Michael Levy: Composer for Lyre

EPIC! The iconic American artist, Jeff Koons, just contacted me again! 

Following the use of my music in Jeff Koons's exhibition last year on Hydra of his new sculptures of Apollo, my ancient Greek kithara-themed music will ONCE AGAIN be the main soundscape in a new exhibition to include his sculpture "Apollo Kithara" at Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung in Frankfurt. 

Almost as if Apollo himself approved of this collaboration, by pure serendipity, for my live lyre concert at the British Museum back in January 2023, I was astounded to learn that I would be performing in the very next gallery to where the original Greco-Roman sculpture of Apollo with Kithara, which Koons based his new sculpture on, was actually located!
 

The exhibition, "Machine Room of the Gods: How our Future was Invented", will be on view from 8th March - 10th September 2023:

https://www.liebieghaus.de/en/machine-room-of-the-gods

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My ancient Greek-themed lyre music is now the soundscape to an exhibition at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts! 

The exhibition, "Making Past Present" features the work of Cy Twombly, a painter and sculpture who found much inspiration in the philosophy and relics of the ancient Greeks:

https://www.mfa.org/exhibition/making-past-present-cy-twombly

The tracks featured, are "Orpheus's Lyre" from my 2013 compilation album, "Musical Adventures in Time Travel" & "The Only Thing Certain is Uncertainty", from my 2023 album, "Ataraxia (Inner Harmony").

The exhibition featuring my music, will be on display at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts between 14th January - 7th May 2023.
 

My music is to become a 'National Treasure'!

For the first since 2013 and for the first time I have had any official live performances since the restrictions of the pandemic, on 23rd January 2023, my live lyre music will once again be the soundscape to a British Museum Member's Evening:

https://www.britishmuseum.org/.../members-evening-23-January

The event is exclusively for British Museum Members - quite possibly the perfect potentially interested new target audience for my musical mission, to continue where the ancients "left off"!

I will be providing a Greco-Roman, Mesopotamian & Ancient Egyptian-themed soundscape and will be performing near the Greek Galleries, between the following times:

18.15 – 18.45
19.14 – 19.45 
20.15 – 20.45

Hope to see some of you there!

I am amazed to finally be able to publicly announce my collaboration with the iconic American contemporary artist, Jeff Koons!

My music for recreating ancient Greek kithara is now the main soundscape of Jeff Koon's new animatronic sculpture, "Apollo Kithara" (2019 - 2022) on display inside Jeff's magnificent recreation of a Temple of Apollo, on the Greek Island of Hydra. The exhibition is at the DESTE Foundation Project Space, Slaughterhouse, which is a free contemporary art space open to the public on the island, from 21.6.2022 to 31.10.2022:  

https://deste.gr/hydra/jeff-koons/

Jeff is featuring 20 tracks of my recordings of the recreated ancient Greek kithara - the lyre of the professional musicians of classical antiquity, associated in ancient Greece with the god Apollo. He wanted to play my music in the exhibition space as a way to celebrate Apollo (god of music, Olympian god of the sun & light) and the history of the Mediterranean.

According to Jeff's agent, Jeff wanted to incorporate my music as follows:

"With the recordings of your ancient kithara music, Jeff would like to overlay at times acapella recordings of contemporary singers, such as, David Bowie, Robert Plant, Lady Gaga, Lil Uzi Vert, and others. For Jeff, mixing the ancient sounds of the kithara with the acapella vocals of contemporary singers will be exhilarating and play with aspects of time, which will also be visually evident in the exhibition. Jeff seeks and desires a sensual quality to the experience of the exhibition and believes the music will amplify this connection to the past, present, and future."


 

I am pleased to announce the publication on YouTube, of my interview with the World History Encyclopedia - the most detailed discussion on my musical mission to date! 

The interview features demonstrations of almost all my recreated ancient lyres, all the background about my musical inspiration, with detailed discussion on topics ranging from the myth of monophony in ancient music, ancient tuning systems derived from Pythagorean numerical cosmology, how ancient lyre playing techniques can be inferred from ancient classical texts & from how lyres are still being played throughout the continent of Africa today: 
 

I am delighted to announce that one of my arrangements for solo lyre of the 2000 year old ancient Greek "Song of Seikilos", from my 2015 album, "The Lyre of Apollo: The Chelys Lyre of Ancient Greece" is featured on the covermount CD of the 2021 November/December edition (Issue Number 172) of Songlines Magazine!

