“Musical innovation is full of danger to the State.” ― Plato, The Republic When the ancient meets the contemporary, new sounds emerge, especially through the lyre, an instrument whose elegant simplicity invites endless reinvention. Drawing from distant traditions, musicians today continue to explore and expand her voice. In this piece, Theodore Koumartzis blends muted chord techniques from ancient Greece with rasgueado, the fiery, percussive strumming style of flamenco guitar. Interestingly, the great Andrés Segovia once tried to banish rasgueado from classical guitar, calling it a technique born “in the noisy hands of the gypsies.” But just as Segovia failed to silence it, so too did Plato fail to stop the spirit of musical innovation. 🎵 Filmed in the haunting ruins of Muro de Bellós — an abandoned village deep in the Pyrenees — this performance features the Lyre of Orpheus, handcrafted in Greece by the LUTHIEROS family.