Jazzman pianist turns to organ
Giorgos Kontrafouris is justly considered one of Greece’s most important jazz pianists. Lately, he has also been making his mark as an organist, giving a memorable concert last January of jazz standards at St Paul’s Anglican Church on central Filellinon Street, along with saxophonist Dimitris Vassilakis. Tonight and tomorrow, Kontrafouris is due to put on his organist’s hat once more an appearance at the Club Guru – Jazz Upstairs venue (10 Theatrou Sq, Psyrri, tel 210.324.6530), accompanied by Demos Dimitriadis, another accomplished saxophonist, Sami Linna on guitar and Teppo Makynen on drums. Kathimerini held a television interview with the Greek organ player, who lives in Helsinki, teaching jazz at the Sibelius Academy, before his arrival in the Greek capital. «Finland is a small country,» he says, «but with the arts it is something else. For example, one student received a grant to go to Costa Rica for two months to record a composition titled ‘The Life of the Butterfly.’ If she’d made the same request in Greece, they would have thought she was mad. You talk to students in Helsinki who are off to Argentina to study the tango, for example. We’ll never see this sort of thing in Greece. On the other hand, in Finland everyone is very obedient. You won’t see a lot of earth-shattering things happening but that which does happen will be very solid. Imagine that Helsinki has just one newspaper with a music critic. What does that show? That people don’t disagree and that’s why when a decision is made, it is done.» Kontrafouris has recorded six albums in Finland, under the alias Sideman with Finnish musicians, while he appears every so often in Greece, at the Parafono jazz club and at Guru. In this new appearance at Guru he will perform selections from an album he recently recorded in the United States as an organ-player. Titled «Little Daddy’s Blues,» it will go into circulation soon under the Chicken Coop Records label of the legendary organist Tony Monaco. «I sent him a demo of my work, and he liked it a lot. I always wanted to play the organ,» says the 40-year-old musician, who first turned to jazz at the age of 16. «I was a rocker, but then I heard Bud Powell’s ‘A Night in Tunisia’ and that was it. Then I discovered classical music. But, we are very cut off from developments in Greece. A Swedish jazz musician will be invited to a festival in Finland. A Serb will go to Bulgaria. We will never get invited to Italy, nor to the Balkans. I was recently invited to Montenegro via a Finnish band. I would never have been invited as a Greek. No one believes we can play jazz. I recently played in Austria with a great Finnish ensemble, the Five Corners Quintet. A Greek journalist was there, singing their praises. When they told him the pianist was Greek, he said: ‘But, we haven’t got jazz in Greece.’ Quite the opposite. We have musicians who have nothing to envy in their counterparts abroad, like the Nukleus trio or Demos Dimitriadis – who has done wonderful didactic work – and Takis Paterelis, among others.»
