Lighthouse Sessions | Savina Yannatou

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The Lighthouse Sessions, the SNFCC’s newest series of musical events, comes to demonstrate the power of the language of music through five unusual portraits, connecting Greek tradition and rebetika songs with jazz and classical music in an unexpected and, as a result, unique fusion, open to improvisation and creative experiments. All sessions in the series will be recorded and uploaded on the SNFCC website, to create a unique “music library” that music lovers can come back to again and again.

Each month, the composer and drummer Alexandros Drakos Ktistakis talks with his handpicked guests about their life and musical pursuits, while inviting them to engage in a musical dialogue, accompanied by a jazz trio and a string quartet. 

His second guest, on Sunday, February 21st, at 20:30, will be Savina Yannatou, and joining him for subsequent sessions will be Giorgis Manolakis, creator of Couleur Locale, the musical band Takim, and Dimitris Mystakidis, for an alternative introduction to rebetika songs and musical tradition.  

Savina Yannatou was born in Athens. She studied singing with Gogo Georgilopoulou and Spyros Sakkas in Athens, and graduated from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, on a scholarship awarded by the “Mousigetis” Foundation.

Her career in music began on the ERT National Radio show “Edo Lilipoupoli”, where she worked most closely with Lena Platonos, and with whom she went on to record the albums Sabotage, Karyotakis 13 songs, and Manos Hadjidakis’ ’62, all landmarks in Greek discography. 

She has also collaborated with composers Nikos Mamangakis (on the operas Erotokritos and Aretousa, Erofili, Shadow Opera, and several discographic productions), Nikos Kypourgos (Lullabies, The garden’s secrets), Michalis Grigoriou, Dimitris Marangopoulos, Dimitris Kamarotos, Vangelis Katsoulis, Arild Andersen, Barry Guy, Nikos Galenianos, and many others. She was a member (1981-1991) of the “Early Music Workshop”, performing medieval and renaissance music. Since 1992, she experiments with free vocal improvisation in the free jazz genre. From 1994, she collaborates with the band "Primavera en Salonico", coming together to perform songs from the Mediterranean and the Balkans in music festivals all over the world. 

She has written music for the Greek National Theater, the National Theater of Northern Greece, the Thessalian Treater, and the Neos Kosmos Theater, as well as for documentaries, pantomime shows and video art projects. Her discography includes approximately thirty records with music by Greek and international composers, traditional songs from various countries, free improvisations, and her own songs. 

The composer, orchestrator and drummer Alexandros Drakos Ktistakis, with an academic background in the Music Studies Department of the Ionian University and musical education, is active in teaching, using his creativity to inspire the new generation that will become the fresh blood of the domestic music scene. 

Five years after his discographic debut, with the album "Tora" and the Alex Dracos Trio, which he co-founded with double bass player Dinos Manos and pianist Giannis Papadopoulos, and in anticipation of his upcoming release, which combines classical, Greek and jazz music, and having composed for a chamber music orchestra, Alexandros Drakos Ktistakis explores global sounds and music anew, starting always from jazz and guided by improvisation and rock, traditional and classical music influences. 

This makes Ktistakis the perfect host for the new series of innovative performed portraits that the SNFCC launched in January, which will introduce, in five monthly episodes, important names of the versatile Greek musical reality, bringing together the timeless value of tradition with the creative ruminations of today. 

Contributors:
Dinos Manos – Bass
Papadopoulos – Piano
Alexandros Ktistakis – Drums
Dionysis Vervitsiotis – Violin
Kostas Panagiotidis – Violin
Ilias Livieratos – Viola
Marina Kolovou – Cello

Alexandros Drakos Ktistakis: Composition & string orchestration
Savina Yannatou & Alexandros Drakos Ktistakis: Adaptation
 

Sunday 21/02, 20.30

LIGHTHOUSE

You may watch the event live on this page, as well as on SNFCC's Facebook page and YouTube channel.