A beautiful aristocratic woman named Smyrna receives in her poor now home, somewhere in Kokkinia or Nea Ionia of the 1930s, six wandering musicians. Together they dig up and reshape precious moments from her turbulent life…
The Alcedo folk band, through the eyes and memories of a woman who’s also a city, Smyrna, compose a new and fresh musical performance and present their first Suite based on themes from the works of great Smyrnaean composers (Kalomiris, Konstantinidis and others) and other popular songwriters (Tountas, Peristeris, Papazoglou, Dragatsis-Ogdontakis and more).
The selection of songs by the above-mentioned songwriters as well as the original traditional songs from Smyrna featured in the performance are arranged by the Alcedo Folk Band.
The work is set in 1950s Greece in a train compartment hosting refugees from various areas of Asia Minor, Pontus and Cappadocia. As is often the case with travelling, passengers start telling stories both about their motherlands before the uprooting and about the adventures of their settlement in Greece.
Through original songs and texts, six stories of people unfold, showcasing their memories from their motherland before the uprooting and their nostalgia for it, their adventurous journey to Greece and the problems of their adaptation and integration into the new environment, but also a series of positive influences, brought about by the refugee influx into the economic and intellectual life of Greece.
The wandering ticket inspector is the one who conveys how natives view the Greeks of the East.
The cicada (tettix in ancient Greek) is by nature associated with the process of transformation when it turns from a nymph into an adult. In the movement-based music performance Pontic Cantada the contemporary music ensemble TETTTIX (with a triple t) presents its own imaginary version of the forced “transformation” of a society.
After the Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Treaty of Lausanne, a part of Pontic Greek refugees settled in Corfu. The mingling of populations, mutually influencing one another, forced the two parties to reconsider their beliefs and habits.
Through drama and satire and in a quasi-vaudevillian mood, TETTTIX and Eugenia Demeglio (choreography/movement) transform the kemençe and the mandolin into a new entity, in a context where otherness evokes reflection and stigmatization and is at the same time refreshing, invigorating and inspiring.
On the occasion of the centenary of the Asia Minor Catastrophe, this concert will be based on two emblematic works of Apostolos Kaldaras released in 1972-73, “Byzantine Vesper” and “Asia Minor”.
Apart from Apostolos Kaldaras’ songs, the concert will also feature covers of emblematic songs from the countries of origins of present-day refugees. The set surrounding the orchestra consists of five large paintings by Kostas Kaldaras inspired by the 2015 refugee crisis, while it will also include screenings of historical documentary material and photographs having as their theme refugees over time – a selection made in collaboration with the Photographers of Trikala Team.
Andreas Karakottas and Ioanna Giannopoulou sing accompanied by a seven-member orchestra. Arrangements are by Sakis Kontonikolas.
This musical performance involves a structured interactive improvisation (stemming from the form of the amane itself), which is connected to the Greek poetry of the 30’s.
The music is inspired by the historical/traditional amane but also provides space to more modern and free musical experimentations. The aim is to emphasize the fact that this is not a music tradition in danger of extinction but a potentially living form, which can function in the present even outside the context of its historical frame of reference.
Respectively, regarding the lyrics, the form of amane will also be preserved, but, instead of using popular verses, this musical performance will use excerpts from 1930’s “art” poetry.
Singer Eleni Tsaligopoulou, actress Eleni Kokkidou and six virtuoso musicians invite us to join them on a journey through notes and words in the beginning of the 20th century, a journey full of the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the city that will always be a reference point in modern Greek history.
Smyrna, in all its legendary beauty and with its tragic ending, will always be the most loved “lost motherland” of the Greeks.
One hundred years later, on the occasion of the sad anniversary of the Asia Minor Catastrophe, Eleni Tsaligopoulou performs timeless songs from Smyrna and of composers of the time, while Eleni Kokkidou narrates testimonies of the uprooting and excerpts from relevant works of Greek literature. A concert full of history, dedicated to the memory that calls these songs its motherland, by two leading artists.
In a directed performance of music and dance, the one hundred performers together with the orchestra and “Ionia” choir, the soloists, the dancers and the narrator meet the exceptional groups “Anatoliki Romilia”, “Horostates” and “Alismonites Patrides” Larissa, dressed in their authentic traditional costumes.
They take us a hundred years back to Smyrna with its sounds, colours, aura and culture. Smyrna was a multidimensional city that flourished but was finally destroyed and its residents give us a strong message of life and encouragement starting up new lives together in various places in Greece, such as Nea Ionia in Volos.
The great grandchildren of these refugees through performance of songs and dances, full of light and energy , bring us a message of hope, joy, life and promise for a better future.
The performance is set against the backdrop of the Asia Minor Catastrophe. Choristers, as passengers of a boat sailing in the Eastern Aegean Sea and heading to the Greek coasts, narrate – each one in their own musical language – memories of their past and homelands.
Rich and poor, old and young, daughters and mothers, some from Constantinople and Smyrna, others from Cappadocia, Pontus and the coast, one by one they all share known and unknown aspects of the everyday life they’re leaving behind.
In an abstractly natural space and using bodies and voices as a vehicle, the boat turns into an “arc” saving diverse musical references associated with a powerful common experience: the painful migration, the uprooting, the journey in search of a better life. The anticipation for the new land, the new motherland, a second chance at life.
A musical journey on the occasion of the centenary of the Asia Minor Catastrophe, featuring Glykeria, the most important singer of Smyrnaean and traditional songs.
Glykeria and her company on stage will take us on a journey to the musical paths of the East. From the sea of Smyrna to Constantinople and Bosporus, and from the Cappadocian market to the Greek ports and inland, where great composers from Asia Minor ended up as refugees, bringing along such songs as: “Apo xeno topo”, “Tzivaeri”, “Elli”, “Smyrnia”, “O emetic”, “Hariklaki”, “T’ apofasisa”, “Armenitsa”, “I Xaveriotisa”, “Karotseri trava”, “Xerizomos”, “Kapia mana anastenazi”, “I Smyrni mana kaigete” etc. Alongside her, singer Dimitris Kontogiannis and a multi-member orchestra.
With music supervision by composer and maestro Stelios Fotiadis
The three artists offer a musical and poetic presentation of the relationship between Kalomiris and Palamas, a rare phenomenon of osmosis between two leading exponents of the Greek letters.
In his autobiography, the great composer from Smyrna, Manolis Kalomiris, recalls his life against the backdrop of Asia Minor, and also how he had dreamt since childhood to become one day the shaper of Greece’s musical language – a “Palamas” of contemporary Greek music. This music-theatre rehearsed reading is based on Tina Malikouti’s idea to combine the composer’s piano works with K. Palamas’ poem “The Twelve Lays of the Gypsy”, which had left a defining mark on M. Kalomiris’ entire artistic career, capturing the nature of the modern Greek soul.
Smyrna, Constantinople, Vienna, Athens. Images from the life of a cosmopolitan Greece spread over the East and the West.