The 2016 Lonsdale Street Festival is underway and it features one of the most significant and beloved Greek artists – Alkinoos Ioannidis.
Hailing from Nicosia, Cyprus, the acclaimed singer-songwriter has released 11 solo albums, which have all gone gold or platinum in Greece.
Despite his tremendous success, Ioannidis has never made any compromises to his vision, maintaining a rare artistic integrity.
During a career spanning two decades, he has given more than 1,700 concerts in Greece and Cyprus and 100 concerts abroad.
He performs up to 100 concerts per year at venues ranging from huge open-air theatres and music halls to small clubs and from ancient Greek amphitheatres to modern rock stages with his constantly-evolving live performances.
At the peak of his popularity, Ioannidis even retired temporarily from performing and recording in order to study composition at the St Petersburg State Conservatory with the legendary Russian composer Boris Tishchenko.
His sound is a combination of electric music with chamber orchestras and rock bands with choirs, chamber orchestras and live looping, in a musical environment echoing rock, jazz, classical, Greek, Cypriot and Middle Eastern folk songs.
His latest album, Mikri Valitsa (Little Suitcase), is a collection of songs influenced by the Greek folk sounds (of laika and rebetika) as well as the recent phenomenon of economic migration from Greece to different parts of the world.
“I almost fled Greece three times during the recent years,” he states in the album’s liner notes.
“What would I put in a small suitcase? What would I keep from the place I was about to leave? From the era and the self I’d leave behind? How do you pack the way, the time and the pain, all that make each one of us what he/she is? What are the absolute necessities? Those that, in order to take them with you, you need to remove something else? Just as refugees, leaving in haste, take with them their photos and wedding wreaths, I similarly closed in my Little Suitcase some folk songs, along with images of our face and times.”
The Lonsdale Street Festival, an annual celebration of Greek culture, music, dance and food, will take place on the weekend of Saturday 27 and Sunday 28 February.