Two legends of the international music scene, Charles Lloyd and Maria Farantouri, combine forces in The Greek Project to the City Recital Hall, Sydney and the Melbourne International Jazz Festival.
“Music of deeply spiritual beauty.” The Times (UK)
“[Her] voice was a gift from the gods of Olympus….” The Guardian of Maria Farantouri
The Greek Project will see jazz and classical Greek musicians combine to unveil an unimaginable synthesis of sound and sensibilities.
“We’re very much looking forward to performing in Sydney,” Charles Lloyd said.
“We have a wonderful concert prepared, one that blends the genres of jazz and classical, and has a distinct Greek flavour.
“It will be a unique experience with some great pieces.”
A musical pair that have been collaborating and sharing musical ideas for over a decade, Lloyd and Farantouri met in 2002 after a performance that Farantouri gave in the United States. The two become friends and a musical partnership blossomed.
Lloyd, dubbed by Carlos Santana as “an international treasure”, is a familiar name to jazz fans with a professional music career that has spanned over five decades. He has collaborated with a number of renowned international artists and groups, including rock groups The Doors, The Beach Boys and Jimi Hendrix.
Farantouri, whose voice has been described as “a gift from the gods of Olympus” (The Guardian), is revered by her country and is considered the voice of Greece.
In The Greek Project Lloyd and Farantouri are joined by Takis Farazis (piano), Reuben Rogers (bass), Eric Harland (drums, percussion, vocals) and Sokratis Sinopoulos (lyra).
City Recital Hall Angel Place General Manager, Anne-Marie Heath, is looking forward to The Greek Project and to what Lloyd and Farantouri have to present.
“The Greek Project is going to be a fantastic evening of music fusion and I can’t wait to see what Charles Lloyd and Maria Farantouri have to present to us,” Ms Heath said.
“Charles is a brilliant jazz player and Maria is one of the great voices of Greece.
“So combined, we are in for some great music.”
Charles Lloyd and Maria Farantouri: The Greek Project
Featuring Takis Farazis, Reuben Rogers, Eric Harland and Socratis Siniopoulos
Wednesday 4 June 2014, 7.30pm
City Recital Hall Angel Place
30th May, Melbourne International Jazz Festival, Melbourne Recital Hall
ABOUT CHARLES LLOYD – SAXOPHONE, FLUTE, TARAGATO
Charles Lloyd was born in Memphis, Tennessee, on March 15, 1938. Like New Orleans, 400 miles to the south on the Mississippi, Memphis has a rich river culture and musical heritage saturated in blues, gospel and jazz. Lloyd's ancestry of African, Cherokee, Mongolian, and Irish reflects a similar rich culture. He was given his first saxophone at the age of 9, and was riveted to 1940s radio broadcasts by Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington. His early teachers included pianist Phineas Newborn and saxophonist Irvin Reason. His closest childhood friend was the great trumpeter Booker Little. As a teenager Lloyd played jazz with saxophonist George Coleman and was a sideman for blues greats Johnny Ace, Bobby Blue Bland, Howlin' Wolf and B.B. King.
Classical music also exerted a strong pull on the young Lloyd. In 1956 he left Memphis for Los Angeles to earn his Masters in music at USC where he studied with Halsey Stevens, a foremost Bartók authority. While his days were spent in academia, Lloyd spent nights getting educated on the job in L.A.'s jazz clubs, playing with Ornette Coleman, Billy Higgins, Scott La Faro, Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, Eric Dolphy, Bobby Hutcherson and other leading west coast jazz artists. He was also a member of the Gerald Wilson big band.
In 1960 Lloyd was invited to become music director of Chico Hamilton's group when Dolphy left to join Charles Mingus' band. The Hungarian guitarist Gabor Szabo and bassist Albert "Sparky" Stinson soon joined Lloyd in the band. Hamilton's most memorable albums for Impulse Records, Passin’ Thru and Man from Two Worlds, featured music arranged and written almost entirely by Lloyd, and during this period of prolific composing he was also finding his unique voice as a saxophonist. A memorable collaboration took place between Lloyd and the Nigerian master drummer Babatunde Olatunji, with whom the saxophonist played when he wasn't on the road with Hamilton.
Lloyd joined the Cannonball Adderley Sextet in 1964 and performed alongside Nat Adderley, Joe Zawinul, Sam Jones and Louis Hayes. He remained with Cannonball for two years, and to this day continues to acknowledge the important role Cannon played in his own development as a leader.
