Santorini degli Archangeli
Composer, Arranger, Vocalist, Writer
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Biographical and Institutional Background
Santorini degli Archangeli (they/them/their) is a Xaymacan (Jamaican)-born composer, conductor, and counter tenor, whose artistic output spans sacred, secular, political, and autobiographical works for piano, voice, chorus, and others. They attended The Priory School, Dunrobin, Hydel, and Stella Maris Preparatory Schools; at the last of which, given their assessment as academically advanced, they skipped grade 4 and were put in grade 5. At the end of grade 6, they sat the Common Entrance Examinations and went on to attend Ardenne High School. It was here that they met, and became friends with, the Principal, the late Winston Somerville Roberts, who took a keen interest in their academic and personal wellbeing. Winston Roberts, famous for reminding the students that, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste”, ensured that Santorini, as well as the hundreds of other students in his charge, were encouraged and inspired on a daily basis. Winston Roberts did not tolerate bullying, in any capacity, from his students, and apart from his no-nonsense approach to student’s behaviour, paired it with his unique brand of humour, that would feed the students’ admiration of him for many years to come. Sadly, Principal Roberts, after a battle with cancer, died in Santorini’s second year at the school; and for his memorial, which was held at the school’s auditorium, he requested that the choir perform Santorini’s hymn, “O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go”. This piece, featured second in their work Songs from the Old World, Op. 5, was not only inspired by Roberts, but dedicated to him in the work. When Santorini would go on to become an educator in later years, it was Roberts’ uniquely disciplined, open-minded and open-hearted approach, that would become an important part of their own pedagogical ethos in interactions with their students. After graduating from Ardenne High School, they went on to study Music Education and Literacy Development at the Mico Teachers’ College, their mother’s alma mater; (Classical) Vocal Performance at The Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, and Vocal Performance (Opera) at Alcorn State University. They are also Safe Space Certified by the Family and Youth Services Bureau of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; Suicide Prevention Training by Kognito; and Dealing with Diversity in the Workplace by Global Mindset. They desire to attain full CPR and First Aid certification in the near future. They are a concert performer, who has performed in Jamaica and the United States; and Founder and Conductor of the currently disbanded Il Coro Accademia Trascendenza: an academic choral fellowship that served as an incubator for encouraging and developing vocal talent, musicianship, and musical scholarship, as well as a community for vocalists, and musicians, of various ages and proficiencies. |
Santorini is passionate about the Culinary Arts; Latin Dancing, Writing, Human and LGBTQ Rights activism, and great lover of Nature and animals. A little known fact is that they are ordained with the Church of Spiritual Humanism, which they did to fulfil the wishes of a couple of friends who wanted them to officiate their wedding. They have also maintained a blog, Dreams on a Battlefield… since 2009.
In addition to being a musician, Santorini’s early years were dedicated to painting and dance. Santorini actually began to teach themself Music Theory at the age of 7. In fact, they originally wanted to pursue Dance as their career, but after delving deeper into their musical studies and abilities when they were in 5th and 6th form, they decided to pursue Music, but continued to carry Dance through their adolescent life and into adulthood. They also hold numerous national awards for Martial Arts, which they began at the age of 2, earning their Junior Black Belt at the age of 12, and 1st Dan at around age 14 or 15, then retiring from that early profession at the age of 19.
Santorini’s earliest mentor in their professional musical career was Jamaican composer and luminary, the late Lloyd Hall, where they were a featured soloist for a number of years on Hall’s programmes with the Saint Andrew Singers. Perhaps the most influential, however, was Barbara Lloyd, a pianist and music educator with an encyclopaedic knowledge and understanding of Music Theory, Pedagogy and Composition; followed by Pauline Forrest-Watson, in whose vocal studio they were trained at the Edna Manley College’s School of Music. They have also been mentored, for varying periods of time, by a number of other music and other professionals, both in Jamaica and the United States, including Lady Rheima Hall, Dr. Carole Powell, Errol Lyn, Larry Lam, Richard Branden, Denys Wibaux (Former French Ambassador to Jamaica), Christine Bannon-Rodrigues, Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter, Dr. Kathy Bullock, Dr. Roger Williams, Peter Ashbourne, Margarita Díaz-Picasso, Teresita Irañeta Ruiz, Peter Dent, Professor Rex Nettleford, Marjorie Whylie, Dr. Noel Dexter, Barry Moncrieffe, Bert Rose, Curtis Watson, Dr. Byron Johnson, Dr. Donna Poirier, Buddy Pouyat, among others.
