Yannis Kyriakides was born in Limassol, Cyprus in 1969 , emigrated to Britain 1975 and has been living in the Netherlands since 1992. He studied musicology at York University, and later composition with Louis Andriessen. Other big influences in that time have been Dick Raaijmakers and Jani Christou.

As a composer he strives to create new forms and hybrids of media, synthesizing disparate sound sources, exploring spatial and temporal experience, and is often drawn to the relation between language and emotion in music, especially in the use dramatic and narrative material.

Recent large scale works include, the music-theatre pieces, ?The Buffer Zone? (Festival a/d Werf), ?Escamotage? (FNM Staatsoper Stuttgart) , the multimedia pieces ?Dreams of the Blind? (Ensemble MAE), and ?The Queen is the Supreme Power in the Realm? (musikFabrik, ZKM, Koln Triennale).

Prizes have included the Gaudeamus prize in 2000 for ?a conSPIracy cantata?, and an honorable mention in the Prix Ars Electronica 2006 for ?Wordless? (12 electronic portraits for headphones and PA). Together with Andy Moor and Isabelle Vigier, he runs the label for electronic and improvised music, UNSOUNDS, is artistic director of Ensemble MAE, and teaches composition at the Royal Conservatory in Den Haag.

 

The instumental ensemble is amplified and fed via a computer through 4 telegraph keys. Their tapping controls the levels of amplification and colour of the ensemble.

The piece is a play on early encryption techniques and the recently deceased medium of telegraphy.