Apokopos

to music by Natalia Kotsani and Tasos Kofodimou

Natalia Kotsani, vocals and piano
Vangelis Zografos, double bass
Participating Ross Daly, lyra

Saturday, August 1, 21:00
Horto Theatre
Entrance 15€

The Apokopos of Bergadis is the most important text of early Cretan literature and was the first Greek literary work printed in Venice in 1509 and written in language that was accessible to ordinary people. It has been characterized as the most poetic text of 16th-century Cretan literature and a characteristic example of the mixing of Greek and Western elements, with obvious Italian influences. It is believed that Bergadis was influenced by representations of Western and Eastern iconography, and vernacular love-chivalric novels, Byzantine lyrical works and elegy have also been identified as source materials.

Natalia Kotsani, the “voice” of the band encardia since 2012, has been touring and giving seminars with them throughout Europe, having inextricably linked her name to the world jazz music scene and Mediterranean songs. She is a singer, composer, producer, plays piano, accordion and percussion, while since 2009 she has been taking on the production and editing of her personal projects. She studied classical piano with D. Mallouchos, jazz and improvisation with S. Lantsia and singing with M. Symeonidou, E. Kylpasi and E. Paspala. She has attended Italian singing lessons with E. Magnolo and A. Villani as well as Irish, Swedish, Norwegian singing and Kulning seminars with L. Gioti. She holds a diploma from the School of Applied Mathematics & Physical Sciences, and a PhD from the School of Electrical & Computer Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens and a graduate of the Postgraduate Program “Jazz Performance & New Technologies” of the National University of Athens, specializing in vocal improvisation in Jazz music. From 2008 to the present, she has performed numerous concerts in Greece, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Cyprus and seminars on vocal technique and improvisation, while she has appeared at the largest festivals and concert venues in Greece (Athens Festival, Little Epidaurus, Athens & Thessaloniki Concert Hall, Herodes Atticus Conservatory, etc.) and has collaborated with numerous artists. She wrote music for the short documentary “Shadow Fighting”, 2021, which was selected as an official entry for the Thessaloniki Film Festival 2022 and for the theatrical performance Ioanna of the Metro (summer 2022, dir. Kostas Arzoglou). She is involved in research on the traditional musical vocal idioms of the Mediterranean peoples and world jazz music, while at the same time she is a researcher in Artificial Intelligence and Computational Ethnomusicology, she has published her research papers in numerous conferences and for 2022 she was selected as a Mentor for one of the largest music conferences in the world, NIME 2022 – New Zealand.