Shows in English

This week, we take the finest product of Greek culture (music) and blend it with the finest product of the Greek land (wine) to produce a tribute to Greek songs about wine! Our starting point, today, is the art song genre and its greatest voices, from Eleni Vitali to Dimitra Galani, who sang the...

Elytis meets Dimitris Lagios and Michalis Tranoudakis Odysseas Elytis was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1979 for “his poetry, which, against the background of Greek tradition, depicts with sensuous strength and intellectual clear-sightedness modern man's struggle for freedom a...

Tasos Leivaditis Tasos Leivaditis is a superb poet whose (largely unacknowledged) genius inspired a series of songs and albums. We will be primarily exploring the setting of his poetry to music by composer George Tsagaris, an endeavour that reveals the tremendous political and humanistic...

Kostas VarnalisA poet whose pioneering work renews not only the linguistic but also the ideological models and contexts of Greek poetry. Varnalis was sent to internal exile for his ideas, took part in the resistance movement against the German Occupation and was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize in...

Dimitris Papadimitriou’s Cavafy With his album “An Alexandrian on an Alexandrian”, Dimitris Papadimitriou delivered a colossal work of 18 songs and six instrumentals inspired by the poetry of Constantine P. Cavafy. The encounter of Papadimitriou with Cavafy is hardly surprising, since both ...

Constantine P. Cavafy x 3 According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, Cavafy is “one of the most important figures not only in Greek poetry but in Western poetry as well”. Naturally, he has been a favourite among Greek composers too, who have turned to his poetry multiple times in search of inspiration. Tod...

IKIGAI: IKI (ΖΩΗ) GAI (ΑΞΙΖΕΙ). Αυτή η ιαπωνική λέξη σημαίνει κυριολεκτικά «η ευτυχία του να είμαστε διαρκώς απασχολημένοι ή ο λόγος ύπαρξης μας που μπορεί να μας βοηθήσει να προσδιορίσουμε τι είναι αυτό για το οποίο θέλουμε να ξυπνάμε το πρωί. Το IKIGAI επικεντρώνεται γύρω από τον πραγματικό σκοπό τη...

Ikaria During the summer, all Ikarian villages host feasts to mark various religious and non-religious holidays. Traditional dishes, Ikarian wine, live music and lots of fun, with locals and tourists alike dancing the traditional Ikariotikos tune, singing along and partying till the...

The sun-kissed instrumentals of Giannis Spanos In our quest for the eternal Greek summer, we turn to Giannis Spanos, this beloved composer who coloured our memories with his special melodies. In particular, we turn to a relatively unknown collection of his instrumentals titled “Deep blue s...

Summertime songs Listening to Greek summertime songs at the start of October is our very own way of fighting the autumn …blues and the nostalgia for the Greek summer. From Locomondo to Eleni Dimou and from Dimitra Galani to Katsimiha brothers, we remind ourselves of the images, scents a...

Οι «Κυκλάδες» του Βασίλη Δημητρίου “Vassilis Dimitriou is well aware of the course and schools of Greek singing and thus he can express his melodic quests in different ways, using the form of the anonymous traditional song or the ‘roads’ of rebetiko or the style of Hatzidakis. The Greek ...

Katie HomataAn incredibly tender singer who became one of the leading representatives of the “Neo Kyma” – New Wave genre and a popular performer in the Athens boite scene. Homata collaborated with top-class performers, including Giannis Spanos, Giorgos Kontogiorgos and Michalis Terzis. The u...

Aware or not, we all one way or another carry our own hidden traumas… Listen to this episode of the english-language show Infinitely Curious with Katerina Batzaki and learn from EMDR psychotherapist Vasiliki Sfyri and EMDR founder Francine Shapiro how EMDR helps patients overcome traumas such a...

SamosThe island of Samos is not part of the Dodecanese but it could not be absent from our tribute, given its geographical proximity and wealth of music tradition. The 2000 collection “Games and gamers”, based on research by Dimitris Zahariou, highlights the songs and melodies that traditional ban...

Leros “Songs of Leros”: A unique panorama of the music of Leros island curated by leading ethnomusicologists Markos Dragoumis and Thanasis Moraitis. This is essentially the first organised attempt to introduce the special colours of the island’s music tradition to a broader audience, through recor...

Karpathos An initiation to the musical heritage of Karpathos through the album “Karpathian Music and Song – Traditional Musical Memories. Karpathians engage in poetic-musical dialogues for hours in social gatherings and parties. The main ‘tool’ of this interaction is ‘mantinathas’ – spontaneo...

Vangelis Konitopoulos Traditional songs from all around the Dodecanese, performed by Vangelis Konitopoulos, prominent member of a family of musicians that has marked the development of island music. The “king of nisiotika” has included the musical tradition of the Dodecanese in his vast rep...

Approaches to the DodecaneseMusic for the islanders is a way of life, an integral part of their daily routine, and it is through songs that they tend to express their love, joy or grief. Today, we will be listening to representative songs from the music tradition of each island of the Dodecanese, performed...