My complementary recording project to the release of my album, "Magic of the Kithara", the inspiration behind this recording project was a complete re-editing, re-mastering & re-releasing of what was originally my former 2022 album, "Ancient Greek Magic" - under the new, more appropriate descriptive title, "Enchantment of the Tortoise Lyre". This release features my recreated ancient Greek tortoise shell lyre, this time evoking the space of some ancient Greek Temple with eerie reverb sampled from York Minster Cathedral & new cinematic-style mastering, in my efforts to evoke the sacred space of an ancient Greek Temple.
The custom-built lyre featured in this album has a resonator fashioned from an actual foraged Greek land tortoise, with goat skin soundboard. This instrument is therefore about the closest thing to taking the 2,400-year-old Elgin Lyre out of its display cabinet at the British Museum & performing on it! This one-off ancient Greek lyre creation, was made for me in modern Greece, by Luthieros:
In putting together the tracks, it was my desire to attempt to create a feeling of dreamlike original meditative music in a selection of original ancient Greek musical modes & in authentic just intonation, inspired by snapshots from the almost infinite kaleidoscope of mythology from classical Greece.