Nikolas Sideris
That would be me then...
My bio is offered directly from the publishers website, and is on quotes...
Nikolas Sideris was born in Athens, Greece in 1977. He has been studying music since the age of 5, and holds a PhD in Composition from Royal Holloway, University of London. He received his Masters in Composition from the same university in 2005 with distinction and he also has a diploma in Piano with honors, and degrees in Harmony, Counterpoint and Fugue. His studies in the UK were funded by the National Scholarship Foundation of Greece (IKY).
Nikolas, as a pianist has performed in concerts all over Greece, in cities such as Athens, Ag. Paraskevi, Holargos, and Ioannina, and has also appeared in Damascus, Syria.
His works have been performed in the UK, USA, Germany and Greece and range from small works for solo instruments, to large works for string orchestras. His work for string orchestra (6-6-5-5-2) Exeliksis won the first prize in the Royal Holloway Composition Competition in 2005 and was performed live the next year in Egham, UK. He's received commissions by orchestras and soloists from around the world and his work The City Under Different Eyes for Solo Piano and Audio Manipulation was featured in an adaptive audio playback software system.
He is also active in the computer games industry, as a composer and sound designer and recently the game that he scored, Privates by Size Five Games won a BAFTA for best Educational - Secondary Game. He co-owns North by Sound, an Audio Production company based in Norway and Greece.
He is a loving husband and father of two.
As a pianist, myself (though with great lack of practice over the past decade or so...), I've been composing regularly for piano, solo or other. Actually I'm in the process of composing a piano concerto but don't tell anyone!
So, quite a few of my works are for solo piano, or piano 4 hands. Following are a list of these works, some descriptions, youtube videos, and attached in the post you'll find some examples, and parts of the published scores!
Sketch Music
This score is commercially available and not for free, but attached you'll find the first few pages for free.
Is a collection of easy to intermediate works for solo piano, created mostly for educational reasons. As a piano teacher (and a composer) I was simply bothered by the lack of the material
I would like to use. My students reacted greatly to these short works, and... well... here we are!
Last year, Luke Bartolomeo of "Repertoire Review" offered a great (and favorable... heh...) review of the work, which can be found
HERE
I'm including 3 youtube videos of 10 of the 21 works available in youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeTFz-6G-SY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tMBOVFIMx8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SEw9lS2pBM
Piano Stories, For piano, 4 hands
This score is commercially available, but attached you'll find the first work titled "If only he was carefree", which, btw, is NOT currently available in youtube.
This is my most recent output for the piano, even if it's for 4 hands.
A series of 7 movements (or works... One could potentially perform them separately or together) that were composed over a period of around 15 years... Some themes date back to the late 90s, while others are as fresh as 2012 is... The difficulty is rather more advanced than
Sketch Music but if I'm allowed to say that for myself, I do think that it's the most catchy tunes I've composed as far as classical music is concerned.
Following is a youtube playlist with 5 out of the 7 movements:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsdvCIwm ... xZBi78_7ar
One special note should be made here. As I realized that a duet may not be able to practice as much as they'd like (especially if we're talking about teacher-student) I've made available all the solo parts of the duets, as mp3 files, along with an ugly metronome in the beginning of each work, for reference. While not works of art on their own, they should serve their purpose I think...
Perniciosus
Finally, my largest piano work to date (or until the concerto comes along, which won't be solo though)...
This score is commercially available, but attached you'll get a few various pages from the score (since the score changes a lot throughout).
This is a fierce work. Very difficult, very exciting (I'd like to think) for the pianist and the audience. A worthy concert hall work, as I've been told... Bulgarian pianist, Kristian Banatzianou recorded it around 2007 or 2008 and the recording of the whole work, with the score to follow is available in youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grGh-U26Db4
All the works listed above are sold commercially through the website of the published at http://www.musica-ferrum.com
Sketch Music Nikolas Sideris pages 1-6.pdf
Piano Stories Nikolas Sideris page 1-7.pdf
Perniciosus Nikolas Sideris various pages.pdf