IMALIS

DEMETRIOS LEKKAS

One of the most prolific Greek composers of his generation, his contributions to Greek musical theater and movie soundtrack over the past twenty years have rightfully earned him numerous awards and the recognition of his peers, beginning with his composition teacher, the Catalan composer Leonardo Balada, and the great master Manos Hadjidakis, who saw in him their exceptional protegé.  Commissioned on a regular basis by the top theaters (The National Theatre, The State Theatre of Northern Greece, various municipal theaters), directors and ensembles working today in Greece, Demetrios’s works span every genre, style and period of the stage, ballet, film, television and comic strips. In particular, his work has left an indelible mark in the history of the grand tradition of the Greek shadow theatre, through his long exclusive musical collaboration with the late great master Eugenios Spatharis. He has also composed chamber works and numerous songs. He has arranged and played in music by other fellow composers and traditional material, pyblished along with theoretical analyses and studies.

Demetrios is a mathematician; every facet of his work, whether scientific or artistic, is permeated by deep study, serious argumentation, well documented conclusions and rigorously applied results. In his creative work, he has been particularly drawn by the relationship of poetry and verse to rhythm and melody. His scholarly and theoretical background as one of the rising top ethnomusicologists in the world affords him a unique mastery of the entire Helladic / Greek musical tradition from the palaeolithic through the neolithic, the Minoan, Mycenaean, classical, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and modern periods, in association with the unbroken folk tradition known as Demotic song and dance, as well as a unique breadth and depth of knowledge in both Western and the three major Eastern musical systems and traditions (Chinese, Indian, Islamic). Not only have his publications in these areas signaled milestones in research in the field of musicology, but also constitute paradigm shifts in the relationship between music, mathematics and language with publications in academic journals spanning the fields of phonology, linguistics, history and archaeology, astronomy, ancient philosophy, pure mathematics, theoretical physics and the structure, phonology and writing systems and of Ancient Greek, with continuous participation in international scientific symposia and presentations and seminars in universities several places across the world. A lot of this research has gone directly to the public through 15 years of presence on National Radio and Television.

His longstanding research into the relationship between music, mathematics, astronomy and language was the subject of his doctoral dissertation in 1995, and has been evolving since then into a series of powerful formal methods for music theory, tonal, rhythmic and harmonic structures, vocal styles, musical instruments, aesthetic and biological extensions as well as cosmological models. He has attempted and accomplished the theoretical reconstructions of all local prehistoric and Graeco-byzantine tuning systems and their musical notations. A key area, linked to history and genetics, is the integral reconstruction of Ancient Greek musical practices as well as the phonology and actual sound of Ancient Greek and its precursors, covering as much its historical evolution as its geographical variance.  He has been teaching these relationships and their theoretical underpinnings in many contexts both occasionally through workshops, seminars and demonstrations and continuously at the Open University since 2004 within the Thematic Unit of Suudies in Greek Culture // Arts II: Overview of Greek Music and Dance, for which he was the designer of the curriculum as well as supervisor and basic author of the multi-volume textbook.   

His collaboration with Vasilis Arabos within the emerging framework of Imalis began in 2007, based on the convergence between their lines of research in the three disciplines of language, of music and of drama.  Demetrios is dedicated to the pursuit of a unified approach in the use of the ancient stage and its texts as a platform for the testing and dissemination of the principles uncovered by his research so far and the development of Imalis as a means of sharing and aiding in the further holistic evolution of the sciences and arts involved as a continuing and lasting human heritage and endeavor.

Academic degrees: BS, Mathematics (/ Logic), 1973, Carnegie-Mellon University; MBA (/ Operations Management), 1975, The University of Rochester; Ph.D, 1995/6, The University of Athens, School of Philosophy, Department of Music Studies; Thesis: The mathematical theory of music; Pythagorean and Natural systems.