Greek Music Express

This week, we are remembering Manos Eleftheriou, who was born on March 12, 1938 and died on July 22, 2018. Probably the single most important lyricist of Greek song, Eleftheriou was a multifaceted artistic personality who also wrote poetry, novels, short stories and studies about the theatre,...

March 8, International Women’s Day, and our choice for today is Despoina Rafail, whom we regard as the most impressive folk, laiko voice of her generation. Her first personal album, "Little Summers" contains ten contemporary art and folk songs composed by Vaggelis Machairas. What is particularly fascinating i...

A statement from the Ministry of Culture: “Dimos Moutsis was one of the most important composers of the post-war era, with an irreplaceable and acknowledged contribution to the renewal of Greek song. With a solid music education, he leaves behind a work characterized by the continuous elaboration o...

Korina Legaki is a profoundly cosmopolitan figure of Greek singing, with origins from Crete and from Sweden, and with a repertoire that includes not only Greek songs but also covers of foreign ones. Today, we are listening to songs from Legaki’s last three albums - Mosaic, New World, and Sequence –...

This week here at GME is dedicated to International Women’s Day and today we will be listening to the songs of a very promising singer-songwriter of a younger generation: Eleni Lagou. Undoubtedly, something special is to be found in Lagou’s debut album, titled “Something to Give”. What she gives us is a...

This week on Greek Music Express we will be drawing inspiration from International Women's Day, listening to some special female voices that have already left a remarkable footprint on Greek singing. First stop? Our beloved performer Chrysoula Kechagioglou, who stands out not only for her unique timbre...

Dionysis Tsaknis is a Greek composer, lyricist and singer. His first album was released in 1982, titled The Traveler's Ballad. The following year he released his second album together with Sofia Vossou titled Kali Akroasi. This was followed by the albums Trito Mati in 1987, Ftaine Ta Tragoudia in 1989...

2000. Two dear friends of Thanos Mikroutsikos, Alexandros Myrat and Haris Alexiou, propose to the composer to orchestrate some of his songs for a symphony orchestra, so that they can be presented in a concert at the Athens Concert Hall. Despite his initial reservations, the creator gives in to the pressure....

Composer Ilias Andriopoulos notes: “I introduced the symphonic orchestra for a reason. I didn't do it superficially to play songs that don't lend themselves to such treatments by big orchestras. I don't want to mention now neither colleagues, nor singers who do this simply to show off. In art, things a...

In his lavishly scored oratorio The Liturgy of Orpheus, Yannis Markopoulos combines fragments of Orphic poems with a narrative text by Panos Theodoridis to create a work brimming with melodies, rhythms and instrumental tone colours. The latter include those of guitar, lute, kanonaki, lyre, harp and...

Today,  we shall be listening to a very powerful live recording of a concert of Dionysis Savvopoulos titled Savvorama. Savvopoulos, one of the few "revolutionaries" of the Greek music scene, gave a series of concerts in December 2000 at the Athens Concert Hall. Savvorama is a panorama of Savvopoulos ...

Lena Pappa’s songs have been set to music by the Katsimihas brothers and Yiannis Nikolaou, among others. Pappa notes: “This is something that I consider important because composing music has an educational effect on the general public, through the marriage of two sensibilities, poetry and music”. As fo...

Nikiforos Vrettakos was a Greek poet whose literary career spanned nearly sixty years, along which he published several collections of poetry, prose works, and a long series of articles and literary essays. David Connolly, who has translated several of Vrettakos’ works, writes that his poems are “firmly roo...

Napoleon Lapathiotis is one of the cursed figures of Greek literature, considered an important poet of the neo-symbolist and neo-romantic schools. In his early poems he is influenced by aestheticism and sensualism, while in his last poems he ends up in desperate and melancholic tones, dominated by the...

Karyotakis influenced many of the poets who came after him and created a literary fashion, Karyotacism, which flooded modern Greek poetry. Going against the sentimentality of his era, Karyotakis conveys a sense of the futile. He writes sarcastic poems about the inglorious and the insignificant as a...

Kostas Karyotakis was born in 1896 and died in 1928, committing suicide at the age of just 32. He is considered one of the most representative Greek poets of the 1920s, with his poetry adding a tragic dimension to the neo-Symbolist and neo-Romantic poetry of his time. Today, we are listrening poetry...

Today, our track list includes songs about seagulls – these lovely seabirds that have inspired several Greek music artists. Primarily, seagulls symbolise freedom, flight, departure, adventure, unconventional behaviour. Gulls are resourceful, inquisitive and intelligent, demonstrating complex methods o...

From antiquity and the Greek mythology, horses were associated with military might and prestige. However, in Greek music horses also become symbols of speed and dynamism, while also being humans’ faithful friends.  From the Red Horse of Dynameis tou Aigaiou band to the Twelve Horses of Costas Tournas, he...