In 1964 Lloyd signed with CBS Records and began to record as a leader. His Columbia recordings, Discovery (1964) and Of Course, Of Course (1965), featured sidemen including Roy Haynes and Tony Williams on drums, Richard Davis and Ron Carter on bass, Gabor Szabo on guitar and Don Friedman on piano, and led to him being voted Downbeat Magazine's "New Star.” Of Course, Of Course was reissued on Mosaic Records in 2006.
Lloyd left Cannonball Adderley in 1965 to form his own quartet, a brilliant ensemble that introduced the jazz world to the talents of pianist Keith Jarrett, drummer Jack DeJohnette and bassist Cecil McBee. Their first release together was a studio recording, Dream Weaver, followed by Forest Flower: Live at Monterey (1966). Forest Flower made history as one of the first jazz recordings to sell a million copies, and the album's firsts continued as it became a stunning crossover success that appealed to a popular mass market audience and gained heavy airplay on FM radio. The Quartet was the first jazz group to appear at the famed Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco and other rock palaces and shared billing with Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Cream, the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane.
In 1967 Charles Lloyd was voted "Jazz Artist of the Year" by Down Beat, and the Quartet was invited to tour the world. The Lloyd quartet found a warm reception in Europe at the new jazz festivals in Montreux, Antibes, Molde. Its performances in the Far East, the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc nations of Europe often marked the first time these audiences had heard an American jazz group live.
And then, at the height of his career in the early 1970s, Lloyd disbanded the quartet and dropped from sight, withdrawing to pursue an inner journey in Big Sur, the wild haven that had previously attracted other artists and seekers including Robinson Jeffers, Langston Hughes, Henry Miller, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jack Kerouac, Jean Varda and Jamie DeAngulo.
It wasn't until 1981 that Lloyd moved to break a decade of silence in the jazz world when a remarkable 18-year-old French pianist, Michel Petrucciani, arrived in Big Sur. Lloyd was compelled to help introduce this gifted artist to the world. This led to U.S., European and Japanese tours in 1982 and 1983 with Petrucciani on piano, Palle Danielsson on bass and drummer Son Ship Theus. British jazz critic Brian Case called Lloyd's return "one of the events of the 1980s.” The group produced a special edition cassette, Night Blooming Jasmine, and two live records, Montreux '82’ and A Night in Copenhagen, which also features Bobby McFerrin (reissued by Blue Note Records). Satisfied that Petrucciani was beginning to receive the recognition he deserved, Lloyd again retreated to Big Sur.
In 1986, after being hospitalised with a nearly fatal medical condition, Lloyd rededicated himself to music. When he regained his strength in 1988 he formed a new quartet with the renowned Swedish pianist Bobo Stenson. When Lloyd returned to the Montreux Festival in 1988, Swiss critic Yvan Ischer wrote: "To see and hear Charles Lloyd in concert is always an event, not only because this saxophonist has been at quite a few crossroads, but also because he seems to hold an impalpable truth which makes him a thoroughly original musician…This is what we call grace."
Lloyd made his first recording for ECM Records, Fish Out of Water, in 1989. The project marked the beginning of a new wave of Lloyd compositions and recordings. ECM's producer, Manfred Eicher, compared the recording to a Giacometti painting, saying, "I really believe this is the refined essence of what music should be. All the meat is gone, only the bones remain." More than twenty years later, he is still with the label, and still in search of the “sound” and the truth.
Mirror, his second recording with the New Quartet (released in September 2010), has been called a “Charles Lloyd classic.” Rabo de Nube, also on ECM, captured the quartet “live” at its inception, and was voted number one recording for the 2008 Jazz Times Reader’s and Critic’s Poll. His concerts and recordings are events of pristine beauty and elegance, full of intensely felt emotion and passion that touches deep inside the heart. This is not entertainment, but the powerful uncorrupted expression of beauty through music. When music vibrates, the soul vibrates and touches the spirit within.
Lloyd established another ‘first’ in his interesting history of jazz ‘firsts’, by collaborating with the classical Greek singer Maria Farantouri for a concert at the Herodion Theater at the foot of the Acropolis. Ta Nea, the leading newspaper of Athens stated “Music has no borders…. The audience was filled with a Dionysian ecstasy. While the music had reminiscences of a Hypiros fair, at the same time it took you to the heart of New York City.” This concert was documented and the ATHENS CONCERT was released by ECM records in 2011.
