Evis Sammoutis

L'Oracle De Nicosia

Evis Sammoutis ' L'Oracle De Nicosia for Soprano and Double Bass. Composed and published 2016. Duration c. 3 minutes. The Oracle of Nicosia is the first of several works planned for the 2016 / 17 seasons that are directly inspired by particular features of my homeland Cyprus and my hometown of Nicosia, more specifically. The composition is written for and dedicated to two exceptional musicians and exponents of new music, Double Bassist Uli Fussenegger and Soprano Hélène Fauchère. I never had the chance to set French poetry in any of my previous works, and I was delighted to collaborate with Dorian Astor. I was already familiar with his outstanding oeuvre and his previous collaborations with composers, and after several exchanges, Dorian Astor created the ideal text for the vision I had for the new work, with a prose that is colorful, concise, evocative, mysterious and cryptic at the same time, creating a text of hymnal yet fragmentary form. The key concepts circle around ancient mystery, the esoteric universe of the Delphic oracle, the Eleusinian Mysteries and the Dionysian or Orphic cults - Evis Sammoutis