BATON ROUGE, LA – The Louisiana State University (LSU) College of Music & Dramatic Arts invites family, friends, colleagues, and students of the late Boyd Professor of Composition Dinos Constantinides to a celebration of his life on Sunday, October 3, 3-4:30 PM.

Musicians from the LSU School of Music will pay tribute to the legendary Greek-American composer through performances of his works. Students, friends, and colleagues from near and far will share testimonials to the indelible mark Maestro Constantinides left on the institution and the world at-large.

A reception will follow the main program. In-person attendance will be limited due to health and safety protocols; advance registration will be required to attend in-person. Masks are required inside the Shaver Theatre.

Dial-In Information

For those unable to join us in-person, a livestream of the main program will be offered via the LSU College of Music & Dramatic Arts and LSU School of Music Facebook pages.

More information is available online: shorturl.at/dyIKV.

Constantinides was born in Ioannina, Greece, on May 10, 1929 and received diplomas in Theory and Violin at the Greek Conservatory in Athens, Greece, and a diploma in Violin at Juilliard School. He received his Master's Degree in Music from Indiana University and his PhD in Composition from Michigan State University. He has also studied at Brandeis University, Meadowmount School of Music, and the Athens Conservatory. He studied violin with Dorothy Delay, Ivan Galamian, and Josef Gingold.

He played violin in the State Orchestra in Athens for 10 years. Since 1967 Constantinides taught at Louisiana State University, and received the Boyd Professorship of Composition there in 1986. He also directed the University's New Music Festival and the Louisiana Sinfonietta.

As a composer, he received First Prizes in the Delius Composition Contest, the L'Ensemble Competition of New York, the National Brooklyn College Chamber Opera Competition, and the First Midwest Chamber Opera Theatre Conference. He also won twenty-three consecutive ASCAP Standard Awards in Serious Composition.

Among his 230 compositions, Constantinides wrote six symphonies and the opera, Antigone.

He published 129 compositions with Allyn and Bacon, Cimarron Music and Reproductions, Conners Publications, Dorn Publications, Editions Nakas, Publications of the University of Veracruz, Seesaw Music Corporation, Society of Composers, Inc., and TAP Music Sales. His music is recorded on Capstone Records, Crest Records, Crystal Records, New Ariel Recordings, Orion Master Recordings, Vestige Recordings, and Vienna Modern Masters.

In recent years, his work was performed at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, presented by Distinguished Concerts International New York (DCINY). Constantinides’ Concerto for Flute, Harp, and Orchestra had its world premiere, courtesy of the DCINY Premiere Project, at Lincoln Center's David Geffen Hall in Manhattan on March 17, 2018. As the composer noted at that time, “My composition Concerto for Flute, Harp, and Orchestra, LRC 268b, is written for and dedicated to Iris Derke and DCINY in celebration of their ten-year anniversary in 2018. Iris suggested the work be a companion of the famous Concerto for Flute, Harp, and Orchestra by W.A. Mozart, but with Greek ideas against a backdrop of my native country, Greece. I used some materials from my past work in new combinations. For instance, in the first movement, ‘Reflections,’ a whole tone figure stated by the flute and harp as well as some cadences are drawn from an old work of mine using the poetry of the great contemporary poet Constantine Cavafy. The second movement, ‘Hymn,’ employs the Delphic Hymn, dated from around 200 BC and found in Delphi. I used this music for an LSU theatre production of Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex, directed by Bill Harbin. The final movement, ‘Dance,’ is a setting of traditional Greek dances that share their modal quality and lively mixed meter rhythms. In reality, the entire piece is derived from my background as a Greek musician.”

Constantinides passed away on July 20, 2021. He was 92 years old.