Memoria InTer Nos,

a musical tragedy composed by Telis Dimitrakopoulos

Genre: Contemporary Classical 

Catalogue: Phasma-Music 111

UPC: 731093480966 

recording, editing, mixing: Konstantinos Pravitas 

mastering: Apostolos Siopis  

All tracks recorded at nVelope Studio, Thessaloniki, Greece, July 2025

The texts for the booklet were written by Telis Dimitrakopoulos

artwork photograph: Benoist Demoriane

graphic design: Fotini Filoxenidou

production management: Iwona Glinka

Composed by Telis Dimitrakopoulos

Despina Kelesidou, Soprano

Anemóen Fronima Quintet:

Mary Stivanaki, Violin

Epameinondas Tzivenis, Violin

Antonios Tzivenis, Viola

Artemis Koukouzika, Cello

Stella Karagiorgou, Contrabass

Raquel Reis, Cello (in track 6)

Jerry Summers†, Percussion (in track 6)

Kostas Pilos, Recording & Cello (in track 6)

Memoria InTer Nos is a concept work of contemporary classical music, conceived as a musical tragedy in album form, composed by Telis Dimitrakopoulos. It marks his first solo release: a work for Soprano, Saxophone, and String Quintet unfolding as a cyclic concert form with an internal sonic dramaturgy.

Composed for soprano, saxophone, and string quintet, the work unfolds as a single cyclic concert structure with an internal sonic dramaturgy. Rather than presenting a collection of separate compositions, Memoria InTer Nos develops as a unified and evolving arc, where memory functions not as a static archive of recollections, but as a living, transformative force of awareness. It operates as a dramatic mechanism: eroding, reconstructing, and reshaping the sonic personas throughout the work.

Structured in seven parts — episodes, choral odes (stasima), and exodus — the work reimagines the architectural principles of ancient Greek tragedy as an autonomous musical form. The alternation between action and reflection generates a pulsating narrative entirely articulated through sound. Conflict emerges through shifting textures, timbral contrasts, and evolving roles among the ensemble.

Balancing contemporary classical aesthetics with experimental sonic exploration, the composition integrates resonances of Eastern Mediterranean musical traditions, refracted through a modern language of timbre and structure.

Memoria InTer Nos is not merely an album; it is a cohesive sonic dramaturgy — a contemporary musical tragedy in which listening becomes an immersive experiential act and memory emerges as the central agent of transformation.  (Telis  Dimitrakopoulos )

Aristotelis (Telis) Dimitrakopoulos is an award-winning composer (Hungary, Canada, Greece), saxophonist, woodwind instrumentalist and researcher whose work unfolds at the intersection of contemporary composition, musical dramaturgy, and improvisational interpretation.

He studied composition at the Department of Music Science and Art of the University of Macedonia and holds a Master’s degree from the same institution, specializing in European Early Music and Modal Musical Traditions of the Mediterranean. Since 2026, he has been a PhD candidate in Composition at the Ionian University.

Dimitrakopoulos explores innovative approaches to connecting Ottoman classical musical tradition with contemporary developments in modal theory. His compositional language re-examines historical musical textures, integrating them into a distinctly contemporary sonic framework. Several scholars and critics have described his work as embodying a “paradox of temporality". By connecting “historical” musical textures his compositional style re-examines the artistic heritage of the past and integrate the “historical” into the broader spectrum of the “contemporary”.

His works have been presented at major events in Greece and internationally, including Mysteries of Transition (Eleusis – European Capital of Culture), East Chamber Festival (Toronto, Canada), and at venues such as Thessaloniki Concert Hall, the Canadian Music Centre, deSingel – White Hall (Antwerp), the Budapest Music Center, etc. His music has been performed by distinguished soloists and ensembles such as Daniel Ramjattan, Naoko Tsujita, Raquel Reis, Chόres Voices, etc.

As a performer, he was awarded Prize for “Best Improvisation of Unique Aesthetic” at the René Arons Improvisation Contest in Antwerp, Belgium 

Website
https://www.telisdimitrakopoulos.com/

YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/@telisdimitrakopoulos7012

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/telis.d.s.h/

Product details:

01. Èsto òti – prologue for soprano saxophone choir and narration

02. O rubor memoria – parodus for soprano and string quintet

03. Pilgrimage to East Necropolis – episode I for alto saxophone and string quintet

04. Ay (The moon) – stasimon I for soprano and string quintet

05. Anti-mnéme – episode II for alto saxophone and string quintet

06. Maldoror de Montibus – stasimon II for clarinet, cello, percussion and narration

07. Another Now – exodus for alto saxophone, soprano saxophone and string quintet

Total Time:  [48:24]

Esto Oti

I wake in absolute dark.

