Iridescences by Various Artists

'Ιridescences’ came up through time, as first work of Nikos Papachristou with the aim of approaching modality in contemporary music.

Everything starts in 2013, with a group of musicians in Barcelona, whose music inquietudes lead them to the exploration of the modal music traditions of the Mediterranean and Near East. Through time, prime ideas and improvisations will be transformed into compositions, whose influences are marked by the popular and classical music traditions of these regions. The recordings will be finally completed in Thessaloniki, some years later. The music material chooses between different instrument timbres, many of which have been traveling across these music traditions, making them belong in a bigger music family and in the same time being able to preserve their uniqueness.

With startpoint the music evolution in Greece during the last decades, nowadays these musics are more widely offered to be explored and studied, opening new ways of communication between cultures. Original but familiar patterns, forms and timbres meet again under a contemporary and creative prism.

In such a way ‘Iridescences’ came to light. As windings of multiple dimensions that surround us, into the ones that we can feel and perceive.


Iridescences are:

Nikos Papachristou / Maria Melachrinou / Pavlos Spyropoulos / Kostas Poulianakis / Thanase Tsitsaris  / Giorgos Psaltis


[*‘Iridescences’;a lustrous rainbowlike play of color caused by differential refraction of light waves that tends to change as the angle of view changes]

During the last two decades, his interest is oriented towards the study of new and old instruments, their possibilities and the way they contribute to contemporary music. Main references, the still evolving plurality of popular music genres found in Greece, Balkan and Anatolian peninsulas, the middle east and the wider east-Mediterranean area.