The great composer Manos Hadjidakis once said that every song is a puzzle. He also viewed art as a response to life’s puzzles: “From my mother I inherited every puzzle, which I’ve been trying to solve all my life. If it weren’t for her puzzles I wouldn’t be a poet…” (For those interested in Hadjidakis, that quote comes from a biographical account of his life and artistic journey at ellines.com).
The May 14th edition of Ákou posed two puzzles related to the Old World, New World album and challenged readers to solve them. I’m happy to report that both winning entries were received by May 15.
Diana (my friend since 5th grade) correctly guessed that Johnny in Johnny’s Journey is John Lennon. She didn’t identify the specific Lennon song I was referencing—Day Tripper—but I didn’t hold that against her. According to Lennon, Day Tripper was written about taking LSD; a “day tripper” is someone not fully committed to the experience. If you listen closely to the chorus of Johnny’s Journey, you might notice echoes of Day Tripper’s chorus. And at the end of Johnny’s Journey, I include a rhythmically altered version of its iconic guitar riff.
Eleni (one of my daughters) solved the second puzzle: when leading the attack on Mistras in 1821, Papakalomiris approached from behind the fortress. The Ottoman cannons had been positioned to repel a frontal assault, so his strategy proved effective. Congratulations to Diana and Eleni—each will receive two tickets to their choice of performance at our double world premiere at Merkin Hall, March 20 and 21, 2026!
And since we’re on the subject of puzzles, it seems fitting to note that the theme of the album Old World, New World was itself a puzzle left to me by my parents: What does it mean to be Greek while growing up in America?
Growing up in the US, the “Old World” was present in my two immigrant grandmothers, who spoke little English, and in other immigrant family members and friends I knew from church. Being Greek was part of our daily lives—through language, music, and celebration. I wouldn’t have called it our “identity”—a word we didn’t use back then. It was simply who we were, how we lived a little differently from most people around us. When I traveled to Greece for the first time at age ten, it felt eerily familiar. Being there helped me understand many things better. Still, I knew it wasn’t home.
Old World, New World begins with the Old World: reflections on the Greek Revolution, the ancient obelisks of Egypt, Arab caravans, and traditional Greek dances. Lift Me Up is set in Jerusalem just before Jesus’s crucifixion. It foreshadows a scene from the forthcoming opera Gethsemane, where it will appear as the closing aria. Makadaisical blends the word makam (a musical mode) with lackadaisical. At the time, I was learning to play the oud and studying the many scales that define Anatolian and Arab music traditions under the guidance of Ara Dinkjian. The piece tries to answer the question: what would a lazy makam sound like?
The transition to the New World begins with two memories from my youth: Northern Song, a string quartet inspired by the simplicity of Quaker music (I attended a Quaker school from kindergarten through high school), and Johnny’s Journey, which explores the 1960s drug culture.
The final four tracks on Old World, New World form a four-movement suite written for the Trio Fadolín, inspired by a live performance of theirs I attended.
Xenitia is a Greek word that evokes homesickness or exile—it captures the feeling of living in the new world while yearning for the old. Tangolero blends two of Argentina’s most iconic dances: tango and bolero. I traveled to Argentina several times in the 1990s and developed a deep appreciation for its music and dance.
The third movement is a string trio arrangement of Lost Going Home to a Caravan, which also appears earlier in the album’s Old World section. Why include a piece about a caravan in the New World half? Interestingly, the inspiration for Lost came from a caravan of Basque-Americans I stumbled upon in Idaho. Each year, they travel more than a thousand miles across the American West with their sheep and covered wagons.
The suite ends with Sundance, an imagined dance that celebrates the sunshine of the American West. Sometimes, when I’m alone in Colorado, I do my own little sun dance—kicking up (as best someone my age can) and slapping the orange dirt of Redstone Canyon.
Ending the album with Sundance is a way of saying that puzzling journeys can lead us back to the simplest elements of our material world—the feel, sight, and smell of dust on your hands, your feet, and in the air as you dance on a dry patch of Colorado earth. Give it a try.
.png)
.png)
.jpg)
