Sotirios Chianis

Here is a short film (1968/1972) made in cooperation with SUNY, Discovering the Music of the Middle East, featuring a music professor I had at Binghamton, an ethnomusicologist who also taught a course about the Romantic Era. (We learned, among other things, that Debussy heard gamelan music at the World's Fair and that Mahler had a fondness for Chinese poetry, then had a great feast at the end of the semester.) Here he is performing at the opening, Dr. Sotirios (Sam) Chianis, a scholar of musical traditions and brilliant performer of traditional music.