Colere Quartet Commissions Composer Alexandros Spyrou

Alexandros Spyrou

Colere Quaret has commissioned composer Alexandros Spyrou to write a new work for saxophone quartet. The piece will be featured during Colere’s 2019-2020 season including a premier performance at Augustana College’s Shockingly Modern Saxophone Festival.

Alexandros Spyrou is a Greek composer, founder and artistic director of the Delian Academy for New Music, and co-founder/co-curator of meta-ξ collective. In his compositional work, he questions the modernistic paradigm of dialectics and dualism and proposes an ontogenesis of a-centered multiplicities which are in a continuous morphallaxis, in a constant state of becoming. He composes chamber and orchestral music, music for stage and electronic media, and often collaborates with artists, writers, and scientists. 

 Alexandro's music has been performed in Greece, Italy, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States by such ensembles as Klangforum Wien, London Sinfonietta, JACK Quartet, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, MDI Ensemble Milano, Ensemble SurPlus, the Contemporary Directions Ensemble, Musica Nova Ensemble, Ensemble DissonArt, and many acclaimed soloists. 

After undergraduate studies in composition and music theory in Greece, Alexandros studied composition with Michael Finnissy in the United Kingdom, with Beat Furrer in Austria, and with David Gompper and Josh Levine in the United States. Further, he attended masterclasses with numerous composers.

He has presented his music in several festivals and academies such as the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik Darmstadt, and the Schloss Solitude Akademie in Germany, the Composit Festival in Italy, the XVIII World Saxophone Congress in Croatia, the Ticino Musica Festival in Switzerland, the Midwest Composers Symposium and the Exchange of Midwestern Collegiate Composers in the United States, OutHear New Music Week and Off-Borders Festival in Greece. 

Between 2013-2017 he taught music theory and composition at the University of Iowa (USA), and served as president of the local chapter of the SCI, as student senator for the School of Music in the Graduate Student Senate, and as president of the local Fulbright Student Association. He is a member of BMI classical, the Society of Composers Inc. (USA), and the Royal Musical Association (UK). 

Alexandros has been a scholar of the Fulbright Foundation, the State Scholarship Foundation of Greece, the City Council of Ioannina, the University of Iowa, the Harry D. Triantafillu Foundation, the Stanley Foundation, the Austrian agency for international cooperation in education and research (OeAD), and has received prizes such as the Startstipendium for Music Composition (Austria), the Henry and Parker Pelzer Award for excellence in composition (USA), and the Ernst Mach Award (Austria). He holds diplomas in Harmony, Counterpoint and Fugue from the Conservatory of Ioannina (Greece), a Bachelor of Music from the University of Macedonia (Greece), a Master of Music from the University of Southampton (UK), a Master of Philosophy from the University of Bristol (UK), a Postgraduate Diploma in composition from the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz (Austria), and a Ph.D in Music Composition and Theory from the University of Iowa (USA). 

For more information on Alex visit his website at: https://www.alexandros-spyrou.com/