Santorini is a direct vocal descendant of Elena Obraztsova, through their teacher Pauline Forrest-Watson (trained in Russia), inheriting a lineage of Slavic vocal strength and lyricism. A listed composer in the Music by Black Composers – Living Composers Directory; the Institute for Composer Diversity; here, on the Music Unites Jamaica Foundation’s Jamaican Composers; British Music Collection; Musicalics: The Classical Composers Database; and the Choral Music by Trans+ Composers directories, confirming their international visibility and contribution to contemporary classical music. Perhaps most notably, they are openly Queer, a truth that carries profound meaning given the deeply rooted homophobic exceptionalism that is a widely recognised feature of their homeland, Jamaica, and across much of the Caribbean. This personal identity deeply informs their artistic language and the emotional urgency of their work.
Artistic Identity and Aesthetic Ethos
Santorini’s compositional fingerprint is defined not only by technical choices but by a deeply embodied queer sensibility. Their compositions are acts of truth-telling; of baring the soul through sound. Their music emerges from a place where the sacred and the sensual, the classical and the diasporic, converse rather than conflict. Their writing is revelatory, offering something emotionally real, spiritually grounded, and deeply human. Each piece is a kind of ritual, shaped by love, grief, memory, etc., uncompromising, and offered in its purest form. Integrity is the thread that weaves the harmony, the pacing, the text, and the silences into a coherent whole. Their essence, intersectional identities and experiences, are inextricable from their work. Music is the offering, and unvarnished truth is the point; forming a soundscape that is both grounded and transcendent.
Key Works and Their Queer Resonance
‘The Mountain’s Song (Wind & Sea)’ - An a cappella sacred-style choral piece that anthropomorphises the natural elements of the Mountain, Wind and Sea. In this piece, the Mountain bears witness and holds memory of the lovers, the Wind and the Sea, their lovemaking and their solemn oaths to one another before all of Nature.
‘Elegy: Oratorio for Joseph Michael Buchanan’ - A sacred oratorio focused on their journey with grief after the passing of their brother; and containing, among other things, a coded, poignant, passage about the night they came out to their beloved brother, and his resulting affirming and love-informed response.
‘After the Storm’ - A protest work composed in response to former Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding’s anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric. It addresses societal exclusion and ends in a hopeful commitment to education and empathy.
‘Beloved, Op. 6’ - A landmark song cycle that boldly centres queer love through a sophisticated fusion of poetic metaphor and evocative musical language. While more overt than many earlier works addressing similar themes, it employs a refined literary style: rich in sensual imagery and layered symbolism, that elevates erotic intimacy to a cosmic, spiritual plane. The music’s lush harmonies, varying rhythmic complexity, and enveloping textures deepen this exploration, creating an experience that is both deeply personal and universally resonant. Through Beloved, Op. 6, Santorini degli Archangeli expands the art song tradition, offering a powerful affirmation of queer identity, desire, and transcendence that challenges canonical boundaries and enriches contemporary musical discourse.
‘Endless Dream: Lament for José’ - A symphonic poem that speaks to the immense sadness, uncertainty, and grief, with which the composer grappled after their friend, and object of deep affection, suddenly emigrated when they were both adolescents.
‘I Lose Myself’ and ‘When Your Heart Speaks to Mine’ - Two Art Songs composed for two different college mates for whom the composer held deep, and enduring, affection, during their student tenure at the performing arts college in Jamaica. They present universally accessible, yet distinct emotional palettes on the sort of policed, and unspoken, affection experienced by Queer individuals in societies like Jamaica.
Themes & Influences
Santorini degli Archangeli’s work is imbued with:
Performance Practice Approach
The first thing to note when performing their music is that they prefer their music to be performed with a tuning of A 442 hz. Performing Santorini degli Archangeli’s music is not merely about technical display but, more often than not, emotional transparency, linguistic nuance, and chamber synergy. The ideal performer approaches their scores with a combination of textual reverence, emotional courage, and refined musical instinct. Whether singing a single intimate line or navigating complex ensemble textures, the goal is to honour the deeply personal world Santorini so generously shares.
As a gender non-conforming, androgynous Black Jamaican composer who is unapologetically Queer, Santorini degli Archangeli offers a unique, powerful voice within contemporary classical music. Their works blend tonal clarity with harmonic sophistication, intimate narrative with cultural and personal identity, and musical innovation with deep emotional truth. Their compositions invite performers and listeners into a richly textured world of sound, identity, and story.
