The Organizing Committee of the April Spring Friendship Art Festival,

My beloved Friends and Comrades,

I am sending you my warm greetings and my love from Cyprus, along with my congratulations, for the enormous effort you have made to organize the festival on a completely new different basis, on line.  The unprecedented circumstances created by covid have changed everyone's lives for the worse. We are closed to ourselves and we are just trying to survive. It is no longer forbidden to make plans for our lives, even to dream.  

Against this black backdrop, your proposal came to me, in order to send my compositions to the festival.  Immediately all those wonderful moments I have experienced every time I visit my beloved Pyongyang were awakened in me.   However, this time, things would have been very different…

Such an important anniversary, the 110th birth anniversary of the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il Sung, would be celebrated under the shadow of the pandemic.  Unfortunately for me I could not live up to the conditions set by the festival, but I would never give up myself if I were absent from this great anniversary.

I would consider my absence as a great disrespect and ingratitude, both to the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il Sung, and to you and the entire Korean people who embraced me all these years with so much love and offered me so much honor.  

Comrade Kim Il Sung was the man who marked my life, changed my ideas and beliefs about life, and made me believe that the revolution is not an empty slogan, but something real, something that is happening and evolving constantly, and the space that happens is my beloved DPR Korea.

I had the highest honor to shake the hand of the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il Sung, many times, to present my compositions in front of Him, to sing especially for Him, and to take His gifts, which I keep as a precious treasure, and to rejoice in the hospitality of His people.  The DPR Korea became the permanent chorus of my life, and the place in which I deposit up to the last gram of my love and adoration as well.

My great respect for the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il Sung led me to the decision to make in no time two compositions, which I sent to you as a testimony of unlimited respect and love for this Great Man.  For me it didn't matter that I was sending my compositions out of competition.  What was important for me, was to commemorate this great anniversary in my own way.  I definitely wanted to be involved in the process of paying due tribute to this great ideologue that I feel Him as my own Father.  My best inspirations I've ever had are put into these compositions.

In extremely difficult circumstances due to covid, I managed to complete together with my colleagues, my two compositions, which are a deposit of my soul.  My fellow singers responded immediately to my call with great joy, since all of them had visited Pyongyang from time to time, as members of my artistic delegations, and knew that they would sing for such an important anniversary and for such an important Great Man,   the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il Sung.

Very moving is the case of tenor Panagiotis Theodorou, whom I lifted from bed where he was lying very ill.  For Panagiotis Theodorou, these songs are the swan song of his life.   

Of course, all of us would have liked to be in our beloved Pyongyang and celebrate this great anniversary together with the Korean people, but anyway, my soul and my spirit will be there with you in this great celebration. 

It is a great honor for me your decision to continue up with my compositions.  The fact that you asked me for the full music scores means a lot to me.  It is now a month when I do nothing else but writing by hand the full scores so that they are ready on time.  As soon as I came out of quarantine, after I had caught covid, I started with the orchestrations.

On The 7th of February I finished with the first orchestration, and now I am working nonstop to complete the second one.  My hand writing is not that great, (my hands tremble a little) but my friend the conductor and the other musician friends will be able to write each one the parts that concern them, based on what I will send.

I would like once again to congratulate you for managing to organize the festival online to commemorate globally this important 110th anniversary of the birth of the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il Sung.   I too feel very honored to be part of this great anniversary celebration.

I recall in my memory all the wonderful moments from the previous festivals, and an unlimited nostalgia overwhelms my heart.  I hope that the situation will soon be normalized with covid, and I will be able to present my humble flower again to the statues of the great leaders on Mansu Hill, to humbly bow at the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun and be revived again in the immortal spirit of Juche.

In 2024 it will be the 40th anniversary of my first visit to your country, (1984-2024) and it is understood how important this is to me.  After the festival I would like to exchange some ideas for this anniversary.   I love you all and thank you for your timeless love. 

I love you all so much and thank you for your timeless love.