Charles Lloyd maintains an active performance and recording schedule with the New Quartet and Sangam. From time to time he collaborates with poets Charles Simic, Michael McClure, and Kamau Daaood.
ABOUT MARIA FARANTOURI
Maria Farantouri was born in Athens οn November 28th, 1947, a harsh period, when Greece, like much of Europe, was recovering from the devastation of World War II and the German Occupation. However, it was also a period of readjustment and awakening, sentiments expressed by Aggelos Sikelianos in his poem March of the Spirit, a work of exaltation and heroic vision that would be sung by Maria Farantouri 23 years later in a setting by Mikis Theodorakis.
Adolescence saw the beginning of Maria’s creative experience; through her participation in the choir of The Society of Greek Music, she understood that singing would become not only a path to follow but a way of life. The Society’s objective was to promote progressive music based on Greek culture and tradition, and it was the spawning ground for many young artists who aspired to revive Greek music including Yiannis Markopoulos, Manos Loizos, Dionyssis Savvopoulos, Christos Leontis, Zakis and Panayiotis Kounadis. In this inspirational environment, Maria took her first steps in music and because of her rich contralto voice, soon left the choir to become a soloist.
It was while she was singing with the Society choir, in 1963, that Mikis Theodorakis first heard Maria singing a song of his own entitled Grief. The composer was deeply impressed by the young singer and at the end of the concert he met her backstage: “Do you know that you were born to sing my songs?” he told her. “I know” was the immediate response of the sixteen-year old singer. In the summer of the same year, after school had broken up for the summer vacation, Maria became a member of Theodorakis’ ensemble. Together with Grigoris Bithikotsis, Dora Yiannakopoulou and Soula Birbili, Maria encountered the magic of concert performance for the first time. Soon, her voice was heard at all important political and social events. Theodorakis’ new work The Hostage was performed at every peace demonstration, and with her militant young voice, Maria made the song The Laughing Boy known throughout Greece, and eventually, the world.
In 1965 Maria made her first professional recording of a song by Spyros Papas and Yiannis Argyris, Someone is Celebrating, with Lakis Papas accompanying. In 1966, the soundtrack of Harilaos Papadopoulos’ film, Island of Aphrodite, was released with music by Theodorakis. From this came Maria’s first recording of Theodorakis, Blood-stained Moon – a setting of Nikos Gatsos’ poem. Shortly before this, Theodorakis had invited her to his house and played her the first work he had written specifically for her voice. It was called The Ballad of Mauthausen with lyrics by Iakovos Kambanellis and the song was to become identified with Maria’s voice throughout the world. Soon after, the composer wrote six more songs for Maria’s voice and named them Farantouri’s Cycle paying homage to the young artist who would become his major interpreter – his priestess! Although he has written many other songs for male and female voices, Farantouri remains the only artist to whom Theodorakis has dedicated a song cycle.
As an inseparable member of Theodorakis’ band, which toured in Greece and abroad, Maria visited the Soviet Union in 1966. There, the famous Russian composer Aram Illych Khachaturian heard her voice and asked her to stay on in Moscow for musical studies. But Maria followed Theodorakis instead on his musical travels. The live recordings made on the tour of the USSR would be regarded milestones in Greek music if they were available today.
Together with Theodorakis, who radically transformed Modern Greek music, especially song-writing, Maria Farantouri made the Greek public familiar with the poetry of the Nobel Prize-winning poets George Seferis and Odysseas Elytis and many other important Greek poets. The musical and political movement begun by Theodorakis and some of his colleagues did not end with the military coup d’état of 1967. The new regime banned Theodorakis’ music and after spending four months underground, he was arrested. Earlier, on a paper chewing-gum wrapper, he had managed to send a short message to Maria, advising her to leave Greece and go abroad. Maria was just twenty years old when she left Greece for Paris, and she did what she considered the obvious thing to do; she sang in a great many non-commercial concerts, the profits from which went to the anti-dictatorship movement. She became a symbol of resistance and hope, and, sensitive to social problems, she took an active role in the women’s movement, in ecological activism and the struggle against drugs. The international press called her a people’s Callas (The Daily Telegraph), and the Joan Baez of the Mediterranean (Le Monde). According to The Guardian, her voice was a gift from the gods of Olympus. Long reviews were devoted to her performances by enthusiastic critics who recognized not only the quality of her voice and the modest style of her performances, but also her strong character and social commitment. In the Greek context, at least, Maria represented a completely new style of singer – a self-aware woman.
