A leading interpreter of baroque, renaissance and early musics, Savina Yannatou is one of the most respected singers in Greek music. She is known not only of her mastery of older, formal repertoire but also for her experience in avant-garde jazz. Since 1983, she has been a member of the Early Music Workshop of Athens, performing at festivals across Greece as well as further afield.
Her dedication to exploring and expanding her voice as an instrument and as a means of communication has led her to record a collection of Sephardic folk songs of the Balkans, heard on her album 'Primavera in Salonica' (1994). These are songs from the Jewish Diaspora, once the strongest community in the cosmopolitan port of Thessaloniki. This Jewish music of the Balkans has been renewed and modified through Savina's vocal experiments and the subtle treatment of her handpicked band of virtuoso instrumentalists, Primavera en Salonico. Their album's release couldn't have been timelier, for it emphasised the connections between all people of the Balkans at a time when others took up arms to stress their separation.
Encouraged by the very positive reaction of audiences in Greece, Yannatou made an effort to enter the international touring circuit and has since enjoyed growing success abroad. Her performance at Reading, UK this year - her second WOMAD appearance - made a lasting impression on the audience, featuring an eclectic program with traditional songs from all over the world, transformed into fascinating explorations of sound and style by Savina's subtle but dynamic voice.
Savina Yannatou & Primavera en Salonico
Based on traditional material – mainly from the Mediterranean Area – Savina Yannatou and the group Primavera en Salonico offer an open sound without borders or labels, from simple songs extending to contemporary music forms.
Insisting on acoustic instruments, half of which have their origin in the East, they attempt at exploiting their specific sound, oftentimes also exploring them to the limits of their possibilities. Beyond her exquisite interpretive capacity Savina Yannatou gives special emphasis to the expression of the “music” of each different language, without letting that stop her from oftentimes using her voice as one more instrument.
With a background that combines classical studies and “authentic” traditional music with improvised music and jazz, Savina Yannatou and the musicians of Primavera en Salonico find themselves like rope-dancers on the chord which connects the modal music of the East with the equivalent music of Western Europe, music of the Middle Ages and the popular polyphonies of the Mediterranean. Beginning from the melismatic riches of the Eastern Maqam and the charming irregular rhythms they explore the territory of collective free improvisation, meeting there modern jazz.
The program
The program usually consists of a mixture of the three CDs Savina Yannatou produced with Primavera en Salonico: the “Sephardic Folk Songs from Salonica”, the “Songs from the Mediterranean” and the “Virging Maries of the World”
The selection criterion of the Mediterranean songs presented by Savina Yannatou and the ensemble “Primavera en Salonico”, was the cultural particularity of each song presented, as well as the common threads that unite the centuries old civilizations of the region into a cultural unity. Each song treated as a cultural artifact requires to bring to fore its distinct colors, vocally and music wise. An endless game of semblance and difference, strange and familiar that characterizes Mediterranean cultures, allowed Savina Yannatou and the ensemble “Primavera en Salonico”, to approach the songs in terms of the most disciplined “tradition” and at the same time with the freedom that personal experience and inter-subjectivity allow for. They are songs from Sardinia, Corsica, Israel, Turkey, Southern Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Albania, Province and Spain.
The Sephardic folk songs are “heavenly melodies” which evoke the memory of long past times. The Sephardic Jews, being expulsed from Spain by the inquisition in 1492, settled in large numbers in Salonica, where they had a thriving community. They brought with them their songs and in the course of the centuries they made many more, in their old-Spanish language “Ladino”.
The “Virgin Maries of the World” are a selection of popular songs about the Divine pathos and the resurrection from the wider area of the Mediterranean but also from Africa, South America and the Caribbean. Though sacred in intention , their marriage with the ancient and pre-Christian traditions and rituals, results in a very charming sound. The melodies, rhythms and lyrics, though they are lamenting for Christ, are gushing with life. Pain, pathos and decay are transformed into a hymn celebrating the perfection of human existence and salvation.
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Sumiglia
(2005)
The quiet storm
Greek singer Savina Yannatou defies boundaries and initial impressions.
By Don Heckman
Special to The Times
March 8, 2005
Savina Yannatou unassumingly strolled on stage Sunday at UCLA's Schoenberg Hall, her slender figure garbed in a flowing red chiffon tunic. Her most notable attribute: an apparent reluctance to perform, almost shyness.
She announced each song in a soft, gentle voice, sometimes simply providing a title and the number's country of origin. Occasionally, she recited an English translation of a song's lyrics.
For the first few numbers, the Greek singer's low-key demeanor dominated the music as well. Overt charisma - despite a growing résumé of rave reviews - was clearly not her game. Singing with precision and control, reading her songs from a notebook on a music stand as she clutched the microphone, she made no apparent effort to invest her performance with anything other than a calculated focus on her songs.
This, despite the fact that the music she has explored through some 20 albums, most of it from Mediterranean countries, simmers with the passion of centuries of traditional songs.
