When I was a boy I asked my father what he wanted to be when he too was young.
"A conductor."
"Of a train?"
"No", he smiled… (He owned a small luncheonette on Columbus Avenue in NYC a few of blocks from what would be one day become Lincoln Center)… "I wanted to be the man who stands before an orchestra and leads them to make music."
He was 13 and alone when many, many years ago, he came to America, from a poor farm on an island in Greece. He never had a hope of doing anything remotely like that but he always loved music especially Opera and Classical.
We had a little spinet at home and whenever I opened it and begin to tinker around the keys he would quietly watch and I’m sure believed that in some way his dream lived on in me. He died many years before I would slowly begin to realize and create music, but I want to believe he would have liked some of that music and perhaps especially this short work dedicated to and named after him.