The magazine can either be purchased in print or digitally downloaded 

There is also a full page story in the magazine, on the inspiration behind my ancient-themed lyre music:

I am delighted to announce that My ancient-themed lyre music is now both the main theme & entire soundscape, of the brand new mod of the video game from Paradox Developement Studio, 'Crusader Kings III', entitled: "APOTHEOSIS: THE HELLENISTIC AGE"


Featuring a wide selection of my ancient Greek-themed music, the main theme of the mod, which automatically plays each and every time the mod is first opened, is my track "Paean to Ares" - from my 2016 album, "Kithara of the Golden Age".

The awesomely ancient historically immersing mod of the game is available now, from here.

Who needs really boring stuff, like a 'record company'!
 

06/25/2021

I was pleased to be invited to give an interview on Dominc Perry's "History of Egypt Podcast" in the most detailed discussion to date, on the background information to my 2020 album, "The Ancient Egyptian Lyre" and the creation of the replica of the 3,500 year old ancient Egyptian lyre preserved in Leiden, which features in it:



 

10/22/2020

I am literally astounded to annouce, that my first compilation album for solo lyre, "Ancient Landscapes" now has OVER ONE MILLION COMPLETE STREAMS on Spotify!!!


 

At 72 minutes in duration, astonishingly, this is the equivalent of this album being played in a continuous loop, 6 hours a day...FOR 544YEARS!!!

Just possibly, more people have probably heard the sound of my lyre in this one release, than during the entire epoch of antiquity when the original lyres of the ancient world were still being played - bring on the 'New Ancestral' Music Revolution!
 

Yes, a tune I conjured up in my spare room, has been melodically incorporated into Rufus Wainwright's "Hadrian" - quite possibly, the most flambouyant new opera of the 21st century...



The full story of my collaboration with Rufus Wainwright was featured in a story in "The Globe and Mail" 

In short, on 27th April 2017, I was contacted by Cori Ellison, who was serving on behalf of Canadian Opera Company in Toronto as the dramaturg for the production:

“Mr. Wainwright has become acquainted with your work, particularly the 'Hymn to Zeus', and would very much like to incorporate a few musical quotations from that piece and perhaps some others in his opera. Might you be amenable to that?”

A telephone conference was arranged between myself, Rufus and Cori on 25th May 2017, whilst Rufus was still on tour in Bergen!

During the course of the conversation, Rufus told me he particularly liked my composition, “Hymn to Zeus” (track 3 from my 2010 album, “Apollo’s Lyre”) which he described in our telephone conference as

 “...a really beautiful melody”.

“Hymn to Zeus” is a piece I composed for lyre, in the intense ancient Greek Dorian Mode; the equivalent intervals as E-E on the white notes of the piano (and misnamed the “Phrygian” mode by scholars in the early Middle Ages). This was also the favourite musical mode of Plato himself, who thought the Dorian mode was the only mode of true moral worth. It has a distinctively introspective and haunting meditative quality. 

Incredibly, my lyre theme was melodically incorporated into literally the two most dramatic scenes of the entire opera - in Act II, Scene IV; when Hadrian relives the moment he first met his lover, Antinous and later, in Act III Scene VIII; when Hadrian finally learns the awful truth behind the mystery surrounding Antinous's death.

How I finally managed to acquire the HD video footage of my lyre theme in Act II Scene IV of the premiere of the opera, was almost like divine intervention from Antinous himself!

After learning the awful truth that my laptop screen capture app miserably failed to record the one-off "Watch Party" livestream of the premiere & after pleading on Twitter, if anyone else out there had recorded the one-off livestream of the opera, I was contacted by an actual latter-day Priest from Brazil's First Temple of Antinous - who finally enabled me to see the opera; almost 2 years after the premiere in Toronto!!! The best things in life, are certainly those worth waiting for...