Tania Giannouli Ensemble - transcendence

Released 2015.

Greek pianist/composer Tania Giannouli follows her 2012 Rattle debut (Forest Stories, with Paulo Chagas) with a recording featuring the newly formed Tania Giannouli Ensemble. With influences as diverse as contemporary classical, Greek folk music, modern jazz, world music and European avant-garde, Transcendence is an intoxicating, musically literate tour-de-force. These richly textured, beautifully balanced compositions are performed with great rigour, lyricism and passion, but above all they are strikingly honest and direct.

"Transcendence: going beyond ordinary limits; surpassing; exceeding.
This suite of compositions reflect on themes of Time, Life and Creation based on impressions and experiences during hard times: the essential and the trivial; lies and illusions; change and responsibility; action and reaction; light and darkness; beauty, emptiness, faith, and fear. For me, this music contemplates a wild and crazy world that surely cannot be all there is, and nostalgia for an as yet unknown happy future. Above all, this album is about my motherland."

Tania Giannouli, 2015