At last, my eyes fall closed.

Darkness is feared

when faced with open sight;

yet closing them, one dares the Light—

Let it be.

Life is an endless night.

Unuttered faith, unclosed eyes,

leave us there.

On the fourth of May,

I closed mine—

after a sound I could not place.

And if silence be the ray,

you are its wind.

Let there be silence

to tame the memory—

the memory of ours.

Once, I knew not the cause of this affliction.

Now I know. I heard it.

It did not end.

It turns around—

and begins again!

It only intimates:

memories not yet born,

yet bound to come.

O Rubor

And since oblivion has struck the signs,
memory becomes the figure
that shall come to sow the mystery.

She is no longer incorporeal.
She has a face and a gaze,
flesh and womb.
She is neither mine, nor yours.
She is not recollection.

She is a deity.

You summon her only when you dare to say:
“You must not forget.”

Yet even if you do not summon her,
still she will come—
to sow the mystery.

Worship her.

Become her servant.
Let her strike you cruelly across the face,
let her spit upon you.
Endure.

In a moment, she will caress you.

For she is sovereign in cruelty and in mercy alike.
She wounds to bind.
She humiliates to consecrate.

Worship Her.

Pilgrimage

I walk and ask the dead,
do you remember me—
Carlo, Johan, Leon, Miles—
do you remember me?

- Thanos, tell me:
You remember?
I will stand before you,
turned to dust.
- Keep them out.
They hollow you
and drain you
till you are no longer you.
Their bodies distorted,
their minds—
once full of tales of love and mortal peril—
now withered.
So do not waste this one breath.
Remember:
you are no longer you.

- Nor are they.
Only shells now,
only sounding boards.
Come, then, gather round.
Walk, run among thorned graves.
You feel them cloudy I know.

Sooner or later
I shall not be myself,
neither do you.

And yet—

we are We. 

Αy

The dead are gone.
Their images scattered.

I am left with a question:
Who was their master?

- Lie down.
Do not think.
Strip off the damp, rotten rags of your realism—
hammered together from pointless experience.
Who are you chasing?
Where do you think you are going?

Follow this track.
The one that looks, to your eyes,
like a carefully mapped path.

Remain alone.
Like the moon—
which makes the stars around it disappear.

Sappho’s poem adapted by Telis Dimitrakopoulos 

Anti-mneme

So, what if we failed the revolution?

It remains only in memory: a heavy rhythm, dragged out, slow, lodged in the darker depths of our existence.

For a moment, one attempts to summon back vagabond time.
A forgotten melody, a phrase, a dance—fragments that return without context.

Try to bring back that vagabond time, guessing, if necessary, how this might be done!

Timeless loneliness seeks to drown itself in light. The pulse is meant to remain—present—within the world’s persistent haze.

Life produces its own memorandum: How to be “present” (?)

To underline this truth is already to harden it into error.

One is told to strike one’s head against the wall of the present, and to accept the impact as instruction.

The narrative demands allegiance. It therefore must be questioned.

What remains is still memory, now luminous, now obscured, embedded in the depths of existence.

For how long, this can persist remains unclear.

How much longer we remain compatible with the absurd?

October 2016,
Thank you Teacher!

Maldoror

You will never know
how cruel the pleasure is
of holding—unceasingly—
the universe
at the end
of a leash.

From darkness, light erupts,
and from light, shadow.
Within remembrance, memory flows—
creator of its own creation.

The body, forced out of memory,
streams and deforms itself
upon light
and upon darkness
from which it is born.

And from the shadow, once more, light—
the silence that was first to be heard.

Remember.

“Woe to man, condemned by his own ugliness”.

Another Now

Let it be that the wind
has torn our wants apart—
who could stand before it
and not be ground to dust?

Let it be that oblivion
has erased the tracks—
what figure would appear
to sow the mystery?

Let it be that there was silence
meant to tame memory.

Let it be that there is silence
to tame it—
memory,
this memory of Ours.

And so, it was not an ending,

but a turning—

and in the turning, a beginning…