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Strat Andriotis is a Canadian composer and guitarist who has worked in many different types of music. These days, he is composing chamber music with an interesting edge to it. His current compact disc, Liars Incorporated, provides new rhythms and unusual harmonies that make music buffs realize that we can still create new and fascinating sound patterns.
Where in Greece were you born?
I was born in Elefsina, which is about 40 miles outside of Athens. My family left Greece in 1967 because of political unrest. I was only four years old, so all I really remember is watching crabs running around the beach. My father hoped for a better life in Canada, so we moved to Hamilton, Ontario. The move was difficult for me because two years later, I still couldn't speak English well and ended up failing the first grade.
When did you start guitar lessons?
I started playing the piano when I was about 11 and I switched to the guitar around age 14. I actually never took guitar lessons, but I worked at playing it on my own after listening to a 1960s British rock group called Cream and to electric guitarist Jimi Hendrix. Cream, which was made up of bassist and singer Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker as well as guitarist and singer Eric Clapton, played a mixture of blues rock, hard rock, and psychedelic rock. Hendrix was the most influential rock musician of his time.
When I was 16 or 17, I heard John McLaughlin's 1978 studio album Electric Guitarist. The first song I heard was Do you hear the voices that you left behind. I wanted to quit guitar after hearing that song. His playing was so far over my head at that time I did not know where to start. In the long run, it changed my life a great deal because it got me into jazz. That changed the way I thought about the possibilities of music and what the guitar could do. McLaughlin's music made me realize that speed and melody could be shades of the same thing. It taught me that speed could drive a melody and be beautiful, as in the music of Jean Django Reinhardt, who lived from 1910 to 1953.