Instrumentation (general) guitar and mandolin orchestra
Program Notes
Pleiades is the first of a number of works from composer Luis Pato inspired in celestial bodies and their mythologies. The work was composed for Orquestra Portuguesa de Guitarras e Bandolins, to whom was also dedicated.
The composer's great inspiring force for this work was undoubtedly his fascination for myths, in this particular case the Greek myth of how Zeus turned the Seven Sisters into stars to comfort their father, Atlas, after making him carry the world on his shoulders.
The musical style of Luis Pato in Pleiades – with modern, wide and complex harmonies, with rhythms which, like a kaleidoscope slowly change shape to lead for new ideas, or even the use of unique orchestrations – creates a fantasy, heavenly, mesmerizing world.