From website: VINYLMINE

From website: VINYLMINE

two CDs with Greek songs

After a long interval on Vinylmine, two albums of songs in Greek, from a company (Metronomos) which insists on ... Helleno-Hellenic.

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THOMAS JOSEPH VENAKIS: My Precious Ruby and Sapphire / Asia Minor songs [Metronomos, 2014]

With a doctorate in Chemistry, the Cretan Thomas Joseph Venakis is a singer in a tradition - an exceptional singer (tenor) in a tradition, who, having served his apprenticeship with the husband and wife Simon and Angeliki Karas (he was a member of the Demotic Song Choir of Simon Karas), now comes, many years later - today, that is - to give his own personal 'take' on a body of songs which, though generally described as being from 'Asia Minor', in reality (also) hail from the Dodecanese, the north-eastern Aegean, Pontus, and the Propontis.

Venakis's interpretative approach involves, basically, knowledge, character, and virtue;  features, that is, which go together and complement one another. His engagement, for years now, with this subject allows him to be as 'personal' as is necessary, so that he interprets these marvellous songs in such a way that they retain, always, their greatness. Because this is the most important thing that I can write about 'My Precious Ruby and Sapphire' ... the fact that we hear 'At the High Windows', 'From Your Sweet Eyes', 'I've Told You and I Tell You Again', and all the rest, purged of the fripperies of certain singers with 'a name but no village', (such-and-such singers),  who sing 'whatever', tossing one or two traditional items into their programmes (because that's what they grew up with ... ).

I have no more to say about this wonderful CD (in any case, all the information is available in the 56-page booklet), which makes the most natural, and unexpected, listening. I should note, only, the names of the musicians who accompany Thomas Joseph Venakis on this unique journey into the past of our song. Manolis Karpathios, kanun, Stratis Psaradelis, Constantinople lyre, Periklis Papapetropoulos, Constantinople lute, and Yorghis Tzanetos, percussion.

Contact: www.metronomos.gr

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