Petroloukas Halkias is a living legend and master of the clarinet in Greece at the age of 85 years old. After living and performing in New York for 20 years, he returned back to Greece where he created and established an extremely innovative, superb and complex, at the same time, vocabulary on the clarinet. Petroloukas Halkias is from Epirus, North West part of Greece, which is the place I was born and grew up by listening to his music live at the local celebrations.
During my studies at Berklee College of Music in Boston, his music and his way of performing the instrumental compositions of Epirus was my main passion. I dedicated three years of studying his way of playing these pieces in depth. My instrument, the laouto, has clearly an accompanying role in the Greek traditional music by playing chords and harmony supporting the clarinet players, violinists and singers. However, in this case, I started studying and performing Petroloukas’s musical lines and vocabulary, which is very unusual and innovative. Three years ago, Petroloukas came to Boston in order to perform a concert where I had the honor of playing with him. When he heard his way of playing performed on my instrument he was very impressed, as he never heard a laouto player performing his lines. He encouraged me to go further and learn more of his pieces. I did it. When I got accepted at the masters program of the prestigious Berklee Global Jazz Institute, I decided that his music and vocabulary would be my final thesis. We decided to record our first video together in December of 2016 that was presented at Berklee College of Music in June of 2017 in front of the professors of the college: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJk3Lq_nYE0 After this video recording was released, Petroloukas Halkias suggested me that the next step is to record our first duo album.
This recording of our duo album with the master Petroloukas Halkias is a new window in Greek traditional music and a new way of preserving our musical culture while expanding it. This is the first time that this music is going to be performed and recorded in a dialogue between the clarinet and the laouto where the old generation will meet the new one with music as a vehicle. Our goal is to record seven of the most demanding instrumental compositions of Epirus, Greece. It is our hope to present our album in many Greek-Epirotic communities in the United States, music universities in Greece and music colleges in Boston and New York emphasizing on the role of our traditional music nowadays. My personal goal is also not only to perform this music in concerts but also to reach, engage and educate the youth of the different Greek communities creating awareness about the importance of our traditional music which is a major part of our cultural identity and who we are.
It is our hope that this album will inspire the new generation of traditional musicians in Greece and around the world to go beyond their limits while emphasizing on the importance of finding new windows to preserve our musical treasure.