Athena Jennifer Galatis
Athena Jennifer Galatis is one of Canada’s most distinguished and inventive composers. Her career spans two decades and includes over 10 solo albums. From the beginning of her career, Galatis garnered critical acclaim for her work. Starting in the 1990s, she charted new directions for composing, pushing the boundaries of classical orchestration with the use of electronic instrumentation. Over the last decade, she has been recognized for incorporating computer-generated electronic instruments in combination with a real orchestra for film scoring.Born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1971, and the daughter of Greek immigrants, Galatis moved to Athens, Greece in 1978 as a child, and it was there where she took her first music lessons. While still at school, her work was performed in many concerts around Athens. Her composition teacher Yannis Kastrinos was one of her mentors. Kastrinos was very surprised by her first symphony written at the age of 13 and he told her he will never show his compositions to her because he didn't want to influence her style. She graduated in 1988 from the National Conservatory in Athens with a performance and composition degree, and soon after went to study piano with Oxana Yablonskaya at Julliard, and Claude Savard at the University of Montreal. She has also worked at McGill University as an assistant to Professor Charles Reiner. Presently, she's an associate professor at The Royal Conservatory of Music. Over the course of her career, she has been the recipient of numerous national and international awards in recognition of her achievements as an artist.
