Athanasios Zervas

Composer, theorist, saxophonist and conductor. He is Professor of music theory and music creation at the Department of Music Science and Art and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts at the University of Macedonia. He is also a guest artist (saxophone) at the Athens Conservatoire. He holds a doctorate in composition and a master’s degree in saxophone performance from Northwestern University (USA) and a Bachelor of Music from Chicago State University. He specialises in set theory, contemporary compositional techniques, analysis and improvisation, and post-1945 music. His research interests include the music of Elliott Carter, Ralph Shapey, the Third Stream and contemporary works written for saxophone. He has composed works for solo instruments, chamber music, symphony orchestra, wind orchestra, jazz orchestra, choral ensembles, lyrical songs, theatre and film music, and electronic music. His sound can be described as polystylistic because it develops in the context of atonality, free tonality and modality. Both the musical surface and the deeper structural level of his works contain elements borrowed from the Greek tradition (ancient, Byzantine, folk) as well as from jazz and Latin music. Compositions of his have been published by Papagrigoriou-Nakas (Panas Music) and Jeanné Inc.