G E N R E S
Classical
Santorini degli Archangeli’s works in the classical genre - by which one may understand art music not explicitly sacred, programmatic, or popular - demonstrate their command of traditional forms infused with deeply personal expression. Whether crafting solo piano pieces like In the Heart of Sadness…; Early Morning Air; or writing chamber music that foregrounds lyricism and tonal colour, degli Archangeli engages classical structures not as constraints, but as vessels for emotional precision. Their use of strophic, ternary, and sonata-inspired forms, for example, reveals a respect for classical architecture, even as they bend it subtly to accommodate rubato phrasing, unexpected harmonic turns, and a fluid interplay between tonal centres. Their harmonic language is lush but disciplined; frequently tonal or modal with chromatic nuance, always in service of emotional truth.
In works such as Songs from the Old World, Op. 5, degli Archangeli shows how text setting and classical form can coexist with a poetic vulnerability that resists rigidity. The vocal lines often recall Lieder traditions, while the accompaniment parts - especially for pianoforte - how an independence and textural variety that deepen the expressive field. There is a refined clarity in their writing that places them in conversation with earlier art music traditions, yet their voice is unmistakably contemporary, rooted in their identity, history, and sensibility. In this way, degli Archangeli’s classical works expand the genre from within, using its tools not to revive the past, but to craft something enduringly human.
Santorini degli Archangeli’s handling of texture is central to their expressive palette, whether in the choral-symphonic realm of Elegy or the intimacy of pianoforte-accompanied pieces. In their piano writing - for instance in Songs from the Old World, Op. 5 and Beloved, Op. 6 - texture becomes an equal partner to melody. In Op. 5, the pianoforte often provides a tapestry of arpeggiated figures: filigree in the right hand balanced by rolling left-hand ostinati, with carefully controlled pedaling to sustain resonances that echo the choral lines above. Those resonances are sometimes extended into pedal-point passages that undergird a floating vocal melody, giving a sense of timeless space. In Beloved, Op. 6, the piano textures range from the gently layered block chords and open-fifth voicings in When I Wake to the more intricate, contrapuntal interplay in Skin, where inner voices in the accompaniment carry their own melodic motifs. Throughout, degli Archangeli uses texture not merely to support the voice but to tell its own story: sometimes sparse and transparent, sometimes dense and kaleidoscopic, always moulded to the emotional core of the text.
List of Works:
Ain’t No Nigger Child!
At the Awakening of the Dawn
Ave Maria (Solo for Soprano)
Behold the Cherry Blossoms
Beloved, Op. 6
Beloved, Op. 9 (Version for Orchestra)
Che Tutti Gli Uomini Udire la Sua Voce!, Op. 3 (Oratorio)
Ding Dong! Merrily On High (SATB)
Ding Dong! Merrily On High (Solo for Pianoforte)
Dov’è il Sole?
Early Morning Air
Elegy: Oratorio for Joseph Michael Buchanan, Op. 4
Endless Dream: Lament for José
For As Eventide Shadows…
Gott, sei mir gnädig nach deiner Güte
His Pow’r Shall Be Revealed
I Lose Myself
In the Heart of Sadness…
In Verdant Fields He Lay
John Crow Seh
Joy to the World!
Labyrinth of Dreamers (Version A)
Labyrinth of Dreamers (Version B)
Les Affres du Désir
L’Oraison Dominicale
Magnificat Anima Mea Dominum
Mighty is the Lord of Hosts
Morn
No River Deep of Tears May Flow
Over the Ocean Waves
Quiet’ Sings the Dawn
Redemption Song
Silent Night
Songs from the Old World, Op. 5
The Dark Voyage (from ‘Elegy’) [Concert Arrangement]
The Enchanted Dream
The First Noël
The Mountain’s Song (Wind & Sea)
The Path, Op. 7
Unto the Heavens Shall Ye Raise
Veni, Veni, Emmanuel
We Said Farewell
When Your Heart Speaks to Mine
While Teardrops Fell to the Earth
Wiegenlied der Hirten (Arrangement for Strings)
Sacred
Santorini degli Archangeli’s sacred works are marked by a profound sense of spiritual intimacy and a deeply personal approach to faith, shaped by their self-identification as spiritual but not religious. Rather than adhering to traditional dogma or liturgical function, their sacred compositions explore the emotional and metaphysical dimensions of divinity, often blending traditional religious imagery with broader, more inclusive themes of love, loss, transcendence, and the human yearning for connection. In pieces like the unaccompanied Alleluia and the expansive oratorio Elegy, degli Archangeli crafts sacred soundscapes that feel devotional, especially because they speak authentically from the heart.