With her concerts in Europe and America, as well as her recordings, that were broadcast by the BBC and Deutsche Welle, Maria kept Theodorakis’ music alive. The composer, exiled in the remote mountain village of Zatouna, secretly supplied her with tapes of his new songs which he recorded crudely on a small tape-recorder and smuggled to her. It was Maria’s responsibility to organize musical arrangements for the songs he had recorded, playing them on the piano and singing them himself. It was under these harsh conditions he first heard State of Siege, his setting of a poem by a woman prisoner, broadcast from London’s Roundhouse, on a radio he had kept hidden from his guards. At this historic concert Maria was supported by Greek artists such as Minos Volanakis, and actors from the musical Hair, who rushed from their show during one of the intervals to support their fellow artist. Sir John Gielgud, Alan Bates and Peggy Ashcroft also offered their help in a later concert Maria gave at the Albert Hall.
It was at this period that Maria met Telemachos Hitiris, a poet and student of philosophy at Florence, where she had been invited to give a concert by some Greek students. The years that followed and the birth of their son revealed that the couple had made a lifetime bond.
It was at this time, too, that Maria began collaborating with the composer Manos Hadzidakis, who was then working on a piece called The Age of Melissanthi, a composition based on his personal experience, and the hardships of his youth. The wounds left by the German Occupation were re-opened by the regime of the military dictators. Hadzidakis reserved a central role in this work for Maria, and subtitled his composition A Musical Story with Maria Farantouri. His work would not be finished until years later, but the creative course of Maria’s and Manos’ relationship had already begun.
In 1970, after the intervention of international artists and writers, Theodorakis, whose health was precarious following his various imprisonments, exiles and house arrests, was released. With the assistance of the French politician Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, he was taken to Paris, from where he began his ceaseless tours of Europe, North and South America, and the Middle East. Always at his side, Maria played a leading part in his concerts, which soon became a beacon of freedom for the exiled Greeks, and were supported by famous international artists, intellectuals, and other distinguished world figures.
The concerts Maria gave abroad were recorded, and reached Greece secretly, usually inside different cover-sleeves, giving courage to those who were struggling against the junta. In the same way, without anyone noticing, the early work of the young composer Heleni Karaindrou, The Great Insomnia, a setting of poems by Yorgos Yeorgoussopoulos, was smuggled out of Greece. Maria’s voice was added to the recording in a London studio, and thus she put her stamp on the unique cycle of songs by Karaindrou, who was to become famous for her film soundtracks. On tour in the USA, Farantouri met the singer Fleri Dandonaki in New York, and their friendship continued until Dandonaki’s agonising death in 1998.
By the early 1970’s, London had become Maria’s adopted home, and it was there that she met the guitar virtuoso John Williams. The internationally-renowned artist was impressed by her voice and presence and together they made an exquisite recording of Theodorakis’ Romancero Gitano, a setting of poems by Federico Garcia Lorca. A victim of Spanish fascism, Lorca had been an inspiration to Theodorakis, who set his poetry to music just before the Greek coup d’état. In 1971, with Maria’s voice, John Williams’ on guitar, and the Elytis’
brilliant translations, Lorca’s poems found an ideal interpretation.
When the Greek dictatorship fell, Mikis Theodorakis and Maria Farantouri returned to Greece, where they gave truly moving concerts to Greek audiences who had experienced seven years of fear and repression. 125,000 people attended the performance of Theodorakis’ Canto General in the Karaiskakis Stadium alone. Maria and her colleague, the baritone Petros Pandis, who had had the privilege of rehearsing this work in Paris under the gaze of the poet Pablo Neruda himself, put their own stamp on this extraordinary work.
Maria has always made conscious choices, and from early in her career she succeeded in achieving artistic independence; as a self-inspired artist, she was able to negotiate her way through all sorts of songs. Her teacher, Elli Nikolaidi, always at her side, was a valuable aid in Maria’s music practice. Faithful to the path she had followed, she was careful to preserve high artistic standards and the quality of her choices as she began to enrich her repertoire after 1976. After seven years abroad she was also driven by a natural desire to advance her career. As a citizen and artist of the world she had been in contact with foreign artists and performed in international festivals with such noted singers as Juliette Greco, Mercedes Sosa, Myriam Makeba, Inti Illimani and Maria del Mar Bonet. She offered Greek audiences the results of her experience in her Songs of Protest from all over the World, a recording that not only found an immediate response but became a gold record.
