U of T music student wins first Harry Freedman Recording Award
BY JENNIFER LANTHIER
Growing up on the Greek island of Samos in a family of amateur musicians, Constantine Caravassilis learned to play the piano before he could talk.
Today, his contemporary classical music speaks to musicians and audiences all over the world.
“In recent years we have had quite a few of our doctoral students who are already making their mark in the professional world in a rather significant way,” said Professor Christos Hatzis of the Faculty of Music. “But I would say even by those standards Constantine is fairly exceptional.”
Caravassilis, 30, and pianist Christina Petrowska-Quilico received the inaugural Harry Freedman Recording Award April 27 for a planned recording of a double CD of Caravassilis’ music for solo piano, Book of Fantasias and Book of Rhapsodies.
Caravassilis, who is pursuing a doctor of musical arts in composition and conducting at the university, said the money from the award will be combined with an Ontario Arts Council award to fund the project.
“The award itself is a national award and brand new,” said Hatzis, Caravassilis’s adviser. “It’s amazing that a student still at university would win it but to be given the very first one is also quite significant as well.”
"Faculty of Music doctoral student Constantine Caravassilis can compose music for all kinds
of ensembles and soloists, a rare talent in a composition student."
The recipient of many awards — including the 2009 Karen Kieser Prize in Canadian Music — Caravassilis has, in a sense, been composing all his life. As a child he entertained guests at the small hotel his parents built by playing on the 110-year-old piano in the reception area.
Caravassilis remembers pianist Maria Garzón attempting to give him lessons while vacationing on the island. “She would make me play Mozart and then every 20 bars, Mozart would become Constantine and I just kept going in my own style,” said Caravassilis.
Constantine's hometown: Pythagorion, Samos Island, Greece
But major breakthroughs in composing came only after years of study and sacrifice. Realizing he needed to leave the island to pursue his studies, Caravassilis left home at 17 for Toronto, where he taught himself English by reading the paper, memorizing a pocket dictionary and making friends.
“Within two weeks I had a job playing the piano in a Greek restaurant and I had a piano and theory teacher at the conservatory — it became home for me right away,” he said.
After spending a year at York University, Caravassilis transferred to the University of Toronto. “My undergrad education was very difficult,” he said. “Although I could do amazing things by ear,this was just a total different universe and I needed a bit of a transition period to get used to the western system.”
While completing his master’s degree at the University of Manitoba —where he studied simultaneously with professors Gordon Fitzell, Michael Matthews and Örjan Sandred— Caravassilis worked intensively on composing.
A synesthete who senses colours and taste when he hears “low or mid to low strings,” Caravassilis has trained himself to compose while in a semi-dreaming state. First, he records himself playing “a musical idea” of between six and 30 seconds and listens to it over and over.
“Then I enter the alpha state by closing my eyes and relaxing, like meditating, and I start to have lucid dreams,” Caravassilis said, “but because I’m not asleep, I’m the director of my dreams so I can invite an entire symphony orchestra to play, I can invite Valery Gergiev to conduct and what I hear is the continuation of this piece.”
It’s an approach many would consider far-fetched, Caravassilis said. But the results are impressive. He has served as composer-inresidence for Denmark’s Open Strings Festival and the U.K.’s London Song Festival, as well as Toronto’s Cantabile Chamber Singers.
His combination of work ethic and talent is reflected in the number of awards he has won, said Hatzis. “He writes pieces for small numbers of instruments, orchestra, choral music and recently he has created some really beautiful pieces in electro acoustic music, which is music that is basically created by the computer alone,” Hatzis said. “It is rather unusual to have a student who does so well in all of these areas.”
For his part, Caravassilis relishes working with Hatzis. “When it comes to U of T it’s not just that it has this special program or that this is the most important place in the country to study composition,” Caravassilis said, “it’s also that the person I’m studying with is a perfect match for me.
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