* On Elegy: The approach to the sacred in Elegy is one of intimate lamentation and reverent questioning, rather than triumphant proclamation or dogmatic assertion. Santorini degli Archangeli treats the sacred not as a fixed doctrine but as a space of vulnerability, grief, and spiritual searching. Elegy is an oratorio that reimagines the genre from within, using its traditional structure and expressive forces to explore mourning as a sacred experience, rather than delivering doctrinal content. It adopts the traditional sacred genre’s scale and expressive gravity, while subverting expectations by focusing on mourning as a sacred act in and of itself. The divine presence in the work is not altogether thunderous or omnipotent; sometimes, it is elusive, tender, even silent. Through this, degli Archangeli presents a Creator or Source, who listens more than speaks, and whose holiness is bound up with the human experience of suffering and love.
The sacred emerges not from liturgical formulae but from moments of raw honesty and emotional clarity. In essence, Elegy sanctifies the process of mourning, treating it as a rite of passage toward healing, understanding, or simply the endurance of love beyond death. It is a sacred work not because it adheres to religion, but because it renders the act of remembrance holy.
This spiritual stance allows their music to transcend denominational boundaries. Works such as For As Eventide Shadows… and The Mountain’s Song employ a contemplative harmonic palette - rich with modal inflection, chromatic ambiguity, and sudden shafts of tonal light - to evoke the ineffable. Texts, whether scriptural or original, are treated with sensitivity and often interpreted through the lens of universal human experience. In this way, degli Archangeli’s sacred music becomes less about worship in the traditional sense and more about bearing witness: to sorrow, to hope, to beauty, and to the sacred presence that flickers quietly in the margins of everyday life.
List of Works:
Ave Maria (Solo for Soprano)
Ave Maria (SATB, Unaccompanied)
Alleluia
Dona Nobis Pacem
Lord, For Thy Tender Mercies’ Sake
Magnificat Anima Mea Dominum
O Magnum Mysterium
The Lord’s Prayer (Version 1)
The Lord’s Prayer (Version 2)
There is a Balm in Gilead
Thou Healest the Anguish’d Heart
Patriotic
Santorini degli Archangeli’s patriotic works are marked less by traditional nationalism and more by a deeply personal, critical engagement with Jamaica’s cultural identity, social realities, and histories of marginalisation. Pieces such as Endless Dream (Lament for José) and The Mountain’s Song, while not expressly patriotic, reflect this ethos through their evocation of diasporic longing, environmental reverence, and collective memory. Their patriotic works are rooted in honouring resilience and place, often addressing themes of displacement, survival, and belonging without resorting to triumphalist rhetoric.
After the Storm stands out as a distinctly protest-driven yet patriotic work, written in response to Bruce Golding’s disparagement of Jamaica’s LGBTQ+ community during a BBC HardTalk interview. While it delivers a pointed critique of intolerance, the piece also incorporates a brief melodic homage to Lloyd Hall’s Jamaica Land of Beauty, blending social justice with cultural pride. This duality captures Santorini degli Archangeli’s approach to patriotism as a courageous call for inclusion and transformation - an affirmation of their homeland’s beauty and heritage alongside a demand for honesty and expanded acceptance. Their most recently completed work, Colours of the Sacred Isle (2025), is an expansive patriotic anthem that offers a highly nuanced picture of life in Jamaica, through the lens of the composer’s lived experience. The piece, written in English and Jamaican Patois, embodies the liminality and duality of the country’s colonial and cultural heritage. Within the piece, a vital clue is offered in the form of the composer’s intentional reclamation of the indigenous Taino’s original name of the island, Xaymaca. It speaks to the composer’s desire for the country to reclaim and honour both her history and identity as a land for, and belonging to, her people. Santorini degli Archangeli admits to being inspired by New Zealand’s own reckoning with their colonial inheritance, and restoration of the indigenous name, Aotearoa, believing that a similar shift in mindset and reclamation would be powerful for the Jamaican people. The piece presents almost as dialogic vignettes: through-composed and employing both the exotic double harmonic major and minor scales, as well as varying choral textures from unified homophony, to imitative counterpoint, among other devices. What is evident throughout, however, is the composer’s love for their country, and willingness to see her in all her beauty and her darkness, refusing to shy away from either through intentional censorship or sanitisation; choosing, rather, to be completely honest with their portrayal.
