February 2015  New Album "Songs of Thessaloniki"
Savina Yannatou’s fourth ECM album is a dazzling evocation of her band’s hometown, plunging deep into its rich and complex history.



 
 November 2, 2012  Stream the Berlin concert"
Stream the Berlin concert

Trailer:




 
 February 22, 2012   Savina Yannatou interviewed by Melchior Huurdeman
Savina Yannatou interviewed by Melchior Huurdeman in Bimhuis Amsterdam for VPRO, Vrije Geluiden





 
 November 2010  New Album "Attikos"
Free Improvisation for Double-bass and Voice
Live recording at the Bimhuis Amsterdam
27 May 2010


 
 September 2008  Songs Of An Other"
"Songs Of An Other", recorded in Athens on October 2007, is the third ECM album by Greek singer Savina Yannatou & Primavera en Salonico. It finds the adventurous collective sailing through traditional songs from Armenia, Serbia, Kazakhstan, and Southern Italy as well as Greece, adding a 16th century hymn from the Yiddish tradition.

Once again, the arrangements, by Kostas Vomvolos with input from all band members, find the points that suggest a unity of the traditions, while Savina locates areas where experimental vocal technique can overlap with the idiosyncrasies of folk singing, as folk melody erupts into free areas. The improvisational quotient is stronger on "Songs Of An Other" than on "Sumiglia", the collective's 2004 album and the whole ensemble's growth of confidence is immediately evident. They've toured extensively in the last four years and the group sound is at once tighter and liberated. Distinctions between 'jazz' players and traditional instrumentalists inside the ensemble no longer apply. Each musician is fully engaged in shaping and developing the music. "If you start improvising then something else happens, just as one thought will take you to another, without the connections being obvious." Yannatou has said. "This time the selection of material seemed to emphasize strongly rhythmic elements and 'strange' melodies, and I think this encouraged the flow of improvisational ideas."


 
 October 2007  Musique des Chambres"
The new album of Savina Yannatou, titled "Musique des Chambres", has as its starting point the song by Giorgos Mouzakis, "An evening" and its general theme revolves around the shows of the 3rd Program (Greek Radio program), in 1993, with the same title.

Songs by Hadjidaki, Mouzaki, Aggelaka-Velioti, Siganidi and Savina herself, converse in this album with improvisations and voicing games, which she sings, speaks and at times her voice is utilized as an instrument. Also, poems by T. Sinopoulou, G. Pavlopoulou, T. Livaditi, H. L. Borges, and others where the words take turns with the inarticulate speech on top of a sound bed with elements of Blues, free Jazz, typewriter sounds and overtones of Argentinian bandoneon.


 
 22 June 2007  Project with Elena Ledda / New ECM production

Finally an update to this news section again! Many months have passed and many concert, too. Highlights have been a collaboration with Sardinian singer/musicians Elena Ledda and Mauro Palmas. This was a project presented in the Half Note Jazz Club in Athens, Greece in March 2006. A CD was recorded and released by LYRA in Greece.

The tour section has also been updated and you can look for upcoming concerts there.

A new ECM production is in preparation and will be recorded with producer Manfred Eicher in September.



 1 August 05  Marta Carta Annual Prize - Sardinia
Maria Carta was the premier interpreter of the music and art of her country, Sardinia.

The Foundation which is named after her, since a couple of years, started an annual prize with the aim of awarding the best musicians in traditional and world music. This year an "international" section has been created, and the jury voted SAVINA YANNATOU as best artist.

The prize-giving will take place in Siligo, north Sardinia, Maria Carta's birthplace, on 1 October.



 18 March 05  Triumph in the USA!

After two entuhusiastically received concerts in Seville and Madrid in Spain, Savina and 4 musicians of PeS (Kostas Vomvolos, Michalis Siganidis, Haris Lambrakis and Kostas Theodorou) went on to the States. Raving reactions from spectators of the concerts everywhere described their deep appreciation of the singer and group, as well as of the beauty of the new material and the unique, creative and skilled way hey approach it. The new CD "Sumiglia", which came out in the USA on March 1st by ECM Records, was being sold at the concerts and new orders had to be made in order to cover the demand. Check the review section in a few days, for a phantastic special by Don Heckman in the Los Angeles Times and a great and witty review by Mark Keresman in Jazzreview.com, Chicago.

Following some pictures and a few of the reactions people wrote us after the concerts. The photos are made at the San Francisco concert by Dariyoosh Hariri. For view of his album or ordering high res. pictures, contact us.

Well if last night's concert is any indication, then this tour is going to be a HUGE success!!! The music was absolutely sensational and Joe's Pub was sold out!!! There was a fantastic buzz in the audience which I think they all felt on stage and it was just an electrifying evening.
Sarah Humphries, New York

The concert was excellent! The show was sold-out and everybody in the audience was raving about the quality of the concert. Savina was amazing and the musicians excellent.
Gus Economou, Chicago

This was one of the most memorable concerts I ever attended! I really liked Savina's older material and wasn't to exited about her new explorations into the more experimental shade of the musical spectrum. It was pretty intimate setting. The church was full.Standing a few feet away from the stage and experiencing her incredible voice reverberating throughout the hall was nothing short of a miracle. Thank You!
Gil Medovoy-KDVS, San Francisco

The concert was wonderful... I loved it. I am definitely a fan....Again, great concert.
Francis Xavier-Edwards, Vancouver

As I said below, the concert was fantastic - she's as wonderful as ever, better than the last time she was in St. Louis. The audience, usually a tough crowd, absolutely adored her.
Terry Williams, St Louis



 21-1-05  New CD Release!