Backstage before the performance, part of only her second U.S. tour, Yannatou displayed similar reserve. Almost dwarfed by a large armchair, the small, fine-boned Greek artist smiled when asked about the reaction to "Sumiglia," her boundary-less new release from ECM Records.
"When I first started singing Sephardic songs and Mediterranean songs," she said, "I really didn't think they could ever be released in an album. Now I have done a few CDs, and they have all had very good reviews. So, like all musicians and artists, I hope that we will make many more."
Back on stage, Yannatou's reserve slowly transformed, especially as she moved into rhythmic music from Bulgaria, emotionally intense tunes from Italy, Spain and Corsica and a gripping Palestinian song. Although her physical manner and between-song comments remained composed, her vocal style expanded dramatically.
Her initial emphasis on cool-toned interpretations, enhanced by a sumptuous sound and a subtle vibrato, gradually transformed into a startlingly diverse repertoire of vocal techniques. In some numbers she employed "throat singing" - a technique in which deep throat tones are used to generate whistling overtones. For others, she flexed her sound to the point where she could produce a melodic line in octaves.
In the concert's last few pieces, she produced bird calls, yelps, squeals and growls with an intensity reminiscent of the late avant-garde singer Cathy Berberian, as she led her four-piece ensemble through electrifyingly contemporary sounding segments.
"I have always been fascinated with the different colors of the voice, the different ways of singing," said Yannatou, opening up conversationally, similar to how she opened up musically on stage. "And that, I think, is what attracted me to the different [styles of] music of the Mediterranean. Singing them becomes like a game, playing with the sounds and the words of different languages."
Yannatou still lives in Athens, where she was born. Although she devoted a few years to guitar lessons, her primary instrument has always been her voice.
"My sister," she said, "helped me get into a choir when I was very young - 7 years old.... And she helped me to learn the second voice, taught me not to be confused by what the other singers were doing. And it turned out to be a very important experience for me - to learn music, to learn how to be with other persons, to share the experience."
She studied voice at the National Conservatory and the Workshop of Vocal Art in Athens, continuing with postgraduate study at London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Her professional career began - while she was still a student - with vocal contributions to the popular "Lillipoupoli" children's program on Greek National Radio 3 under the direction of composer Manos Hadjidakis.
Yannatou initially concentrated on contemporary Greek song and opera. Renaissance and Baroque music attracted her interest next, followed in the early '90s by a fascination with vocal techniques and free improvisation.
By the mid-'90s she had met and formed a creative alliance with the members of Primavera en Salonico, the group that has backed her for more than a decade and with whom she has recorded several albums with combined U.S. sales of about 10,000.
"I first met them," she said, "when I became interested in Sephardic songs from Saloniki.... We started doing concerts and eventually, the songs of the Mediterranean came next."
"And now, suddenly," she adds with a smile, "it has been more than 10 years together."
Yannatou finished the Schoenberg Hall concert with more wide-open improvisations, her vocal excursions enhanced by the heroic accordion playing of the group's music director, Kostas Vomvolos; the multilayered percussion work of Kostas Theodorou, the string bass of Michalis Siganidis and the nay flute of Haris Lambrakis.
By this point it was fully apparent that Yannatou's quiet stage demeanor, like her calm, intimate conversational manner, represented only one facet of a complex personality. Rather than rely on superficial stagecraft, she employs her voice, her eyes and her inner intensity to mine a creative trove filled with emotional treasures.
"If you choose to do this kind of work," concluded Yannatou, "you have to have a basic love of music. And for me it is always the expression of the music, the feeling within the music, that has to come first. So, I can only hope that what I do, what I sing, is experienced as passionate, even if I don't necessarily seem that way when I am on stage."
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CD booklet includes both Greek and English lyrics and interpretations.
Most pieces comprised in the present CD were composed in 1989 and 1990 exclusively for
"G's Musical Workshop", a radio programme produced by Michalis Gregoroiu for Greek Radio Three,
which unfortunately , ceased to broadcast in 1994. This radio progamme offered the oppurtunity to composers and musicians alike to experiment with music, in front of or with no audience at all in the studio, composing musical pieces in two days time only. Those pieces of mine we re-recorderd and completed so that they could be released through the present CD ten years after their initial composition. I set to music lyrics and notes by my sister Sophia Yannatou (apart from the "Black Moons"). I also made use of two melodies dating back to the middle ages and the Renaissance, namely "Rosa Das Rosas" and "A los banos dell amor" and deemed appropriate to retain the original orchestration in all tracks, since any sort of alteration would seem to upset the inner balance of the present release.
---Savina Yannatou
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The 2001 live recording by the great diva from Greece, again with her incredible Primavera Salonica ensemble .Exciting and very colourful ECM debut for innovative Greek singer Savina Yannatou and her band Primavera en Salonico. Yannatou and company propose a wide-open sound which embraces the simplest of folk songs as well as improvising that both draws upon far-flung traditions and moves beyond them. Music both highly attractive and emotionally-intense, recorded before a capacity crowd in Yannatou's hometwon of Athens.
