What Greek Did For us

When people think of the masterpieces of art, painters such as Gauguin or Picasso might spring to mind. But thousands of years before these modern masters put brush to canvas, artists from all over the ancient world, from France to Egypt to South America, created a trove of masterpieces—artwork stunning for its opulence, its realism, its utility, and its visual drama.

Classical archaeology—the excavation and analysis of ancient Greek and Roman sites—was born on Wednesday, October 22, 1738. On that day, Roque Joaquín Alcubierre, an engineer in the army of the Bourbon royal family in Naples, was lowered by ropes down a square well shaft cut through volcanic material that had formed on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius.

Bassist/composer Petros Klampanis has absorbed a vibrant palette of colors over the course of a varied musical life journey, including Mediterranean and Balkan folk music of his native Greece, classical colorings of studies in Athens, Amsterdam and New York City, and vibrant splashes of musical pigment developed on the diverse NYC jazz scene through collaborations with such innovators as Greg Osby, Jean-Michel Pilc, Shai Maestro, Oded Tzur and Ari Hoenig.

Hailing from Cyprus’s divided capital Nicosia, and led by Antonis Antoniou, the founder of Monsieur Doumani and Trio Tekke, Buzz’ Ayaz creates a transfixing Eastern Mediterranean psychedelia. Their self-titled debut album is a fuzzed-out urban soundscape of dubby electronics, 70s-psych organ, growling bass clarinet, amplified folk instruments, ritual beats and Greek and Anatolian melodicism.