Hey everyone, my name is Chris Angelidis and I am from Great Neck and I’m Greek. Most people assume I worship the ancient gods when they hear my ethnicity and to that I respond: I wasn’t actually born. Instead I was found on the top of Mount Olympus as a baby, destined for greatness.

As I’m sure is the case with everyone else in this class, I’m a pretty multitalented person. In highschool I swam, ran, pole vaulted, played basketball, and fenced. Sports were great and all, but my main passion is music. I’ve been playing an instrument for 11 years now. I started playing the recorder in third grade with everyone else in my class and then picked up the oboe in fourth grade. To be honest I wanted to learn the saxophone, but so did everyone else in my grade. So instead of learning to play the trending Pink Panther theme song, I was stuck learning how to play hot crossed buns. I hated it at first. The messages behind the notes of classical music were so distant from me at the time that practicing just felt like a chore. My parents made me keep playing the oboe for a couple of years until I realized I actually enjoyed the instrument. Having matured a little bit I found that playing any composition was a journey through the notes. I joined an orchestra run by Yo-Yo Ma’s sister and performed a ton of pieces by Dvorak, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and Brahms. I played traditional concerts in Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, ballet pits, musical pits and  even an opera pit for a world renowned tenor Placido Domingo. Despite all of these great opportunities, I felt I wasn’t experiencing all that music had to offer and so I began to search for more.

I decided to dive into modern music when I picked up my first guitar in eighth grade. I didn’t really know what I was doing since 6 strings are a lot different from the keys of a woodwind instrument. After watching youtube relentlessly for a couple of weeks, I picked up how to play chords and began playing some songs with friends. They’d usually sing and I’d accompany them. I settled for this basic level of guitar playing for about a year until I put the guitar down to learn the mandolin. Mumford and Sons had inspired me and so I learned a lot of their songs. After about a year of playing mandolin, I switched back to the acoustic guitar and began to learn more difficult songs. I decided to buy an electric guitar during the summer of my Junior year and formed a band called Lost by the Lighthouse (you can find us on facebook) with my two closest friends. The more we practiced together, the more serious I got about playing guitar. During my senior year I played guitar for my schools productions of Highschool Musical and Rent with the drummer who played in the actual broadway performance of it. Nowadays, I like to record my own songs in garage band and play as much music as I can. Any song requests?