Natassa Mare 4tet

Natassa Mare is a charismatic as well as singular singer songwriter. An artist of high prescriptions, with classical music education, sensitivities, imagination, technique, modesty and all things required for someone to “say” something special through the art he or she proposes.
Following the example of international artists of her field, such as Ute Lemper's, she does not hesitate to experiment with and visit various music sites. Having been influenced for many years by different music trends, jazz, ethnic and others, here she is now delivering a personal disc, titled “a”, the extract of her musical quest.
Her personal stigma is always present in the songs she presents. The listener accepts the invitation to a journey during which Natassa Mare is the guide with her attractive, sometimes eerie, sometimes immaterial, sometimes ecstatic voice. The words and the meanings of her verses, her sky, her sea, the breaths that live beside her, the silent moments of her thoughts, her dreams and her nights, all these lead us to a musical Ithaca, which is exciting and romantic every minute. A musical Ithaca that comes alive through an intoxicating and inviting song.
We hope the songs by wonderful Natassa Mare will soon be heard outside the Greek borders. Her musical horizon is definitely hiding more treasures. We are looking forward to it. [A&N Records 9101].

Constantine Carabelas Sgourdas
Member of the Greek Music and Theater Union of Critics / Member of the critical committee of the International Contests Vincenzo Bellini and Sigismond Thalberg
- Greek Music and Theater Union of Critics

Her musical influences come from the international music scene and spread from the west side of ethnic to jazz and ambient. Natassa Mare, however, manages to give them personal identity. This is the most important element in her album, titled “a”, which is the beginning of everything, and, therefore, half of it. The disc is dominated by the virtues of a songwriter who has a clear knowledge of the space she wants to move in and a specific personal position.
Through her album Natassa Mare expresses her position on orchestration (faith in the eminence of improvisation), on performance (the soft innuendo instead of the outgoing “statement”) but also on the verse (free poetry instead of the structured couplet and refrain). The cd creates the sense of a continuous journey, its songs being the different views of the same global scenery.
The sense of globalization is intensified by the alternation of the languages. Greek coexists with the English and French verses.

M. Nikos Moraitis
Echo & Artis magazine
- Echo & Artis magazine

Natassa Mare has tirelessly participated in the music scene with careful moves, a broad spectrum of quests and channels to express herself. In the nine themes of “a”, Natassa Mare creates an album of high aesthetics, with reference to the erotic talk, belonging to easy tempo jazz orchestrations, oriented towards chill out atmospheres.
Ethereal vocals, erotic metaphysical verses with a poetic attitude. All these in the “a”, which gets full marks for its production and final product concerning both sound and expression. It deserves our congratulations, indeed.

M..Michael Polyhronis
Difono magazine

- Difono magazine

Personally, I perceive the songs by Natassa Mare, as absolutely erotic. Take a look at Kavafis' desire the whole creation in 50 words, Sappho's fragments, Shakespeare's sonnets, Pasolini's or Kanellopoulos' shots… Following such routes Natassa Mare with her wonderful voice traverses extreme erotic situations. The same high quality characterizes the production of the themes. With one at least amazing- song, the French “Je t' appelle” and all the others moving in the same timeless dream world, Natacha Mare creates an album of fine aesthetics, which also benefits immensely from the perfect recording / production.
She calls it “a” ... let it be marked with capital “A”...

M.Fondas Trousas
F.T. Editor-in-chief of the Jazz & Jazz magazine

- Jazz & Jazz magazine

For art work we have naked bodies in various states of embrace telling graphically what is happening aurally on this singular album where flamenco/classical guitarist Jason Carter teams up with Greek neoclassical singer Natassa Mare for a meeting of musical minds. The skin-on-skin feel of the booklet seems to let us know that bodies were made for embracing, they fit together so well. It's a mirror image of the aromatic nylon strung music and lingering voice of two people who fit so well together musically, it's joy and peace to listen to.

The mournful descending chords and smartly executed arpeggios of the British guitarist are inspired and quite moving. In "Guten Morgen Mein Angel" (if angels do listen to music then this is the sort they would listen to) the sweetness of the morning calls to me through music that is both aching with weight and airy with its lightness.