Review:
fROOTS Magazine, No 239
May 2003
A live recording featuring a gloriously varied range of material – there are songs here from Greece, Lebanon, Spain, Sardinia, Bulgaria, the Caribbean and many other places, besides (including a Hebridian song from the Marjory Kennedy-Frazer collection). It’s hard to say exactly how much post-concert work was done in the studio, but this is a live CD that really does combine the energy and spontaneity of performance with the technical precision of a studio recording. Yannatou’s vocals are impeccable throughout, her articulation clear, the ornamentation precise and – where necessary – the voice gutsy without being strained. Another excellent female vocalist, Lamia Bedioui, sings on a number of the songs in Arabic.
The subtle textures of the two female voices are offset perfectly by the instrumental backing. Primavera en Salonico is a mainly acoustic orchestra consisting of traditional instruments such as oud, kanun and ney, as well as guitar, accordeon and double bass. It is an excellent and versatile band that copes gloriously with the demands made by the various styles on offer – this CD would be an enjoyable listen even without the vocals. As someone with a special interest in the instrument, I was especially impressed by Kyriakos Gouventas’ violin playing, but there is not a single instrumentalist here who is less than excellent.
I have one minor quibble, which is that the sleeve notes give minimal information (and in English only – most of the song texts are given in translation) about what is a very interesting selection of songs. But this is one of Savina Yannatou’s best releases and is highly recommended.
Chris Williams
Track listing
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Sephardic, folk songs of the Spanish-Jews, performed in this collection by Savina Yannatou, consist, in their entirety, of a qwuite contradictory as well as charming mosaic. The European Middle Ages, Byzantium and the Arabic-Pewrsian tradition co-exist with elements from the folk music of the Iberian Peninsula, the Balkans and the wider Mediterranean basin. Traditional songs written and composed by the Spanish Jews of Salonica, which, up to fifty years ago, were heard, sadly or cheerfully, in the ppor neighbourhoods of the town. The CD is accompanied by an 80-paged booklet in 3 languages.
Track listing
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Savina Yannatou and the Primavera en Salonico ensembleAdrift the warm ephemeral breezes of the blue Mediterranean, about two feet just above the ocean waves you are able touch the spirit of any points East, South, West and North in Savina Yannatou's new CD in collaboration with the Primavera en Salonico ensemble of traditional acoustic instruments, released by Sounds True. From the opening alluring melismas through staccato dances to tightly woven harmonies and simple cries exquisitely orchestrated, Yannatou's poignant vocalizations open a door to the Mediterranean lands so ancient that upon entrance you may discover you have never left.
Track listing
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Following the path of re-discovering musical treasures of centuries, united by a most obvious and at the same time unsuspecting narrative thread, Savina Yannatou and the group PRIMAVERA EN SALONICO, present the Virgin Maries of the World, popular and folk songs, hymns, encomia, eulogies, lamentations, carols excerpts from popular masses (missa) for the universal figure of Virgin Mary. These songs bring together a variety of Divine archetypes in the form of a mystical musical journey, spreading from the folk religious chants of Greece and Cyprus to popular masses from Congo and Argentina.
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Those songs, that I wouldn't hesitate qualify them as "adolescent" when it comes to their lyrics, were
written between 1975 and 1985. They were released in 1986 under the title Is King Alexander
Alive?, a title alluding to my friend Alexandros as well as to the sense of bereavement transpired.
I dedicated the album to Alexandros, and never wrote lyrics ever since. As for music, I've been wri-
ting under commission only. For the orchestration I used four channels, my voice in multiple takes
transferred for strings, a DX21 synthesizer and my guitar. Three of the songs "A Morn spent in a
Foreign City", "Yellow - Blue", and "Note", were orchestrated at the studio by the musicians.
I literally hacked the poem by Yorgos Koropoulis, without even ask for his opinion, strongly sub-
scribing, back then, to an extended notion of communal ownership, literary ownership notwithstand-
ing. I have to thank him for his friendship and sense of humor that have prevented him from getting
mad at me.
The two pieces written by my sister, were parts of her diary and I set them to music, just as they
were.
Savina Yannatou
1. A MORN SPENT IN A FOREIGN CITY
Proino se xeni poli
Lyrics: Sophia Yannatou
2. YELLOW-BLUE
Kitrino -Ble
3. DISTANCE
Apostasi
4. OPTICAL ILLUSION
Optiki apati
5. THE END
Telos
Lyrics: Yorgos Kompoulis
6. SUPPOSE THAT YOU..
Ke pes pos
7. IS KING ALEXANDER ALIVE?
Zi o Vasilias Alexandros
Lyrics: Sophia Yannatou
8. ADOLESCENCE
Efivia
9. SLOW TAKE
Argi lipsi
10. WITH BILL EVANS ON THE RECORD PLAYER
Me ton Bill Evans sto Pik-ap
11. SAMOTHRACE
Samothraki
12. SKETCHES
Zografies
13. NOTE
Simioma
Catalog #CD3444 CD $19.99
(Includes booklet with English and Greek lyrics)
To Place an order, note Title and cat. #
select
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