Category Archives: Arts, Culture And Heritage
Athens Music
Music in Athens, Greece, comes in all sizes and modes – from ancient instruments through traditional music, jazz and classical concerts and back to simple melody and rhythm.
This is a city comfortable with accomplishment of all kinds and in many genres, with events listed and unlisted. In the Summer, when formal venues are closed, the streets become a natural location for the more adventurous performer.
This informal piece looks at some Summer musical offerings in Athens. It includes (below) a list of links to and phone numbers for events which I discovered, though not necessarily attended or checked out. If you know more about these or other events which readers might find of interest, please tell us via the Comments box at the end of this article. Thank you!
The range of ‘street music’ in the capital city of Greece, Athens, is an eye-opener to those of us from colder climes. Athens is a city where the traditions of ancient and non-Western people meet those of us accustomed to the folk music and formal classical music modes of Northern and Central Europe. Here is a place where the cembalon of Eastern Europe is heard alongside African percussion, the guitars and bouzoukis of the Mediterranean (and later Ireland) and the brass instruments of every part of the world.
So there’s plenty of music, much of it very relaxed and informal, for visitors in Athens – and if you know of other events not mentioned below, please do tell us about them via the Comments box at the end of this page.
Whatever your preference, there will be something to enjoy – and to engage your interest and imagination. One of the great things about ‘street music’ is that it’s for everyone, young and old alike. Just as we have found when occasionally we can perform in public spaces in Liverpool, it’s the children who stop and listen and watch, often keen that they should not be moved on by parents or carers until they have heard their fill.
For some musicians however this is serious stuff. They have instruments and recordings of their work to sell, music to make to earn a crust. For others perhaps it’s a bit of fun, a way of passing time during the Summer months. It’s not difficult as a listener to tell who has which intention; but only rarely is there simply no evidence of skill when the performance, however fleeting perhaps as players stroll between cafe venues, begins.
But not all music is performed on the street. Athens has the attributes of all great capital cities – concert halls, an opera house (even if it does perhaps require relocation and an upgrade) and museums such as that for Maria Callas dedicated with whatever degree of enthusiasm to Greek classical music performers and composers of Greece – some of whom are listed (along with the main cultural venues around Athens) below, drawing for composers’ names on the cataloguing work done during the Athens Cultural Olympiad of 2004.
Nonetheless, there are forms of music which occur throughout the year in any city. Jazz bands and stringed instrument performers can play wherever they can find a space, and in almost any combination of instruments and performers; just as traditional dancers can congregate and entertain wherever numbers can be mustered – though certainly this is not how things happen at the treasure which is the Dora Stratou Theatre, a national institution to encourage traditional dance forms, offering performances throughout the Summer.
The choice is the listener’s. Formal or informal entertainment? Go for something new, or stick with the tried and tested? In Athens it’s best to have one’s listening mode in gear, ready for the next experience. It could even be during an unsheduled coffee stop. And who knows, you could even end up buying an instrument all of your own…
See more of Hilary’s photographs: Camera & Calendar
and read more about Music, Musicians & Orchestras, Travel & Tourism and Cities in Transition.
If you have recommendations for, or if you promote, musical events and venues in and around the Athens area, please post details (with contact information, indicating whether the occasion is regular, or one-off) in the Comments box below.
Some Greek music composers:
Yannis Andreou Papaioannou (1901-1989), Dimitris Dragatakis (1914-2001), Nikolaos Halikiopoulos-Mantzaros (1795-1872), Manolis Kalomiris (1883-1962), Alekos Kontis (1899-1965), Georgios Lambelet (1875-1945), Loris Margaritis (1895-1953), Dimitri Milropoulos (1896-1962), Andreas Nezeritis (1897-1980), Georgios Poniridis (1887-1982), Mikis Theodorakis (1925-), Marios Varvoglis (1885-1967), Alekos Xenos (1912-1995)
More information on events:
Athens Concert Hall (Megaro Mousikis), Vas. Sofias & Petrou Kikkali Street, tel: (from UK) (0030) 210 728 2333
Athinais Cultural Centre, Kastorias 34-36, Votanikos, tel: (00 30) 210 348 0000
August Moon Festival (free, on the night of the full moon, at a variety of ancient historic sites in Athens))
Dora Stratou Dance Theatre, 8 Stouliou Street, Plaka (offices) and Philopappou Hill (theatre), tel: (00 30) 210 324 4395 / (0030) 210 324 6188
Hellenic Festival, various venues, tel: (0030) 210 327 2000
“Melina” – Municipality of Athens Cultural Centre, Herakliedon 66, Thissio, tel: (00 30) 210 345 2150
Municipality of Athens Cultural Centre, Akadimias 50, tel: (00 30) 210 362 1601
National Opera, Akadimias 59, tel: (00 30) 210 364 3725
Technopolis (and the Maria Callas Museum), Pireos 100, Gazi, tel: (00 30) 210 346 1589
Vyronas Music Festival, tel: (00 30) 210 766 2066 or (0030) 210 765 5748
Aegina International (Summer) Music Festival [Tickets available at the “Eleni” shop next to the Aegina Port Authority building, tel: (0030) 22970 25593, & on the door.]
