John Psathas | The All Seeing Sky

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Posted by sounzmusic | May 11, 2022 | Composer Interviews | 0

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The All Seeing Sky, a new double percussion concerto by John Psathas will be premiered this week by the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, with a second performance with Orchestra Wellington a week later. Karlo Margetić caught up with John to talk about the new work.

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The All Seeing Sky was commissioned for Fabian Ziegler and Luca Staffelbach. How did you meet these guys? Can you tell us about some projects you did with them before?

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My relationship is really with Fabian Ziegler. Luca I’m meeting for the first time when he comes to New Zealand next week. Fabian and I are into our fourth project now. The first was a reworking of View From Olympus, to create a new karaoke version, but I upgraded it with electric guitars, basses and synths, things like that, rather than just an orchestra backing track. Then he commissioned a duo for himself and his wife Akvilė Šileikaitė, for piano, vibes and backing track called Atalanta. [It] has really done well, it’s taken off and is getting played a huge amount. Then Fabian put together a percussion consortium and commissioned a piece for solo percussion, backing track, and video. He commissioned Filip Merčep, a percussionist and video artist, to make a separate layer that goes with the piece – which is fantastic. That’s called RealBadNow, all one word! This double concerto is the fourth project that we’ve done together…………

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