Athanasios Zervas

ATHANASIOS ZERVAS is a composer, theorist, saxophonist, and conductor. He holds a DM in composition and a MM in saxophone performance from Northwestern University, and a BA in music from Chicago State University. He studied composition with Frank Garcia, M. William Karlins, William Russo, Stephen Syverud, Alan Stout, and Jay Alan Yim; saxophone with Frederick Hemke, and Wayne Richards; jazz saxophone and improvisation with V. “Bunky” Green, Joe Daley, and Paul Berliner. He is a specialist on pitch class set theory, contemporary music, composition, orchestration, improvisation, and Greek traditional music.

As a composer, has frequent performances of his music in Europe, Africa, and the US including a performance in Carnegie Hall NY, and he is the recipient of numerous academic and composition awards including the W. T. Faricy Award for Creative Music. He is considered as an eclectic composer. His musical language often fuses elements of Byzantine chant, microtonal sonorities, polyrhythm, and lyric fragments of traditional Greek tunes.

Dr. Zervas taught composition, theory, saxophone and improvisation at Chicago State University, Columbia College Chicago, Northwestern University, and at University of Indianapolis-Athens Greece, the Contemporary Music Conservatory of Athens, and the University of Crete-Rethymno Greece. He has solo performances with the Louisiana Sinfonietta-Baton Rouge, the Chicago Jazz Ensemble, and in Greece with the State Orchestra of Hellenic Music, the Athens Symphony Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra, the State Orchestra of Athens, the Athens Contemporary Ensemble, the State Orchestra of Thessalonica, etc. Between 1993 and 1997 he was conductor of the St. Andrews Greek Orthodox Church of Chicago Choir, and between 1999 to the end of 2006 he was the music director/conductor of the Athens Big Band (Athens Municipality, Greece). He has performed at the Carnegie Hall NY, the Schubert Theater-Boston, the Pick Staiger Concert Hall-Evanston, Mandel Hall of the University of Chicago, and in Greece at Herodion Odeion in Athens, the ‘Megaron’ Music Halls of Athens and Thessaloniki, in Epidaurus Ancient Theater, and in the Opening and Closing Ceremony of the ‘Olympics 2004,’ There are more than 100 compositions written for and premiered by him by American, European, and African composers, and has recorded contemporary, classical, and traditional music with BMG, EMI, FM records, Libra Music Ltd, Mercury/Universal Co., Magni Records, Centaur Records, etc. Dr. Zervas was president of the Hellenic Saxophone Association between 1999 and 2008, and is a member of the Greek Composers Union, the Composers Music Society, NACUSA, North American Saxophone Alliance, and Music Theory Midwest.

Dr. Athanasios Zervas is an Associate Professor (of music theory & creation) at the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki Greece, Professor of Saxophone at the Conservatory of Athens, editor for the electronic theory/composition journal "mus-e-journal" at www.muse.gr, and founder of the Athens Saxophone Quartet.