Maria also renewed her collaboration with the Greek song-writer Manos Loizos at this time, with an album that characterised an era, The Negro Songs, based on the poetry of Yiannis Negrepontis. She also worked with the young composer Mihalis Grigoriou, who had set the poetry of Manolis Anagnostakis to music. Meanwhile her collaboration with Hadzidakis had been revived with the completion of Mellissanthi and the composition of new songs especially for her voice. Hadzidakis’ concerts in the Roman Agora of Athens, with Maria and younger singers who were taking their first steps as performers, were the musical event of the season.
A longing for peace and friendship between Greece and Turkey led Maria to take the daring step of collaborating with the Turkish composer Zülfü Livaneli. Their concerts in Athens were embraced by the public, who clearly revealed their weariness with the long confrontation between the two nations and their desire for reconciliation and peaceful co-existence. The same enthusiasm, if not greater, was displayed by Turkish audiences.
In 1981 she travelled again with Theodorakis to Cuba. Their concerts before the musically-aware Cuban audience, including Fidel Castro himself, were so successful that the Cuban leader issued an open invitation to the Greeks to perform a new series of concerts the following year.1985 marked the beginning of a new chapter in Maria’s life with the birth of her son Stefanos on October 28th (National Independence Day in Greece). A period of relative withdrawal from artistic engagements followed the birth of Stefanos. Maria worked rarely and selectively.
In 1989 the political situation in Greece became unstable. Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou, leader of the Socialist Party, was under attack from the opposition. Election succeeded election without the formation of a stable government. At that time Maria felt that she had to support the historic leader of the Socialist Party against what proved to be slanderous attacks. Responding to his invitation, she offered herself as a candidate for office and, elected as a member of the opposition, she worked with Melina Mercouri and Stavros Benos on cultural issues.
Motherhood and politics could not keep her long from her art and in 1990 she worked with Cuban composer Leo Brouwer on a double album of international repertoire, including songs written especially for her voice by Vangelis Papathanassiou.
Although her collaboration with Theodorakis has continued until today, including on his most recent works, Maria actively seeks out the new generation of young composers. For example, she sang The Diary for Passer-by at the End of the Century, by Pericles Koukos, a setting of the poetry of Christoforos Christofis at the Athens Music Hall in 1996. Three years later, seeking a creative new direction, she proposed collaboration with two of her younger colleagues, Savina Yiannatou and Elli Paspala. Supported by the musical arrangement of the pianist Takis Farazis and with the participation of musicians David Lynch and Haig Yazidjian, the show they put together was such an artistic and commercial success that they were able to keep it going for two years.
In 2000, after years of absence, the avant-garde composer Lena Platonos, who was regarded by many as the only significant descendant of Manos Hadzidakis, returned to the recording studio, and recorded exclusively with Maria. In August 2001, when Athens had emptied for the summer vacation, Maria filled the Herod Atticus Odeon, performing with the Orchestra of Colours under the baton of the conductor Miltos Loyiadis in a program called A Century of Greek Song. In June 2003, nine years after the death of Manos Hadzidakis, once again in the Roman Odeon, Maria sang in the completed version of his Amorgos, a setting of the poetry of Nikos Gatsos. For the last ten years many of Maria’s performances abroad and in Greece have been supported by the German band Berliner Instrumentalisten including the musicians Henning Schmiedt (piano), Volker Schlott (saxophone/flute) and Jens Naumilkat (cello). With this ensemble, Maria has given a new dimension to the traditional Greek rembetiko (traditional urban songs often likened to the Blues), to Byzantine music, to old and new Greek and international repertoire. At the same time she continues to reach out to international musical trends, such as ethnic music, as in her recent CD Mosaic but also in her collaboration with classical musicians, such as the distinguished pianist Yannis Vakarelis.
In November 2002, a great man and artist attended her concert at Santa Barbara University – Charles Lloyd. The two artists felt very close to each other and a very good friendship was born. In July 2004, when he came to Greece for a concert at the Lycabettus Hill, Charles asked her to join him in his song Blow Wind – this was a crucial moment in Maria’s career and an extraordinary experience. The world of jazz opened to her and six years later Charles and Maria had their own concert in Herod’s Atticus Odeon – a concert that was recorded by Manfred Eicher and released by ECM as the Athens Concert.
In September 2004, the President of the Greek Democracy, Mr. Constantine Stephanopoulos, recognized the contribution of Maria Farantouri to Greek song, awarding her the Gold Cross of the Order of the Phoenix.
