Angélique Ionatos & Katerina Fotinaki
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Angélique Ionatos & Katerina Fotinaki

Athens, Attica, Greece | INDIE

Athens, Attica, Greece | INDIE
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"Les Voix Envoutantes d'Angélique Ionatos & Katerina Fotinaki"

"The two artists have just recorded an album of a great delicacy"
"The two singers, one with a vibrant and deep tone, the other one evanescent, play together... In a garden at night, everything is allowed" - Le Monde


"Angélique Ionatos & Katerina Fotinaki"

"Her previous record already claimed it, Angélique Ionatos is more blooming than ever; between softness and sourness. With two voices and two guitars, they interprets masterpieces of Manos Hadjikadis, Sappho, or a tango in ancient Greek.." - Télérama


"Deux voix sublimes au Théâtre du Rocher"

"The two are virtuosos, in the way they are playing their instruments as well as the way they sing"
"80mn of emotions, the audience was thrilled, and shows it" - La Provence


"soirée de fête mardi au théâtre des Trois Chênes"

"Angélique Ionatos comes finally to Le Quesnoy to share the beauty of her arrangements, the Greek poetry, Homere at his most modern, as she knows how to make have a dialogue with our language, full of nuances, in delicacy and in sharpness, by playing with an extraordinary complicity with her stage partner, Katerina Fotinaki. Their stringed instruments and their vocal cords will take you far away" - La Voix du Nord


"Angélique Ionatos magistrale au Forum Meyrin"

quotes
"The performance is magnificent, not only a concert, but also theater. the tragedy, sometimes. The room is full. When Angélique Ionatos speaks to the public, she puts in it of the humor. And spirit" - Tribune de Genève


Discography

Angélique Ionatos & Katerina Fotinaki :
Comme un jardin la nuit - 2009 - Accords Croisés / Harmonia Mundi

Angélique Ionatos :
1972 : Résurrection (w/ Photis Ionatos)
1975 : Angélique & Photis Ionatos (Grand prix de l'académie Charles-Cros)
1979 : I Palami sou
1981 : La forêt des hommes (To dassos ton anthropon)
1983 : O Hélios O Héliatoras
1984 : Marie des Brumes (Maria Nefeli)
1985 : Récital
1988 : Le Monogramme
1989 : Archipel (Compilation)
1991 : Sappho de Mytilène (w/ Néna Venetsánou)
1992 : O Erotas
1994 : Mia thalassa
1996 : Parole de juillet (Iouliou logos)
1997 : Chansons nomades (w/ Henri Agnel)
2000 : D'un Bleu très noir
2003 : Angélique Ionatos canta Frida Kahlo : Alas Pa volar
2004 : Anthologie (Compilation)
2007 : Eros y muerte

Photos

Bio

Their homeland is Greece, but what gathers them, " is especially, says Angelique Ionatos, the wild love for our mother tongue and its poets, as well as our passion for our guitars. ".

They both speak the same language, the one of music that we can all understand. Pursuing their road of artistic complicity, after their show "Comme un jardin la nuit", Angelique Ionatos and Katerina Fotinaki propose "Anatoli" which in Greek means at the same time "the Orient" and "the Sunrise".

The enjoyment to play together, in every meanings, our greater complicity - while making us more requiring offer us a new freedom: to travel beyond Greece, which is the door to the Orient, to recognize this homeland as " a fresco with successive layers", and to assert that music ignores borders.

Personal compositions, traditional and contemporary musics recreated for their voices and their guitars are a case to the texts and poets who for a long time inspire them.

Their voices rise, spread, one grave and warm, that of Angelique Ionatos, the other one crystalline and enlighted, that of Katerina Fotinaki. Fingers run on ropes and their guitars have never seen that same virtuosity.

Collusive laughter, happiness to play, everything confers to a magic evening. In the heat of the starry night, the sun gets up on the stage and in the audience, in a whirlwind of colors and rhythms.

Born in Athens, Angélique Ionatos left Greece in 1969 for Belgium, then France. In 1972 her first album, Resurrection, with her brother Photis, won the Gustavo Beytelmann Prize. That marked the beginning of her career in France. She went on to make a second recording with her brother, this time of songs in French which they had composed. Their duo broke up in 1976 and Angélique Ionatos decided to turn to setting texts by contemporary Greek poets to music. Her first solo recording, I Palami sou, won the Grand Prix du Disque de l’Académie Charles Cros. Two years later La Forêt des hommes was released, with compositions based on poems by Greek Nobel Prize winner Odysseus Elytis. The album O Hélios O Hélatoras followed the same path.

After meeting fellow Greek singer Nena Venetsanou she had the idea of composing a work for two female voices. Encouraged by Odysseus Elytis, she set poems by Sappho (7th century BCE) to music, which were sung in classical Greek and in a modern translation by Odysseus Elytis. The result was Sappho de Mytilène (orchestration, Christian Boissel; staging, Joël Jouanneau), which was presented at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris in 1992. The album was awarded the Grand Prix de l’Académie Charles Cros.

2009 sees the release of the album Comme un jardin la nuit, a duo for two voices and two guitars with the young Greek singer Katerina Fotinaki. The show of the same name will be on the bill for two weeks in Paris at the Café de la Danse.
They are back together with this new project, Anatoli.