Cyprien Katsaris

Paris, France

Hope for an Ideal Ocean

Instrumental

Behind the Music

Music not only brings people together from all over the world, but it can also express a range of feelings and also trigger individual memories and sensations specific to a listener that can’t always be captured with words. Music adds emotional depth to things, as can be seen by the impact of Gustav Mahler’s haunting and extraordinary music in the film, “Death in Venice.” The unique melodies help the overall work stand out, and the same can be accomplished with journalism.

Ian has gone to great lengths to report these stories and reveal these truths. His work deserves credit and attention, and I think my music as well as that of other artists helps to achieve that impact. I sincerely hope that this music project will help prevent the continued exploitation of the sea and push to establish a modicum of order on this lawless landscape.

Cyprien Katsaris
About Cyprien Katsaris

Cyprien Katsaris, the French-Cypriot pianist and composer, was born in Marseilles in 1951.

A graduate of the Paris Conservatoire, he won the International Young Interpreters Rostrum-UNESCO (Bratislava, 1977), the First Prize in the International Cziffra Competition (Versailles, 1974) and he was the only western-European prize-winner at the 1972 Queen Elisabeth of Belgium International Competition.

His major international career includes performances with the world’s greatest orchestras: The Berlin Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam and the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra. He has collaborated with conductors such as Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Masur, Sir Neville Marriner, Sir Simon Rattle, Mstislav Rostropovich, Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Eugene Ormandy.

After having recorded extensively for the majors, C. Katsaris created his own label, PIANO 21, in 2001.

On October 17, 1999, the New York concertgoers offered him a standing ovation in Carnegie Hall for his recital dedicated to Frédéric Chopin, performed on the 150th Anniversary of his death. In March 2006, Cyprien Katsaris was the first pianist ever to give masterclasses in Franz Liszt’s house in Weimar since Liszt himself, who taught there for the very last time in 1886, the year he died. On July 10, 2014 he performed in the first concert at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris.



Winner of the 2021 Scripps Howard Award for Excellence in Innovation in Journalism

The Journalism behind the Music

All music in this project is based on The Outlaw Ocean, a New York Times Best-Selling book by Ian Urbina that chronicles lawlessness at sea around the world. This reporting touches on a diversity of abuses ranging from illegal and overfishing, arms trafficking at sea, human slavery, gun running, intentional dumping, murder of stowaways, thievery of ships and other topics.

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