaropoulos is a Greek composer and pianist. He was born in Athens, Greece and since 1997 he resides in Boston, Massachusetts. He holds a Doctoral Degree in Composition from Boston University where he studied with Theodore Antoniou and Lukas Foss. His compositions include music for solo instruments, various ensembles, chorus, and orchestra and his works have been performed and awarded in Europe and the United States. Dr. Liaropoulos is the recipient of the prestigious Fulbright Scholar Award (2018) and currently serves as a faculty member in the Composition Department at Berklee College of Music and the Department of Performing Arts at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He is also the founder and music director of the Greek Music Ensemble, a Boston-based collective that focuses on performing Greek art music.