List of Works:
After the Storm
Jamaica National Anthem
Colours of the Sacred Isle, Op. 8
Film
Santorini has been approached about writing for film projects; their emotionally vulnerable and evocative writing cited as the reason for interest by one project manager. However, as this has been a very recent development, they do not currently possess a vast catalogue within that genre. One single completed piece is listed at this moment.
List of Works:
O, Mine Eyes Deceive! (Subtitled: “Reunion”; [Endings 1 & 2])
W H E R E T O P U R C H A S E
Select works are currently available through J.W. Pepper, Sheet Music Direct and Sheet Music Plus, with additional sources to follow. Links below.
https://www.jwpepper.com/myscore/Santorini
https://www.sheetmusicdirect.com/en-US/Search.aspx?query=Santorini%2Bdegli%2BArchangeli
https://www.sheetmusicplus.com/en/category/publishers/s/santorini-degli-archangeli/?srule=topsellers&sz=50
S O C I A L M E D I A
Instagram: https://instagram.com/santorini_arch
Vero: https://vero.co/santoriniarch
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/santorini_arch
BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/santoriniarch.bsky.social
Stage32: https://www.stage32.com/profile/43656
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SantorinidegliArchangeli
Blog: Dreams on a Battlefield… (https://hommearme.blogspot.com/ )
In addition to being a musician, Santorini’s early years were dedicated to painting and dance. Santorini actually began to teach themself Music Theory at the age of 7. In fact, they originally wanted to pursue Dance as their career, but after delving deeper into their musical studies and abilities when they were in 5th and 6th form, they decided to pursue Music, but continued to carry Dance through their adolescent life and into adulthood. They also hold numerous national awards for Martial Arts, which they began at the age of 2, earning their Junior Black Belt at the age of 12, and 1st Dan at around age 14 or 15, then retiring from that early profession at the age of 19.
Santorini’s earliest mentor in their professional musical career was Jamaican composer and luminary, the late Lloyd Hall, where they were a featured soloist for a number of years on Hall’s programmes with the Saint Andrew Singers. Perhaps the most influential, however, was Barbara Lloyd, a pianist and music educator with an encyclopaedic knowledge and understanding of Music Theory, Pedagogy and Composition; followed by Pauline Forrest-Watson, in whose vocal studio they were trained at the Edna Manley College’s School of Music. They have also been mentored, for varying periods of time, by a number of other music and other professionals, both in Jamaica and the United States, including Lady Rheima Hall, Dr. Carole Powell, Errol Lyn, Larry Lam, Richard Branden, Denys Wibaux (Former French Ambassador to Jamaica), Christine Bannon-Rodrigues, Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter, Dr. Kathy Bullock, Dr. Roger Williams, Peter Ashbourne, Margarita Díaz-Picasso, Teresita Irañeta Ruiz, Peter Dent, Professor Rex Nettleford, Marjorie Whylie, Dr. Noel Dexter, Barry Moncrieffe, Bert Rose, Curtis Watson, Dr. Byron Johnson, Dr. Donna Poirier, Buddy Pouyat, among others.
Santorini is a direct vocal descendant of Elena Obraztsova, through their teacher Pauline Forrest-Watson (trained in Russia), inheriting a lineage of Slavic vocal strength and lyricism. A listed composer in the Music by Black Composers – Living Composers Directory; the Institute for Composer Diversity; here, on the Music Unites Jamaica Foundation’s Jamaican Composers; British Music Collection; Musicalics: The Classical Composers Database; and the Choral Music by Trans+ Composers directories, confirming their international visibility and contribution to contemporary classical music. Perhaps most notably, they are openly Queer, a truth that carries profound meaning given the deeply rooted homophobic exceptionalism that is a widely recognised feature of their homeland, Jamaica, and across much of the Caribbean. This personal identity deeply informs their artistic language and the emotional urgency of their work.
Artistic Identity and Aesthetic Ethos
Santorini’s compositional fingerprint is defined not only by technical choices but by a deeply embodied queer sensibility. Their compositions are acts of truth-telling; of baring the soul through sound. Their music emerges from a place where the sacred and the sensual, the classical and the diasporic, converse rather than conflict. Their writing is revelatory, offering something emotionally real, spiritually grounded, and deeply human. Each piece is a kind of ritual, shaped by love, grief, memory, etc., uncompromising, and offered in its purest form. Integrity is the thread that weaves the harmony, the pacing, the text, and the silences into a coherent whole. Their essence, intersectional identities and experiences, are inextricable from their work. Music is the offering, and unvarnished truth is the point; forming a soundscape that is both grounded and transcendent.
