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biographical
notes
Nikos
A. Dontas
Born
in Bonn (Germany) he holds a Ph.D. in Musicology (Faculty of Music
Studies, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens). Since 2006
he is Head of the Dramaturgy Department of the Greek National Opera
and since 1995 he is the music critic of the Athens daily newspaper Kathimerini.
He has contributed articles to the 29-volume German Dictionary Die
Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (MGG)
and has written extensively for the publishing departments of the
Athens and Thessaloniki Concert Halls, the Athens Festival, the
Greek National Opera etc. He has produced series of broadcasts
regarding classical music for the Greek National Radio as well as
for private radio stations. He holds a M.Sc. in Advanced
Architectural Studies (Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL) and has
worked as a designer and supervisor of the 20.000 m2 extension of
the Byzantine and Christian Museum of Athens. He has also been
Supervisor of Computer Aided Design and Visuals at the Foundation at
the Hellenic World and is the author and academic editor of a volume
on the Ionian city of Priene (FHW, 2001), which was translated and
published in English by Harvard University Press in 2005.
Konstantinos
Mavrogenis
Born
in Athens, he started studying piano with Vangelis Katsambas at the
Hellenic Conservatory of Music and Arts, from which he graduated in
1993 (Degree in Harmony in 1992). He continued his studies in
Advanced Theory under Panagiotis Adam and Joseph Papadatos at the
Philippos Nakas Conservatory (Degree in Fugue in 1996). At the same
period, he took up classical singing with M. Stamataki and continued
with G. Zervanos (Diploma in classical singing in 2001).
As
a soloist singer he has cooperated with the Greek National Opera,
the Athens Concert Hall, the Thessaloniki Concert Hall, the Hellenic
Festival and the Onassis Cultural Center, while he has also
performed with the orchestra of the Greek National Opera, the Athens
State Orchestra, the Greek Radio Orchestra, the City of Athens
Orchestra and the Armonia Atenea – The Friends of Music Orchestra,
interpreting scores from the baroque era until the twentieth century
as well as works of important Greek composers (M. Hatzidakis, N.
Mamangakis, Y. Markopoulos etc.). He is a member of the early music
vocal ensemble “Polyphonia”, which has recorded on FM Records
all the surviving works of the sixteenth-century Cretan composer
Franghiskos Leondaritis.
He
is a graduate of the Technical University of Athens (Faculty of
Electrical Engineering, 1997) and holds a Ph.D. in Historical
Musicology awarded by the National and Kapodistrian University of
Athens (Faculty of Music Studies, 2009).
Solon
Raptakis
He
was born in Athens in 1991. He studied at the Attikon Conservatory
with Dionysis Mallouchos, where he received his piano diploma in
2012 (grade A, first prize and distinction). He has also received
awards in piano competitions (second prize in the Arafinios
Panhellenic Competition, first prize in the UNESCO Panhellenic
Competition). In addition, he has studied Harmony, Counterpoint and
Fugue. In 2014 he graduated from the Department of Music Studies at
the University of Athens, having completed a thesis under the
supervision of Prof. Ioannis Fulias on the subject “The Piano
Sonata in Early Romanticism: A Comparative Study of First Movements
from Piano Sonatas of the 1820s”. He specializes in the
performance of late romantic, modern and contemporary piano pieces,
and regularly participates in the artistic events of the Department
of Music Studies at the University of Athens and the Municipality of
Vironas, where he lives. He is a piano teacher at the Attikon
Conservatory.
Konstantinos
G. Sampanis
He
was born in Athens in 1964 and completed his studies at the Faculty
of History and Archaeology of the School of Philosophy at the
University of Athens. He received his Master’s Diploma in Opera
from the Faculty of Theatre Studies of the School of Philosophy at
the University of Athens, and a PhD in Historical Musicology from
the Faculty of Music Studies at the Ionian University of Corfu, with
a thesis entitled Opera
in Athens during the Reign of King Otto (1833-1862) through
Newspaper Articles and Travellers’ Memoirs of that Era. He
deals specifically with the introduction, the reception and the
establishment of the operatic genre in the theatres of the Greek-speaking
area during the nineteenth century. He has been working as a Greek
language teacher since 1989, is married and has two adult daughters.
Markos
Skoulios
His
research, both as an ethnomusicologist and a music performer,
focuses on the “Great Eastern” traditions with particular
attention to the modal systems found in the area between Greece and
North India (Ottoman-Turkish and Arabic Makams, Persian Dastgahs,
Indian Ragas and Byzantine Octoechos). Among his teachers were Cinuçen
Tanrıkorur, Ömer Erdoğdular, Ümit Gürelman,
Murat Tokaç, Caner Şahin, Darius Tala’i, Rahim
Khoshnawwaz, Bachalal Mishra, Santosh Mishra, Panayiotis Neohoritis
and Lefteris Mitropoulos.
Since
1994 he has worked as a professional musician collaborating with
many groups, taking part in numerous concerts and recordings in
Greece and abroad. He is the founder and coordinator of Maye
Ensemble, a group which performs Greek and Near and Middle Eastern
music repertoire. In 2007 he was invited to participate as a soloist
in the “International Ney Meeting” in Jerash Festival (Amman,
Jordan).
In
the period between 1994 and 2002 he taught the Ud, the Ney and Modal
Analysis in several state or private music schools and
conservatories. Between 2002 and 2005 he undertook the coordination
of the research group for the theory of Mediterranean music in the
“MediMuses”, a three-year program funded by the European
Community and realised by the music organization “En Chordais”.
He is the artistic director of the annual “Festival of Eastern
Music” organised by FEX in Xanthi.
Since
the fall of 2003 he teaches at the Department of Traditional Music
of the Technological Educational Institute of Epirus. At the same
time he publishes scientific papers and gives lectures and seminars
on issues concerning Eastern modal traditions and their relation to
Greek musical idioms (at the Universities of Aix en Provence, France,
and Yildiz, Turkey, at the annual encounters of Mediterranean Music
Schools in Damascus and Genoa, etc).
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