Blog Archives
Hot Water Bills In The Land Of 2000 Hours’ Sunshine
Energy is a commodity with variable value, it seems, depending on where you are. ‘We Greeks,’ said a fellow-traveller on the train as we departed Athens, ‘could have free hot water and free lighting all year; but we prefer to pay… Why put an annual 2000 hours of sunshine to good use, when we can produce energy more expensively in other ways?‘ He was, of course, being ironic.
August Moon And Little Cat On Lykavitos (Lycabettus) Hill, Athens
Tonight is full moon in Athens, Greece, when by tradition everyone attends free events till late on the ancient sites; and this year there’s also a partial lunar eclipse over the city. But for this feral kitten, silently padding the very highest point atop Lycabettus Hill in search of restaurant diners’ scraps, it’s just business as usual.
Every year since 1953, the August Moon Festival in Athens on the night of the full moon – believed to be the most beautiful such event of the year – has been a celebration open to everyone, with free performances of opera, traditional dance and classical music on the Acropolis and Roman Agora, as well as events located in other unique and incomparable historic sites of Athens such as the Odeion of Herodus Attikus .
This is truly an occasion, if you are in Athens at the right time, not to be missed! (And if you’re somewhere else in Greece, you may still be lucky anyway – consult the Greek Ministry of Culture for possible events in other locations.)
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
Sefton Park Boating Lake Shortchanged: A Half-Done Restoration?
The upheavals as Sefton Park is ‘restored’ have been grim. Trees and habitats destroyed, birdlife disrupted and months of mud and noise – though at least, we all believed, for future benefit. But will the Boating Lake, largest and most public of the waterways, now remain a dumping ground for waste as before? Apparently the money may be running out. If it does, I’d say, so is our civic pride.
Is this (above) the view of Sefton Park Boating Lake which will stay with us after all the heritage and landscape restoration is finished? Will the people of Liverpool, already said by Bill Bryson to have celebrated a ‘Festival of Litter’, permit what is arguably the City’s most significant park to retain within it a dumping ground for anything their careless fellow citizens have over the decades jettisoned into the Boating Lake?
… and this proposed ‘cost-cutting’, so it is said, all for a saving which is probably less than the amount already spent on destroying perfectly healthy trees in Sefton Park because they ‘block the view’?
The photographs below show some of the garbage which lies below the normal waterline of the lake, together with a view of the area which the dredger has cleaned up (by the top island), and the boating fence which, as things stand, may delineate the divide between the restored area and the much larger part of the lake which it’s feared will be left in neglect.
Will the powers-that-be ensure, despite the rumours, that the whole lake will be cleared? Or has this City really still so little civic pride? We await the evidence that all will be well, hopefully very soon.
Read more articles on Sefton Park
and see more photographs at Camera & Calendar.
The Liverpool Orrery Comes To Hope Street
The Liverpool Orrery came to Hope Street last week, to the Suitcases plateau; and with it came lots of happy and excited children, eager to see the universe from the Unity Theatre’s special SplatterFest! perspective. Using the public realm like this shows more clearly than any words how creativity can engage our communities and our imaginations.
Read more about the Hope Street Quarter and the ‘Suitcases’ (A Case Study).
See more photographs: Camera & Calendar.
What is an Orrery? Find out here; and read about Unity Theatre and SplatterFest!.
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
Sefton Park Renovation: The Protests
Renovation of Liverpool’s Sefton Park has not lacked controversy – especially concerning the removal of healthy trees (and thereby wildlife habitats) in order to improve sightlines for monuments. In protest at this there has been both formal objection from Friends of Sefton Park and anonymous direct action.
See also Liverpool’s Sefton Park Trees Under Threat – Unnecessarily?.
More articles on Sefton Park, Liverpool.
Big Science In Regional Economic Context: Daresbury And ALICE
Investment in scientific programmes often has added socio-economic value. But there is little evidence that good indices are available to measure what this impact might be for large-scale scientific regionally-based development. Whilst private investors guard their capital with care, only rarely do the criteria for evaluation of Big Science proposals include adequate consideration of the wider impact of public funds invested.
The bovine foot and mouth pyres of a few years ago are testament to unintentional damage inflicted when strictly focused ‘science’ is applied crudely in wider socio-economic contexts.
Everyone wanted to do the right thing; but the upshot of scientific best advice was rural economic devastation.
What criteria?
The same scenario may be enacted again, if the judgement of a panel of leading scientists results in removal of the Alice (Accelerators and Lasers in Combined Experiments) programme at the Daresbury Laboratory in North-West England.
The science will carry on elsewhere, most probably in the USA, but the NW regional economy, which could have benefited hugely, will instead take a hammerblow.
Best value for government investment
Scientists quite rightly concentrate on what they understand – in this case physics, engineering and the like. I cannot comment on their scientific judgements about ALICE; though it is always open to their colleagues have views on this.
Whatever, the investment of significant government monies must also, as numbers of parliamentarians have argued, be about best value in socio-economic terms, as well as indicated by narrower scientific parameters; and the scientists would without doubt agree they are not best placed to adjudicate all this.
Socio-economic impact studies
If the relevant science councils have undertaken regional socio-economic impact studies on their proposed investments, these, like the scientific appraisals, must now be opened to public scrutiny.
If they have not, we must challenge the science councils to undertake these comparative impact studies immediately, before potentially devastating decisions are made.
Added value – or otherwise
‘Added value‘ (perhaps significantly, a term often used to evaluate the impact of educational initiatives) and ‘unintended consequences‘ (c.f. Robert Merton’s work) may be indices beyond the lexicon of physical science; but, as the rural economists acknowledged after foot and mouth disease, they can never be outside the remit of decisions about big investment, in the public interest, of taxpayers’ money.
A version of this article, entitled ‘Alice in economic context’, was published on the Letters page of Guardian Education on 15 April 2008.
Read more:
Science, Regeneration & Sustainability
Science & Politics
Sefton Park Easter Fitness And Fun
Sefton Park is the venue for a very organised fitness training programme. The wearers of these cheery Easter bonnets are amongst those for whom even the Bank Holiday weekend offers no let up on the exercise regime.
See more photographs at Camera & Calendar,
and read more about Sefton Park.
Dreaming Realist 