Harry Stafylakis

photo credit: David Adamcyk

Haralabos [ Harry ] Stafylakis is a Canadian-American composer based in New York City. His concert music strives for dramatic emotional and intellectual expression, integrating idioms drawn from classical and popular styles. With an intimate background in progressive metal and traditional Greek music, Stafylakis has developed a unique conception of musical temporality and rhythm, infusing his compositions with a characteristic vitality and drive.

Stafylakis’s works have been performed internationally by the Israel Chamber Orchestra, McGill Symphony Orchestra, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Mivos Quartet, Cadillac Moon Ensemble, Cygnus Ensemble, Alea III, Lorelei Ensemble, Architek Percussion, and American Modern Ensemble. He has been featured at festivals and conferences including Composers Now, New Music on the Point, Providence Premieres, Aries Composers Festival, SCI, THEMUS, EAMA, York Guitar Festival, Cluster, and the Montreal International Classical Guitar Festival.

Awards include the Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and four SOCAN Foundation Awards for Young Composers. Stafylakis has received commissions and grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, soprano Sharon Azrieli-Perez, guitarists Patrick Kearney and Tariq Harb, Architek Percussion, Lorelei Ensemble, and McGill Sax Quartet. As of 2013 he is composer-in-residence with the contemporary dance group Untitled|Collective, collaborating with choreographer Ian RT Colless.

Stafylakis holds a B.Mus. from McGill University, where he studied with Chris Paul Harman, Jean Lesage, and John Rea. He is a doctoral candidate and Graduate Teaching Fellow at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center, studying with Jason Eckardt and David Del Tredici, and serving on the music faculty at City College of New York. His doctoral research, supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada, examines the conception of rhythm and meter in progressive metal and the potential adaptation of studio production techniques to instrumental composition.

In the field of materials science, the study of fracture mechanics makes a fundamental distinction between fractures that occur at different levels of tensile stress. In the case of brittle fracture, there is little or no apparent plastic deformation before failure occurs; in other words, cracks travel so fast that it is often impossible to tell when the material will break.

Brittle Fracture attempts to depict this type of structural failure in musical terms. Inspired by modulation and temporal manipulation techniques commonly employed in pop music production, the piece is based on a simple four-note piano theme that is performed as if it were being processed through an echo unit. The piano’s resulting spectral content is selectively captured, extended, and transformed by the orchestral instruments, effectuating a long-range rhythmic, melodic, registral, articulative, and dynamic intensification. Throughout this textural crescendo, the music undergoes various types and degrees of stress that attempt to disrupt the constant musical flow. At the peak of the process the music finally buckles under its own weight, causing an abrupt rupture in the structure. A series of these fractures occurs, slicing between two contrasting musical surfaces until the inevitable and complete dissolution of their constituent materials.

This work was originally composed as a work for chamber orchestra (18 players) in 2013 as part of a residency with the CUNY Graduate Center’s Contemporary Music Ensemble. It received its premiere in that form on May 8, 2013 in Elebash Hall, New York, with Whitney E. George conducting. Brittle Fracture has been awarded a 2013 Sir Ernest MacMillan Award by the SOCAN Foundation.