With Juno Awards in 2017, 2008 and 2006, several Canadian and international awards and a slew of recent commissions by internationally recognized touring artists such as violinist Hilary Hahn, percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie, the Winnipeg and Montreal Symphony Orchestras and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet among others, University of Toronto professor Christos Hatzis is widely recognized as “one of the most important composers writing today” (CBC) and "a contemporary Canadian master" (The New Yorker.)
Hatzis is pioneering a distinct breed of 21st Century music which combines intellectual complexity and clarity, emotional/psychological directness and technical mastery of various media and musical idioms. His recent work focuses on indigenous issues, geopolitical diversity, migration, environmental consciousness, and human rights. Although technically challenging, Hatzis’s music has established a deep and direct connection with a growing number of musicians and listeners of every walk of life worldwide (his audio playlist has registered over 1,700,000 hits since 2008). Two of his recent large-scale works,
GAIA and
GOING HOME STAR: Truth and Reconciliation are indicative of Hatzis’s most recent musical thinking.
GOING HOME STAR: Truth and Reconciliation a ballet score for Inuit throat signer Tanya Tagaq, the Northern Cree Singers and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra based on the subject of the “Indian Residential Schools”, was commissioned by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet under the auspices of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The critical response to
GOING HOME STAR has been unanimous: “The music for Going Home Star may be the best ballet composition ever created in Canada.”—THE GLOBE AND MAIL; “Christos Hatzis’s tour-de-force score . . . is a game-changer.”—WINNIPEG FREE PRESS; “One of the most powerful and moving works composed by a Canadian composer”—David Dalle, CKCU FM. Based on the themes of climate change, social unrest, migration and nativist reaction,
GAIA for Inuit throat singer Tiffany Ayalik, Arabic vocalist Maryem Hassan Tollar, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra plus surround audio had its first performance in 2017 with aspects of the work still under development. (“Such are these golden moments in art”—WINNIPEG FREE PRESS).
Hatzis’s music is constantly presented in performance and broadcast (over 100 events worldwide in 2016 and over 120 in 2017) with a stream of CD recordings on Naxos, Deutche Grammophon, Centrediscs, EMI, Analekta, Sony, CBC and other major and independent labels, several of them all-Hatzis albums. Current work includes
Vernal Equinox, a marimba concerto commissioned by Theodor Milkov, one of the world’s greatest soloists of this instrument, on the theme of the Greek Bicentennial to premiere in Athens in 2022 and
Hiddenness, a Holocaust-related multimedia collaboration with actor/musician Daniel Oore also for a premiere in 2022. Recent work includes “
Sarah Slean”, a much lauded CD with pop singer Sarah Slean and Symphony Nova Scotia consisting of Hatzis’s two song cycles:
Lamento and
Ecstasy; the premiere and Canadian Tour of
GOING HOME STAR by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet (on the theme of the “Indian Residential Schools”) in 2014 and 2016, (and of Mexico in 2019), preceded by
The Isle is Full of Voices, which was commissioned and premiered by the Montreal Symphony Orchestra in 2014, opened the Eurasia Festival in Russia with the Urals Philharmonic Orchestra in 2015 with recent performances by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Warsaw and Naples Philharmonic Orchestras, the National Symphony Orchestra of Greece and the South Netherlands Philharmonic and a recent performance by the Prague Symphony Orchestra; Hilary Hahn’s D.G recording which included Hatzis’s
Coming To won a Grammy Award in 2015 and topped many international top and top 10 lists that year and was performed by Hahn on tours of Europe and North America. Recent releases include several professionally produced videos of Hatzis’s works for marimba and electronics by Fabian Ziegler and Felix Reyes (2019), the Holocaust-themed Menorah (2020), videos in Greece by the Greek National Opera (2020) and Megaron/Thessaloniki State Orchestra (2021). Hatzis often writes about contemporary music and its relationship to today’s society. Hatzis’s book “
Resonance: A Journey of Connections Made by Intuition” was recently released online (2020). His memoir
“Searching for the Right Key: The First Forty Years” was also released online in 2021. A book of music essays by Hatzis is currently under preparation.
http://www.hatzis.com