And more Festivals and events…
The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra At the BBC Proms
The RLPO finished their season in style this evening, with a sell-out BBC Proms concert in London’s Royal Albert Hall. There was a real excitement as the audience departed after the performance, matched by the sense of achievement RLPO players derive from working with Principal Conductor Vasily Petrenko. This is surely how professional orchestral musicians like to feel at the end of a year’s hard work.
A date at the Royal Albert Hall for the BBC Proms is a highlight of the season for any orchestra, and this was no exception for the RLPO, an orchestra with a distinguished history. Vasily Petrenko and the RLPO‘s programme for the evening was the World Premiere of Graven Image for Orchestra by the RLPO’s Composer in the House, Kenneth Hesketh, Beethoven‘s Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Minor, Opus 45 (soloist Paul Lewis) and the Rachmaninov Symphonic Dances, Opus 45, with Mussorgsky‘s Gopak as an encore.
And happily even those who couldn’t join the Proms audience in person were able at absolutely no cost to do so, as for every Prom, live via BBC Radio 3.
Reviews for the concert reflected the enthusiasm on the night.
But now the players are off for a well-earned break, applause still ringing in their ears….
See more of Hilary’s photographs: Camera & Calendar
and read more about Music, Musicians & Orchestras
Operation Black Vote Is Launched In Liverpool
Liverpool’s Operation Black Vote programme was launched today in our Town Hall. This ambitious movement intends to establish an emerging generation of politicians of all ‘races’, cultures and faiths, who have been mentored early in their careers by existing councillors. The event this evening demonstrated that OBV’s aim is shared by all our civic leaders, and that they believe they will indeed deliver.
Further information on Operation Black Vote.
Read more:
Social Inclusion & Diversity
Camera & Calendar
Balletic Synaesthesia
The Balanchine ballet Jewels, premiered in 1967, was this genre’s first three-act abstract work. Connecting the parts only through the artifice of contrasting gem colours – emeralds and the music of Faure, rubies with Stravinsky and finally diamonds, set in gold and white and silver to the rich tones of Tchaikovsky. This great performance art is synaesthesia in action, a gorgeous blending of colour, sound and movement which sometimes overwhelmed my own senses and occasionally did not.
Seeing Jewels performed this week by the Kirov Ballet at The Lowry, I was struck by how particular are the individual perceptions of synaesthetes.
Comparing performances
Having had the extraordinary good fortune also to have seen the Kirov Ballet, again with the Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre, in the New York City Center just a month ago, I could compare my response to their performance then of shorter pieces and narrative ballet – Fokine‘s Le Spectre de la Rose, the exquisitely danced Dying Swan and Chopiniana – with that of the Lowry ‘abstract’ Jewels ballet programme.
These previous pieces had a logic and formulation quite independent of my own. Only when I was presented in The Lowry with the overt conjunction of colour, sound and movement for its own sake did I become aware yet again of my life-long synaesthetic tendency.
One-off perceptions
Put simply, I can immerse myself in a ballet story according to someone else’s prescription. The creator of the dance has the floor.
But when confronted with another’s interpretation of what sounds ‘look like’ and how music ‘moves’, I’m at a bit of a loss to understand how the colours and jemstones were selected. Faure is not emerald, he’s citrine and alexandrite; Stravinsky is indeed quite ruby, but with deep-toned garnet, and his undertone is a fierce andesine-labradorite, not creamy gold; and whilst I can cope with Tschaikovsky as diamond, gold and silver, I’d rather he were the bluest sapphire and Brazilian tourmaline.
Synaesthesia
All of which tells us nothing, except this: synaethesia is an individual thing, and it’s quite involuntary.
For me, this aesthetic confusion is just quite an interesting aspect of my perception, when I have occasion to notice it (most of the time, it’s just too much part of my daily experience to be aware of). But for some few very gifted people it’s obviously a central and compelling force in their lives.
… and creativity
I dare say Balanchine was a synaesthete; how else could he have dreamt up Jewels?
The multi-sensory neural wiring of synaesthesia, though probably less unusual than was first thought, can be challenging on occasion. Nonetheless it’s surely a blessing for us all, not least when it results in the creation of performances which exist solely to celebrate art forms for their own sake.
Sometimes it’s good – in our various and individual ways – to see art just as art.
Spring, Four Strings And Four Seasons
Daffodils in the sunshine take on a new aspect when they’ve just been background to a performance of ‘Spring’ from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Members of Elegant Music are here (below) relaxing in a break from rehearsals for a client’s special occasion.
Martin Anthony (Tony) Burrage, Donald Turnbull, David Ruby and Alexander Holladay are members of Elegant Music (which also performs more formal concerts and recitals as Ensemble Liverpool).
For more photographs please see Camera & Calendar.
Read more articles at Music, Musicians & Orchestras.