Key Works and Their Queer Resonance
‘The Mountain’s Song (Wind & Sea)’ - An a cappella sacred-style choral piece that anthropomorphises the natural elements of the Mountain, Wind and Sea. In this piece, the Mountain bears witness and holds memory of the lovers, the Wind and the Sea, their lovemaking and their solemn oaths to one another before all of Nature.
‘Elegy: Oratorio for Joseph Michael Buchanan’ - A sacred oratorio focused on their journey with grief after the passing of their brother; and containing, among other things, a coded, poignant, passage about the night they came out to their beloved brother, and his resulting affirming and love-informed response.
‘After the Storm’ - A protest work composed in response to former Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding’s anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric. It addresses societal exclusion and ends in a hopeful commitment to education and empathy.
‘Beloved, Op. 6’ - A landmark song cycle that boldly centres queer love through a sophisticated fusion of poetic metaphor and evocative musical language. While more overt than many earlier works addressing similar themes, it employs a refined literary style: rich in sensual imagery and layered symbolism, that elevates erotic intimacy to a cosmic, spiritual plane. The music’s lush harmonies, varying rhythmic complexity, and enveloping textures deepen this exploration, creating an experience that is both deeply personal and universally resonant. Through Beloved, Op. 6, Santorini degli Archangeli expands the art song tradition, offering a powerful affirmation of queer identity, desire, and transcendence that challenges canonical boundaries and enriches contemporary musical discourse.
‘Endless Dream: Lament for José’ - A symphonic poem that speaks to the immense sadness, uncertainty, and grief, with which the composer grappled after their friend, and object of deep affection, suddenly emigrated when they were both adolescents.
‘I Lose Myself’ and ‘When Your Heart Speaks to Mine’ - Two Art Songs composed for two different college mates for whom the composer held deep, and enduring, affection, during their student tenure at the performing arts college in Jamaica. They present universally accessible, yet distinct emotional palettes on the sort of policed, and unspoken, affection experienced by Queer individuals in societies like Jamaica.
Themes & Influences
Santorini degli Archangeli’s work is imbued with:
- Exploration of gender fluidity and non-conformity, reflected in various ways throughout their œuvre.
- Deep engagement with gay love and relationships, articulated with vulnerability and strength.
- Jamaican cultural heritage that informs rhythmic and expressive subtleties.
- The nuanced interplay of identity, longing, and resilience, shaping a distinct and personal musical voice.
Performance Practice Approach
The first thing to note when performing their music is that they prefer their music to be performed with a tuning of A 442 hz. Performing Santorini degli Archangeli’s music is not merely about technical display but, more often than not, emotional transparency, linguistic nuance, and chamber synergy. The ideal performer approaches their scores with a combination of textual reverence, emotional courage, and refined musical instinct. Whether singing a single intimate line or navigating complex ensemble textures, the goal is to honour the deeply personal world Santorini so generously shares.
As a gender non-conforming, androgynous Black Jamaican composer who is unapologetically Queer, Santorini degli Archangeli offers a unique, powerful voice within contemporary classical music. Their works blend tonal clarity with harmonic sophistication, intimate narrative with cultural and personal identity, and musical innovation with deep emotional truth. Their compositions invite performers and listeners into a richly textured world of sound, identity, and story.
G E N R E S
Classical
Santorini degli Archangeli’s works in the classical genre - by which one may understand art music not explicitly sacred, programmatic, or popular - demonstrate their command of traditional forms infused with deeply personal expression. Whether crafting solo piano pieces like In the Heart of Sadness…; Early Morning Air; or writing chamber music that foregrounds lyricism and tonal colour, degli Archangeli engages classical structures not as constraints, but as vessels for emotional precision. Their use of strophic, ternary, and sonata-inspired forms, for example, reveals a respect for classical architecture, even as they bend it subtly to accommodate rubato phrasing, unexpected harmonic turns, and a fluid interplay between tonal centres. Their harmonic language is lush but disciplined; frequently tonal or modal with chromatic nuance, always in service of emotional truth.
In works such as Songs from the Old World, Op. 5, degli Archangeli shows how text setting and classical form can coexist with a poetic vulnerability that resists rigidity. The vocal lines often recall Lieder traditions, while the accompaniment parts - especially for pianoforte - how an independence and textural variety that deepen the expressive field. There is a refined clarity in their writing that places them in conversation with earlier art music traditions, yet their voice is unmistakably contemporary, rooted in their identity, history, and sensibility. In this way, degli Archangeli’s classical works expand the genre from within, using its tools not to revive the past, but to craft something enduringly human.
