Description
Evis Sammoutis is a prolific composer whose music has been presented in some of the most prestigious concert venues around the world and commissioned by leading contemporary music ensembles and institutions. Raised in Cyprus, an age-old crossroad from Europe to the Middle East and Africa and trained as a classical guitarist and composer in Europe and the United States, he is deeply immersed in every aspect of the fabric of contemporary music. As someone both deeply embedded in the discipline and thoughtfully reflective towards his unique and varied background, his musical idiom is reflective of a wide and diverse spectrum of compositional practices and cultural references.
At the same time, there are some concrete poetic tropes that emerge as a throughline in his work. The most immediately affective one is that of physicality. His music gestures often invoke physical gestures, vocal utterances, and other aspects of embodied language. Another dimension of physicality pertains to the element of virtuosity, evidences in the technical demands of the individual parts as well as ensemble writing.
His is a music to hear and to touch, a music that balances dexterously between subliminal suggestion and visceral outbursts. Sammoutis' works explore the relationship between timbre and harmony, creating a context where extended instrumental and vocal techniques are naturally fused with more traditional features of expression.