The Metropolitan County Councils, Abolished In 1986
Incredibly, it was twenty two years ago that the Conservative government closed down the Metropolitan County Councils , thereby ensuring control from the national centre of power. The impact on local decision-making was huge, as was the effort subsequently required to rebuild the regional administrative decision-making process.
The Metropolitan County Councils, like the Greater London Council and the Inner London Educational Authority, were powerful bodies representing local and regional interests, and were seen as irritants on the national body politic. So Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher decided they ‘had to go’.
But as Dr Richard Beeching also demonstrated, when years earlier he closed many local and regional railway lines, it takes little time to destroy something which holds together the physical or political regional infrastructure – and an enormous amount of money and effort to reinstate it.
This is the invitation I received to the Merseyside County Council closure reception for ‘Workers in the Merseyside Arts Community’, on 20 March 1986, at Metropolitan House, Old Hall Street, Liverpool. The evening was hosted by Cllr Keva Coombes, a local lawyer and Leader of the Merseyside County Council.
See more photographs at Locations & Events and read more about Regions, Sub-Regions & City Regions.
Liverpool’s Hope Street ‘Suitcases’: A Case History
The Hope Street ‘Suitcases’, installed by John King in 1998, are at the junction with Mount Street, by LIPA (the old ‘Liverpool Institute’) and Liverpool School of Art, opposite Blackburne House Centre for Women. The labelled suitcases ‘belong’ to many of Hope Street Quarter’s most illustrious names and organisations.
Monday Women ’08 Take The Next Step!
2008 sees a new location for Monday Women in Liverpool. For a few months we’ll be meeting in El Rincon Latino, by Roscoe Street and Oldham Street in the new City Gate development at the top of Renshaw Street. It’s free to come; all women most welcome, first Monday of every month, from about 5.45 to 7.30-ish p.m.
El Rincon Latino is located on the corner of Roscoe Street and Oldham Street just one block up the hill from Renshaw Street. It’s immediately across from the multi-storey car park behind Leece Street Post Office, on the town side of Leece Street but still near St Luke’s, the ‘Bombed Church’. You can also get there via a very short walk up the hill opposite the main entrance to Rapid Hardware on Renshaw Street.
The address and postcode are Roscoe Street, L1 2SU (map); tel: 0151- 324 0454.
All you pay for is your supper and drinks, ordered as you wish from the bar, if / when you’d like some – but no obligation. (There’s a photograph of a sample menu below, right…) Our Chilean host, Francisco Carrasco, is also Director of All Things Latin (ATL) and tell us the cafe aims to serve food from across Southern and Central America, as the head chef is from Ecuador. The venue has many cultural links with Latin America.
If you have ideas about anything you’d really like to discuss or do when everyone meets, you can of course join the Monday Women e-group (absolutely free, quite voluntary) and suggest things beforehand. Other than that, the format of each Monday Women event is decided by those who are there – drinks and chat, debate, even this year perhaps post-meeting salsa classes… It’s your choice! Dates for 2008 are below.
Monday Women meeting dates for 2008 (all first Mondays of the month, 5.45-ish to approx. 7.30, please just come and go as you wish) are:
February 4th
March 3rd
April 7th
May 5th
June 2nd
July 7th
August 4th
September 1st
October 6th
November 3rd
December 1st (special event, the annual Christmas Do!!)
To check any particular date please call the venue on 0151-324 0454.
Do join us. No need to book, just turn up whatever time you can; and bring your women friends as well…
We’d love to see you there.
Find out more here or visit the Monday Women message board.
Liverpool 4, 11 & 12 January 2008: The Euro-Year Begins!
Liverpool’s European Capital of Culture Year is finally launched.
First, we went to the pre-launch of the Liverpool Echo Arena on Friday 4 January.
Then we went to St George’s Plateau for the ‘People’s Opening’ on Friday 11 January, where after much frenetic construction all day Ringo Starr sang from a box on the roof of the Hall and we saw some fireworks and lights.
And finally we found ourselves in the Echo Arena again on Saturday 12 January for the formal opening of that venue and Liverpool’s 2008 events. The Arena ceremony offered a colourful performance of Liverpool – The Musical by artists ranging from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra with Vasily Petrenko (who all played valiantly throughout the show) to performers such as Gary Christian, The Farm, Sense of Sound, Ringo Starr, The Welsh Choral Union and The Wombats.
And so began our city’s European Year of Culture….
Everyone worked very hard to make it all happen. The preparations were no doubt complicated and frantic, the general mood was convivial and fun, and the outcome was by and large convincing and festive.
This was certainly not the weekend to be negative; though it has to be said that there is a lot still to do. Watch this space….
(But after this posting we shall, I promise, begin once again to acknowledge the world outside Liverpool 2008.)
For more photographs please see also Camera And Calendar.
Liverpool At Christmas
The few weeks as 2007 ended and became 2008 saw much festive activity in Liverpool. Here, the set for the BBC’s special production of the ‘Liverpool Nativity’ was surrounded by excited onlookers well before the performance started, but alongside all the high technology Saint George’s Hall stood serene, just as it has for the past 150 years.
Dreaming Realist 