The 41st Greek Festival of Sydney will present Rebetiko, “an emotional experience through a symphony concert” on Friday, April 21 at City Recital Hall.
Rebetiko is the initiative of the Greek Orthodox Community of NSW. It is a story of love, loss, drugs, and refugee hardships.
Rebetiko the music of the poor and the dispossessed, combines diverse musical styles with lyrics describing the joy, the sorrow, of everyday life.
Commonly termed the Greek blues, Rebetiko grew out of an urban sub-culture around the ports of Piraeus and Thessaloniki where countless Greek Asia Minor refugees crowded after their expulsion from Asia Minor, modern day Turkey.
The music is a meld of Byzantine, Greek, Turkish, Sephardic Jewish and Jazz. Ifigeneia Ioannou will perform the music from the iconic Rebetiko film by Costas Ferris, with the original music by Stavros Xarchakos, one of Greece’s leading composers of the 20th Centuty.
Ioannou has collaborated with various music groups on stages in Greece and Europe as well as Greece’s musical big hitters, Dionysis Savvopoulos, Manos Lydakis, Mpampis Tsertos, George Perris and many others.
Music by Kostas Skarvelis, Vassilis Tsitsanis and Panayiotis Toundas will also be presented in a performance by the symphonic orchestra under the direction of George Ellis.
When & where: Friday, April 21 at 8pm City Recital Hall, Angel Pl, Sydney, NSW