Santorini degli Archangeli’s handling of texture is central to their expressive palette, whether in the choral-symphonic realm of Elegy or the intimacy of pianoforte-accompanied pieces. In their piano writing - for instance in Songs from the Old World, Op. 5 and Beloved, Op. 6 - texture becomes an equal partner to melody. In Op. 5, the pianoforte often provides a tapestry of arpeggiated figures: filigree in the right hand balanced by rolling left-hand ostinati, with carefully controlled pedaling to sustain resonances that echo the choral lines above. Those resonances are sometimes extended into pedal-point passages that undergird a floating vocal melody, giving a sense of timeless space. In Beloved, Op. 6, the piano textures range from the gently layered block chords and open-fifth voicings in When I Wake to the more intricate, contrapuntal interplay in Skin, where inner voices in the accompaniment carry their own melodic motifs. Throughout, degli Archangeli uses texture not merely to support the voice but to tell its own story: sometimes sparse and transparent, sometimes dense and kaleidoscopic, always moulded to the emotional core of the text.
List of Works:
Ain’t No Nigger Child!
At the Awakening of the Dawn
Ave Maria (Solo for Soprano)
Behold the Cherry Blossoms
Beloved, Op. 6
Beloved, Op. 9 (Version for Orchestra)
Che Tutti Gli Uomini Udire la Sua Voce!, Op. 3 (Oratorio)
Ding Dong! Merrily On High (SATB)
Ding Dong! Merrily On High (Solo for Pianoforte)
Dov’è il Sole?
Early Morning Air
Elegy: Oratorio for Joseph Michael Buchanan, Op. 4
Endless Dream: Lament for José
For As Eventide Shadows…
Gott, sei mir gnädig nach deiner Güte
His Pow’r Shall Be Revealed
I Lose Myself
In the Heart of Sadness…
In Verdant Fields He Lay
John Crow Seh
Joy to the World!
Labyrinth of Dreamers (Version A)
Labyrinth of Dreamers (Version B)
Les Affres du Désir
L’Oraison Dominicale
Magnificat Anima Mea Dominum
Mighty is the Lord of Hosts
Morn
No River Deep of Tears May Flow
Over the Ocean Waves
Quiet’ Sings the Dawn
Redemption Song
Silent Night
Songs from the Old World, Op. 5
The Dark Voyage (from ‘Elegy’) [Concert Arrangement]
The Enchanted Dream
The First Noël
The Mountain’s Song (Wind & Sea)
The Path, Op. 7
Unto the Heavens Shall Ye Raise
Veni, Veni, Emmanuel
We Said Farewell
When Your Heart Speaks to Mine
While Teardrops Fell to the Earth
Wiegenlied der Hirten (Arrangement for Strings)
Sacred
Santorini degli Archangeli’s sacred works are marked by a profound sense of spiritual intimacy and a deeply personal approach to faith, shaped by their self-identification as spiritual but not religious. Rather than adhering to traditional dogma or liturgical function, their sacred compositions explore the emotional and metaphysical dimensions of divinity, often blending traditional religious imagery with broader, more inclusive themes of love, loss, transcendence, and the human yearning for connection. In pieces like the unaccompanied Alleluia and the expansive oratorio Elegy, degli Archangeli crafts sacred soundscapes that feel devotional, especially because they speak authentically from the heart.
* On Elegy: The approach to the sacred in Elegy is one of intimate lamentation and reverent questioning, rather than triumphant proclamation or dogmatic assertion. Santorini degli Archangeli treats the sacred not as a fixed doctrine but as a space of vulnerability, grief, and spiritual searching. Elegy is an oratorio that reimagines the genre from within, using its traditional structure and expressive forces to explore mourning as a sacred experience, rather than delivering doctrinal content. It adopts the traditional sacred genre’s scale and expressive gravity, while subverting expectations by focusing on mourning as a sacred act in and of itself. The divine presence in the work is not altogether thunderous or omnipotent; sometimes, it is elusive, tender, even silent. Through this, degli Archangeli presents a Creator or Source, who listens more than speaks, and whose holiness is bound up with the human experience of suffering and love.
The sacred emerges not from liturgical formulae but from moments of raw honesty and emotional clarity. In essence, Elegy sanctifies the process of mourning, treating it as a rite of passage toward healing, understanding, or simply the endurance of love beyond death. It is a sacred work not because it adheres to religion, but because it renders the act of remembrance holy.
