ERT will honour the memory of Mikis Theodorakis on the second anniversary of his death by televising his concert on Saturday, September 2, at 10:00 p.m., on ERT2.
The performer Betty Harlautis and the ERT Contemporary Music Orchestra, under the direction of George Aravidis, will present the last album of the great Greek composer through the concert given in the courtyard of the historic Radio Megaros.
During the concert, Miki's favourite songs will be heard, including songs contained in the album entitled "Betty Charlauti in the World of Miki Theodorakis", produced by ERT and orchestrated by Yiannis Belonis, as they were recorded for the first time with a symphonic sound, at Radiomegaro, before the composer's death.
Mikis Theodorakis was born on July 29 1925, on the Greek island of Chios. The famous Greek songwriter and composer has written over 1000 songs and is considered Greece's best-known living composer.
Fascinated by music as a child, he taught himself to write his first songs without access to musical instruments. When he visited Pyrgos and Patras, he took his first music lessons, and in Tripolis, he formed a choir and gave his first concert at 17.
His first symphonic works, Concerto for Piano, First Suite, and First Symphony, were internationally acclaimed. In 1957, he won the Gold Medal in the Moscow Music Festival; in 1959, Darius Milhaud proposed him for the American Copley-Music Prize as the Best European Composer of the Year after the performances of his ballet "A
An active resistance fighter during World War II, he studied at the conservatories in both Athens and Paris. Theodorakis wrote several symphonies during the late '50s but later returned to Greece to apply his musical knowledge to the traditional Greek music he'd grown up with.
He wrote many symphonies, cantatas, several ballets and operas, plus popular songs, including "Zorba the Greek." When 1967 brought a fascist government into Greece, he went underground. He formed a revolutionary group to combat abuses, as there was a national ban on playing or listening to his music.
He was later arrested, exiled, and sent to an internment camp. However, the work of a global solidarity movement -led by Leonard Bernstein, Dmitri Shostakovich, Arthur Miller and Harry Belafonte helped secure his release in 1970.
On 26 February 2019, Theodorakis was hospitalized due to heart problems, and on 8 March, underwent surgery to place a pacemaker. He died from cardiopulmonary arrest at his home in Athens on 2 September 2021, at the age of 96.
The Greek Prime Minister declared three days of national mourning to honour him, and his body was lain in state in the chapel of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Athens, with many thousands of people, artists and political leaders from all Greek parties paying their final respects.
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