Arranging Lena Platonos's music for solo piano
Athens Premiere, May 13 2012, Michael Cacoyannis Foundation.
Featuring Savina Yiannatou, voice.
“…Listening to the CD and to all the arrangements was a moment of glory for me –It feels indeed as, through refined imagination and phenomenal piano theme development, he was interpreting non-existent verses. I want to wish him success in his career and state how lucky I am that he took the initiative to interpret and arrange my work.”
Lena Platonos, Athens 9.12.2011
Pianist Spyros Manesis, known in Greece from his work with various jazz projects, presents now his new project for solo piano inspired by Lena Platonos's music. In this project, Spyros fashions a special interpretation of this important composer/songwriter's music, and creates bridges between her original recordings and his own musical world, in which the classical/romantic tradition exists together with the jazz idiom. While arranging these works for piano Spyros was asking the following questions: How close can “Sabotage” be to Thelonious Monk's music or the “Cadence of Spring” to the stride tradition? Does the lyricism alter when in the “pop” style compared to when it is in a classical/romantic style? Does the music retain its importance without its lyrical counterpart?
Apart from these thoughts, Spyros explores the sonic range of the piano (dynamics, textures, registers) experiments with the form, reharmonizes the original pieces and uses improvisation techniques in order to build up the development, always keeping a dialectic relation to the original works and their features, such as lyricism, minimalism, dynamic extremes and melancholic images.
Spyros Manesis belongs to the new generation of Greek jazz musicians, He studied in Greece and Holland and is now active throughout Europe. His relationship with Lena Platonos's music began when he first listened to the albums “Sabotage” and “Karyotakis – 13 songs” as a teenager. Later, with TRIOISM, he made an arrangement of “Galazia kithara” that was included in their album released in 2008. In 2009 he decided to arrange a series of Lena Platonos's songs, which was his Masters Research Project at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam under the title “DEVELOPING OUR OWN SONGBOOK: Arranging Lena Platonos's music for solo piano”, which received enthusiastic accolades. Recently, he has finished recording eight songs, soon to be released in an album.
At the concert at Michael Cacoyannis Foundation, he is collaborating in a few songs with Savina Yannatou, whose voice is so much associated with the original recordings. The great vocalist which is characterized by unique stylistic flexibility will re-approach Lena Platonos's music, this time through improvisation and the jazz idiom, as she collaborates with the pianist.
Michael Cacoyannis Foundation
http://www.spyrosmanesis.com/Spyros_Manesis/portraits_of_lena.html