If you ever wondered what the Sirens sounded like when they sang to Ulysses then Natassa's haunting voice may be somewhere near it. Sometimes when the word "classical" is mentioned many popular music lovers switch off, but it would be wrong to write this off as a strict measure by measure classical performance. There are overtones of jazz, world, flamenco, sitar, Greek and even the simplicity of children's nursery rhymes with hints of a number of other styles besides.

None of the songs are sung in English but it matters not a jot.

Paul Poulton,
Cross Rhythms, USA
- Cross Rhythms, USA

“Jason Carter is a classical-flamenco-world guitarist, who collaborates with artists from across the globe. Natassa Mare is a Greek singer. Together, they are unlike anything I have yet heard.”

”How to describe a collection so unique, and without any obvious reference points? For a few starters, try the hypnotic guitar patterns and ambience of Note For A Child - (“Infinity Fields”) - mixed on the faster runs with a dash of mid-years Gordon Giltrap, while Mare gives us a more upbeat and sensual version of the resonant vocals in Gorecki’s Third Symphony - (“Going Home”) - seasoned - (on “Marks Piece”) - by occasional bursts of Kate Bush. Tracks here could accompany various scenes, from Lord of the Rings moments to bright whirls of dancing undersea life.”

“Rarities usually prove to be either oddballs or treasure. This disc is definitely one of the latter.”

Derek Walker,
Phantom Tolbooth, USA
- Phantom Tolbooth, USA

Roland Barthes speaks of the “grain of the voice”, of audible seeds that fertilise a given space, and create altogether new, distinct, livable spaces. Natassa Mare constitutes a unique rare instance of a voice with such grain that, in its dispersion, creates new, livable spaces. It is a voice that does not trespass on the music, nor does it follow it subserviently; rather, it enters the music like an unintrusive thread, creating the impression of a traveler, wandering through different rooms. This voice honours the relationship between music and prosody; and it honours silences, one of the most crucial factors in the production of space. It is a voice that guides, without commanding. This is what makes “The Embrace” stand out as a record, for it is a dense map of spaces that exist in actuality, or may be created in potentia.

Danae Stefanou,
Lecturer in historical musicology, Department of Music Studies, School of Fine Arts, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

- Department of Music Studies, School of Fine Arts, A.U.Th

The magic encounter of a musician who travels in the sound of cultures of the world, of Jason Carter with Natassa Mare, a profoundly healing voice. We have to taste the musicality in the silences of their songs or the profound peace in the pulses of their music in order to experience that all things are here. Through his travels in all around the world, the composer becomes intermediator, transmitter and reconciler of oppositions, which, in another case, seems frighten. On the other hand, observing the poetic way of Natassa, the soul takes courage by transforming energy into forms, allowing the creation of new, dynamic forms of energy. Natassa has the ability to unite different kind of music in one and only vibration. This is the way her voice is made. It sense, reveals and is guided by the musicality of the words. Every moment of the cd is full of human presence. Here’s a dreamy travel or a multicultural experience.

Rea Kalogianni
Scientific collaborator of the A.U.T.H. and the University of Maine in France, Responsible of the International French-Speaking magazine “Synergies” in Greece
- Aristotle.University of Thessaloniki. & University of Maine in France

«The Embrace» has come in the centre of all inspiration which is Eros, experienced as the absolute union and at the same time the absolute loss. Natassa Mare sings and recitates with the imprint of the human breath. With her voice as a guide, we touch words, which underline aspects such as the fond centre of all things, the maternity that penetrates the universe, the uniqueness of each person as he experiences common and diachronic moments but valuable and irreplaceable. The body impressed like a fragment into the album’s photos, it reveals through music and lyrics as the raft of the invisible, a guard of the unreturned moments, a body that is inornate, within in its nakedness, lacking expressions, pretence, motives and dealings. It is the body of the soul ceaselessly moving in the wave of Eros.

Vassiliki Fitoka
Collaborator of the Center of Research for the Greek Language
- Center of Research for the Greek Language