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Ilios Steryannis: Babylonia Suite
by Dan McClenaghan
Canadian drummer Ilios Steryannis traces his family roots back 2,500 years to ancient Babylonia. With his Babylonia Suite, he explores the family tree and his maternal grandparents' diasporic journey from Baghdad to Mumbai to Manchester and finally to Canada with a world music selection of sunshine bright music, with eleven life-affirming compositions. The instruments include piano, bansuri flute, violin, tabla, oud and saxophone. The result is a sort of Middle Eastern, Indo-jazz fusion that shifts into the direction of “Blue ...
Continue ReadingIlios Steryannis: Bethany Project
by Dan McClenaghan
Toronto-based drummer Ilios Steryannis calls the sounds on his Bethany Project “World Music From the Heart." Thes sound is a musical stew stirred up from Afro-Cuban rhythms, the Mediterranean sounds, John Coltrane, and ebullient West African percussions (and more), spiced with danceable funk and bebop, and drawing influences from, by turns, Gabriel Garcia Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude, Macedonian sounds, and--on “The Ornado"--the whirlwind motions of the leader's four year old son. That's a big world to ...
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