This spiritual stance allows their music to transcend denominational boundaries. Works such as For As Eventide Shadows… and The Mountain’s Song employ a contemplative harmonic palette - rich with modal inflection, chromatic ambiguity, and sudden shafts of tonal light - to evoke the ineffable. Texts, whether scriptural or original, are treated with sensitivity and often interpreted through the lens of universal human experience. In this way, degli Archangeli’s sacred music becomes less about worship in the traditional sense and more about bearing witness: to sorrow, to hope, to beauty, and to the sacred presence that flickers quietly in the margins of everyday life.
List of Works:
Ave Maria (Solo for Soprano)
Ave Maria (SATB, Unaccompanied)
Alleluia
Dona Nobis Pacem
Lord, For Thy Tender Mercies’ Sake
Magnificat Anima Mea Dominum
O Magnum Mysterium
The Lord’s Prayer (Version 1)
The Lord’s Prayer (Version 2)
There is a Balm in Gilead
Thou Healest the Anguish’d Heart
Patriotic
Santorini degli Archangeli’s patriotic works are marked less by traditional nationalism and more by a deeply personal, critical engagement with Jamaica’s cultural identity, social realities, and histories of marginalisation. Pieces such as Endless Dream (Lament for José) and The Mountain’s Song, while not expressly patriotic, reflect this ethos through their evocation of diasporic longing, environmental reverence, and collective memory. Their patriotic works are rooted in honouring resilience and place, often addressing themes of displacement, survival, and belonging without resorting to triumphalist rhetoric.
After the Storm stands out as a distinctly protest-driven yet patriotic work, written in response to Bruce Golding’s disparagement of Jamaica’s LGBTQ+ community during a BBC HardTalk interview. While it delivers a pointed critique of intolerance, the piece also incorporates a brief melodic homage to Lloyd Hall’s Jamaica Land of Beauty, blending social justice with cultural pride. This duality captures Santorini degli Archangeli’s approach to patriotism as a courageous call for inclusion and transformation - an affirmation of their homeland’s beauty and heritage alongside a demand for honesty and expanded acceptance. Their most recently completed work, Colours of the Sacred Isle (2025), is an expansive patriotic anthem that offers a highly nuanced picture of life in Jamaica, through the lens of the composer’s lived experience. The piece, written in English and Jamaican Patois, embodies the liminality and duality of the country’s colonial and cultural heritage. Within the piece, a vital clue is offered in the form of the composer’s intentional reclamation of the indigenous Taino’s original name of the island, Xaymaca. It speaks to the composer’s desire for the country to reclaim and honour both her history and identity as a land for, and belonging to, her people. Santorini degli Archangeli admits to being inspired by New Zealand’s own reckoning with their colonial inheritance, and restoration of the indigenous name, Aotearoa, believing that a similar shift in mindset and reclamation would be powerful for the Jamaican people. The piece presents almost as dialogic vignettes: through-composed and employing both the exotic double harmonic major and minor scales, as well as varying choral textures from unified homophony, to imitative counterpoint, among other devices. What is evident throughout, however, is the composer’s love for their country, and willingness to see her in all her beauty and her darkness, refusing to shy away from either through intentional censorship or sanitisation; choosing, rather, to be completely honest with their portrayal.
List of Works:
After the Storm
Jamaica National Anthem
Colours of the Sacred Isle, Op. 8
Film
Santorini has been approached about writing for film projects; their emotionally vulnerable and evocative writing cited as the reason for interest by one project manager. However, as this has been a very recent development, they do not currently possess a vast catalogue within that genre. One single completed piece is listed at this moment.
List of Works:
O, Mine Eyes Deceive! (Subtitled: “Reunion”; [Endings 1 & 2])
W H E R E T O P U R C H A S E
Select works are currently available through J.W. Pepper, Sheet Music Direct and Sheet Music Plus, with additional sources to follow. Links below.
https://www.jwpepper.com/myscore/Santorini
https://www.sheetmusicdirect.com/en-US/Search.aspx?query=Santorini%2Bdegli%2BArchangeli
https://www.sheetmusicplus.com/en/category/publishers/s/santorini-degli-archangeli/?srule=topsellers&sz=50
S O C I A L M E D I A
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Stage32: https://www.stage32.com/profile/43656
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SantorinidegliArchangeli
Blog: Dreams on a Battlefield… (https://hommearme.blogspot.com/ )
