• "Timeless Music."

    — Toronto Star

  • "Exceptional, attractive, substantial, full of memorable ideas."

    — Clive Paget, Musical America

  • "...these are not the rhapsodies of Brahms or Bartok. Caravassilis’ approach to form is actually more rhapsodic in spirit than either of those masters."

    — Jon Gonder, SUNY Geneseo/CAML Review

  • "...this is music that earns our attention rather than requiring it."

    — John Terauds, ludwig van TORONTO

  • "...numinous beauty and sublime expressiveness...rapturous."

    — Chris Morgan, Scene Magazine, London

  • "...the most important Hellenic descent composer of his generation."

    — Thomas Tamvakos, Jazz & Tzaz

  • "...a few steps above excellence."

    — R. Murray Schafer (1933-2021)

  • "...substantial, attractive....the effect is expressive less of nostalgia and memory than of a sympathetic collective consciousness."

    — William Yeoman, Gramophone Music Magazine

  • "...the music is visionary"

    — Leslie Barcza, Barczablog

  • "…endless variety of moods, feelings, shifting drama."

    — Stanley Fefferman, OpusOneReview

  • "...one of our finest young composers here in Canada."

    — Dr. Daniel Béland, CKCU Radio, Sakatoon.

  • "…a genuine, prodigious contemporary master. I am stunned, amazed!"

    —David Dale, CKCU Radio, Ottawa.

  • "...radiant and brilliant, a delicious listening experience."

    — Nic Gotham, The WholeNote

  • "… lush, profound, brooding yet soaring with Shostakovich-like moments of virtuosic playfulness."

    —Nadina Mackie Jackson, Canada’s premiere bassoonist.

  • "…visually pleasing, no one dares move—incredible music!"

    —Loki Karuna, Trillonquy

  • "…stunningly beautiful music by one of the hardest-working Canadian composers of the younger generation."

    — Ella Wiernicka, Radio Host, CFCR 90.5 FM, Saskatoon.

  • "...celebrated, beautiful and thoughtful music."

    — Tom Allen, CBC Radio, Canada

  • "Magical Realism!"

    — Records International

  • "Caravassilis has a talent for programmatic depiction through music, and a unique compositional voice to go with it."

    —Justin Rito, I Care if You Listen

  • "...Spellbinding, effectively expressive. I was intrigued and seduced from the start by this modern encounter. We’re not listening to a timeless sound world; we’re being sucked into it!"

    —Frédéric Cardin, PAN M 360

  • "…colourful and evocative, languorous, and even voluptuous…there’s lots to like and lots to explore..."

    —John Gilks, Operaramblings

—sehnsucht symphony recording/filming

Besední dům

Brno, czhechia - Nov. 2-6, 2024

Conducted by the composer, Sehnsucht Symphony, a 40-minute, 6-movement work for 92 musicians received its premiere recording for future release by the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra at the historic Besední dům (designed by architect Theophil Hansen and built between 1870 and 1873), home of the Philharmonic.

Sehnsucht Symphony was commissioned by VuViVo Ministries (Tampa, FL.) and is based on a book by the ministry’s founder, Zach Elliott. The work will be featured in an upcoming documentary, which will detail its inception, the composer’s process, and the parallel creative journeys of Caravassilis and Elliott.

— national ballet of Canada on tour:

théâtre des Champs-Élysées

Paris, France - Oct. 12-15, 2024

Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, France has been the site of consequential performances since its opening in 1913, when it hosted the infamous world premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring.

The National Ballet of Canada will revisit this legendary stage following the successful tour of Nijinsky in 2017, this time with an all-Canadian programme of newly acquired work and pieces created specifically for the National Ballet: Crystal Pite’s Angels’ Atlas, James Kudelka’s Passion and William Yong’s UtopiVerse (with music by Benjamin Britten and Constantine Caravassilis). 

— national ballet of canada premiere

Join us on March 20-24 at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts for the world premiere of acclaimed Canadian choreographer William Yong’s futuristic UtopiVerse.

Commissioned and produced by the National Ballet of Canada, UtopiVerse is a multidisciplinary exploration of the concepts of “utopia” and “paradise lost” with music by Benjamin Britten and Constantine Caravassilis. 

utopiverse

— Just in: interview with david dalle

Listen to an interview of Constantine Caravassilis with radio host David Dalle, as aired on August 29, 2024 (part of the Dave Dalle Show—CKCU Radio | 93.1 FM, Ottawa), dissecting the composer’s multimedia cantata From Sappho’s Lyre (CD release by Orchid Classics).

— new album release

from Sappho’s Lyre

This double-album project is the result of a multi-year collaboration between Caravassilis and American classicist, author, and poet Jeffrey Duban.

The project’s focus is the poetry of and inspired by the ancient Greek poetess Sappho of Lesbos (7th and 6th centuries BC), in the words of famed British poet Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909), “simply nothing less—as she is certainly nothing more—than the greatest poet who ever was at all.”

“…a genuine, prodigious

contemporary master.

I am stunned, amazed.”

— David Dalle, CKCU Radio, Ottawa

Driven by beauty and spirituality; inspired by literature, nature, the music of the spheres and imagined workings of the cosmos; reflecting a deep humanitarianism and modern findings on the faculties of the human brain, Constantine Caravassilis’ work is yet intimately connected to his Hellenic roots.

Caravassilis draws inspiration from the prodigious past and supreme wisdom of his ancestors, as he reflects on Greek mythology and epic themes and on Byzantine chant and the times it reflects. And yet, he often finds himself re-imagining Eastern modality and the folksongs of the Aegean as sung to him by his grandmothers.

— Featured Video

Ill Nome Della Rosa