Michael Levy: Biography

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Michael Levy is a daring, experimental self-taught musician, who since 2006, has focused his unique skills, at both intensively researching & recreating the ancient playing-techniques of the lyres of antiquity. Basing these techniques from both illustrations of ancient lyre players and the various playing-techniques still practiced today in Africa, he has independently produced 12 albums of ancient lyre music & 2 albums of solo Klezmer fiddle music, in just over 3 years...

For the majority of Michael’s albums, he plays an evocation of an ancient Biblical lyre called the “Kinnor” – once played by his very own, very ancient Levite ancestors in the Temple of Jerusalem, to accompany the singing of the Levitical Choir. His instrument is based on depictions of Temple lyres depicted on ancient Jewish coins minted at the time of the Simon Bar Kokhba revolt against the Roman occupation of Judea (132–136 CE)

The Kinnor is documented in both the Biblical texts & the writings of the 1^st¢entury Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus, who actually witnessed the Levites play their lyres in the Temple of Jerusalem during the 1^st century CE.

As the Kinnor is strikingly similar to the ancient Egyptian lyre of the New Kingdom, the ancient Greek Kithara & later, the Roman Kithara, Michael has also explored evoking & recreating the music of ancient Egypt, the music of ancient Greece & the music of ancient Rome, with both original compositions for lyre in a selection of some of the original ancient musical modes, as well as arrangements of some of some of the actual music of ancient Greece.

 Recently, a selection of Michael’s lyre music featured as part of the British Festival of Archaeology Week, as background music for the show “Skies of Ancient Egypt & Greece” at the Planetarium in the World Museum, Liverpool, UK. His live performance of "Hurrian Hymn (Text H6) c.1400BCE", the oldest fragment of written music so far discovered in History, also recently featured in an article in “The Biblical Archaeology Review”.

His arrangement of the 2000 year old “Delphic Hymn To Apollo” was used in a DVD lecture “The Great Tours: Greece & Turkey”, produced by The Great Courses Teaching Company  

Future projects include the use of his music for Alexander Nikolaou's forthcoming documentary on ancient Cyprus - "Cyprus Throughout History"  

This documentary will be on Blu-ray and DVD and will be released in the end 2013 in Cyprus...

ARE THERE ANY FILM MAKERS OUT THERE INTERESTED IN LICENSING MY MUSIC?