Top soloists given room to roam
Operating through sparser-than-usual formats, mostly as duos, a solid selection of some of the country’s finer musicians, some of whom have contributed to important Greek recordings over recent years – both their own and others – and made inroads abroad on the world music circuit, will appear at a two-week festival in Athens. Dubbed «Soloists-Instrumentalists» by its host and organizer, the Fones club in the capital’s Neos Cosmos district, the event, which began late last week and is being held for the fourth consecutive year, will run to April 12. A couple of visiting acts have also been included in the program. Indisputably, one of the distinct features of this event, both for the participating artists and audiences, is that some of the musicians will be performing outside customary conditions. Though most of the teams of musicians on the agenda have played together in the past, or still do, some have yet to test their musical chemistries as soloists in duos or trios – at least publicly. Let’s take one of the country’s finer and more authentic bouzouki players, Manolis Pappos, and the accomplished ethnic jazz-inclined double bassist Costas Theodorou, for example, who have teamed up for one performance on April 9. Their paths have crossed in the past, both on stage and in the studio, but the two have never managed to play to an audience as a pair. Pappos and Theodorou, who have released interesting material of their own and also offered their refined musical services to some of the country’s more compelling contemporary songwriting talent, such as that of popular Thessaloniki-based songsmith Socrates Malamas or Larissa’s Thanassis Papaconstantinou, will drop their broader, more elaborate commitments for an intimate musical exchange of original compositions as well as improvisation. Incidentally, Theodorou opened the festival last Thursday with the Bulgarian kaval player Theodosii Spassov, an emerging artist on the international world music scene and a frequent collaborator with Theodorou during more recent times. The two grew into a trio and then a quartet over the next two nights with progressive additions of oud player Haig Yajdzian, an Athens-based Armenian, and lyra player Ilias Papadopoulos to the lineup. Another fine pairing, the saxophonist Thodoris Rellos and drummer Takis Kanellos, better known for their key roles in the noteworthy Athens-based ethnic jazz band Mode Plagal, will also be leaving behind usual commitments to play as a duo on Saturday. The two, who co-founded Mode Plagal with the act’s guitarist Cleon Antoniou slightly over a decade ago, before the band’s lineup was gradually expanded to serve its developing Greek folk-jazz-funk-rock sound, will be returning to the act’s roots – unadorned melody and rhythm – for their Fones Club appearance. The stripped-down format of Rellos and Kanellos alone should shed additional light on their musicianship which, besides Mode Plagal, has also adorned the recorded work of numerous other respected local acts. The duo’s most recent album with Mode Plagal, «Mode Plagal III,» incidentally was voted number 13 on the World Music Charts Europe (WMCE) by top European radio producers for the month of April. This should bolster the group’s standing when it expects to hit the road for more European dates in coming months. The high-caliber vocalist Savina Yiannatou, another Greek artist whose work with her regular backing band, Primavera en Salonico, has fared well on the same European charts, will team up with one of her more regular side-project collaborators, the cellist Nikos Veliotis, for mostly improvised work on Sunday. Tonight, one of the festival’s few visiting artists, Indian Reshma Srivastava, an accomplished sitar player who was born into a musical family and gave her first public performance at the age of 8, will perform accompanied by a local tabla player, Marcos Damianos. Nowadays backed by a lengthy track record of performances both at home and around Europe, Srivastava has also established links with top players here. Recently, she was guest performer – as part of a fine, mostly local cast of musicians – on an album by Greek jazz guitarist Takis Barberis, who also performed at the festival on Sunday. Tomorrow, a ubiquitous figure on the local circuit, the young, seasoned Constantinople lyra player Socrates Sinopoulos – whose extensive list of credits include working with the composer Eleni Karaindrou, internationally renowned for her music for the films of Theo Angelopoulos; the masterful multi-instrumentalist Ross Daly, a Greece-based Irish expatriate; and the aging Greek folk preservationist Domna Samiou – will join forces with another remarkable young virtuoso, Panos Dimitrakopoulos, on kanonaki. Appearing with them, as a special guest, will be another talented young artist, the French-Iranian percussionist Bizan Chemirani, a frequent visitor to Greece, drawn here in the past by his work connections with Daly and performances with the Chemirani Trio, a father-and-sons percussive combo, all on the traditional Iranian zarb. Reserved for the festival’s final night, on April 12, three leading exponents of traditional music from the Epirus region in Greece’s northwest, clarinetist Petroloukas Halkias, Christos Zotos on lauto, and violinist Achilleas Halkias, will render the emotionally charged, wailing sounds that characterize their homeland. The Soloists-Instrumentalists festival is one of three annual festivals organized and hosted by the Fones club. It also stages a percussion event and a Women’s Voices festival early each year. Fones-Live Cafe, 9 Artemonos Street, Neos Cosmos, 010.927.0628. Musicians on the menu Tonight: Reshma Srivastava; tomorrow: Socrates Sinopoulos & Panos Dimitrakopoulos; Thursday: Nikos Grapsas & Vangelis Papanastasiou; Friday: Georgia Syllaiou & Sakis Papadimitriou; Saturday: Rellos & Kanellos; Sunday: Savina Yiannatou & Nikos Veliotis; April 9: Manolis Pappos & Costas Theodorou; April 10: Alekos Christidis & Joe Tornabene; April 11: Giorgos Stronis, Christos Gotsinas and guests; April 12: Petroloukas Halkias, Christos Zotos, Achilleas Halkias.
