AXIOS’s mission is to preserve a largely unknown and exquisite collection of Greek Orthodox hymns and to raise awareness and renew interest throughout the Greek-American and wider U.S. choral communities of this unique genre of hymnody.
AXIOS: Celebrating the Hymns of Greek Orthodox America
AXIOS’s inaugural project was a choral CD entitled AXIOS: Celebrating the Hymns of Greek Orthodox America. A substantial number of arrangements were collected and reviewed, from which ten hymns (eight of them previously unrecorded) were selected; fourteen accomplished Bay Area choral musicians and a conductor were recruited, and all ten hymns were rehearsed and recorded over the course of a single week. The finished CD was released in 2011. AXIOS: Celebrating the Hymns of Greek Orthodox America has been featured in the Hellenic Journal among other outlets and is available for purchase on Amazon and select Orthodox music websites.
Soma Christou Virtual Choir
Modeled after Eric Whitacre’s very successful virtual choir recordings, AXIOS produced a virtual performance of Tikey Zes’s beloved arrangement of the communion hymn Soma Christou, directed by Dr. Zes himself and premiering on YouTube during Holy Week 2014.
Via webcam or video camera, singers recorded their parts individually from their home computers or devices while listening to a background accompaniment and watching a specially recorded video of Dr. Zes conducting the piece. AXIOS engineers merged 90 individually recorded voices from around the world into a composite a cappella ensemble and created a composite video, which can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-V7Ap1sIenA