Giants of the music scene

Limassol and Nicosia will be jumping with performances by three giants in the Greek music world this week and next.

Vasilis Papakonstantinou, Odysseas Ioannou and Rita Andonopoulou will perform concerts under the name Nine and Five in Limassol on Friday and Saturday and in Nicosia next Tuesday and Wednesday.

Papakonstantinou is probably the best-known rocker in Greece. He started off in 1976 when he worked with the Greek composer Mikis Thedorakis after meeting him in Paris two years earlier. Theodorakis is only one of the great composers he has collaborated with, others have been Manos Loizou and Thanos Mikroutsikos.

Composer Ioannou will be joining Papakonstantinou on stage. Ioannou has written for a number of Greek singers, published four books, and has also been running a daily radio station programme for the last 22 years. Since 2008 he has led a series of seminars about song writing, lyrics and the radio.

The one woman on stage, Andonopoulou, will complete the musical affair with a female tone. Andonopoulou began music lessons at 18, while also performing English and other foreign language songs with a number of bands. Two years later she began lessons in classical music and today she has worked with a number of composers and has performed around Greece.

Nine and Five
Live performance by Vasilis Papakonstantinou, Odysseas Ioannou and Rita Andonopoulou. January 6-8. Pattichio Theatre, Limassol. Friday: 9pm and Sunday: 8pm. Tel: 25-377277
January 10-12. Latsia Municipal Theatre, Nicosia. 8.30pm. €30/25/22. Tel: 99-694637

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.