"Sumiglia", Yannatou's first ECM studio album and her first creative collaboration with producer Manfred Eicher, takes the music to another level. "Sumiglia" both celebrates the differences between the traditions and the common ground they share. The musicians reveal a deep feeling for the melodies they explore, treat them with great respect, and when the music seems to demand it, follow their implications until increasingly free improvisation becomes an inevitability. "Sumiglia" is also a vocal, and linguistic, tour-de-force. Savina, possessed of a voice that always seems a naturally expressive instrument, nevertheless has the ability to move in and out of roles and characters (and dialects and idioms) with an actress's or opera singer's facility: she becomes the protagonists of her songs - the orphaned child of "Porondos viz partjan", the suffering lover of "Sta kala lu serenu", the war-weary narrator of "Terra can nun senti", the Greek bride of "Evga mana mou" "Yannatou is a chameleon," marvelled writer John Slavin in Australian magazine, The Age, "playful, sexy and richly endowed with musical intelligence. An astonishing artist." Drawing on the open-ended arrangements of Kostas Vomvolos, the band is able to match Yannatou's mercurial changes of mood. "Sumiglia" also gives the fullest account yet of the group's instrumental range.

ECM 1903

CD 6024 982 4050 (2)

Release:
USA 1 March
Germany March
UK 21 March
France 11 April


Italy, Portugal, Scandinavia and other European countries end of March

Release concert: 23 March at Club 22, Athens, Greece



8 -3-04
 Adelaide, Australia


A wonderful WOMADelaide Festival in Australia, with phantastic weather and a great audience once more confirmed the extraordinary talents of the WOMAD organizers.

 


15-1-04
 Brindisi
In Brindisi Savina and the group played a concert of the Virgin Maries of the World in the Cathedral. That same morning they joined a meeting of the Greek community with the mayor in the town hall. Here you see Savina with old Griko singers of the group Argalio:



The concert at GLOBALfest in the Public Theater in New York was a huge succes for Savina Yannatou & Primavera en Salonico. Our Nort-American agent Itzik Becher says: the reaction to Savina's performance was fantastic. People raved and were very impressed and happy with the show. He has started booknig dates in Nort America for March 2005.

20-9-2003
 Aviv Productions
Good news: the agency of Savina Yannatou for North America as of today is Aviv Productions in New York! Check their coordinates in the contact section. Aviv productions are planning tours for Savina in north America in the autumn of 2004 and the spring of 2005.


10-9-2003
 Helmut Buergel comments
Helmut Buergel, the artistic director of the "Stimmen" Festival in Loerrach in Southern Germany, writes the following about Savina's concert there on 12 July: 'it was a wonderful concert.... This was a real highlight of this years Stimmen. A wonderful setting, a wonderful sommernight, a highly concentrated audience and Savina and her band on the top level of her music. ...... It was just a wonderful moment of grace, as everything came together - even the moon above the stage at the end of the concert.'


4-9-2003
 New interview online!
We didn't know radio interviews could be an art form, but this interview on NPR (USA) by David D'Arcy certainly is a work of art! You can listen to it following these two links, depending on your player preference:

Real Player Format
Windows Media Player format


28-8-2003
 Tour updates!
The tour section has been updated! Check it out here!

Soon you will have the chance to hear MP3 samples from Savina's latest tour with Primavera en Salonico! Visit soon!


18-6-2003
 Moers New Jazz festival
Moers New Jazz Festival's program director Burkhard Hennen says about Savina & Primavera en Salonico's performance on 8 June (with the participation of Tunesian singer Lamia Bedioui): 'For me personally was the concert of Savina one of the big highlights of the festival, a revelation. Thanks very much for the great collaboration, everything worked out wonderfully.'

You can also check out a new review by Thomas Steinfeld, in the reviews section!


27-5-2003
 Tour news
The current concert tour in Austria and Germany is underway. The organizer Norbert Ehrlich in Vienna, where the concert took place in jazz club Szene Wien last Saturday, says that " tha concert has enthused all of us in Szene Wien... In my opinion it was one of the most beautiful concerts in the entire year." Last night in Munich the Studio 2 of the Bavarian Radio and TV was completely full and people had to stand on the sides.


27-5-2003
 Cultural Olympiad participation
Savina Yannatou's participation with 5 songs in "All Around Is Light," an American Ballet Theater tribute to the Cultural Olympiad conceived and directed by Costa-Gavras , the Greek filmmaker, and presented on 20 May at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, got the following wonderful mention in a review by Jennifer Dunning in the New York Times of May 22, 2003: "Savina Yannatou's dark, sweet voice suggested the glimmer of the first star at dusk."


3-4-2003
 Good start
At the occasion of the ECM release of her Terra Nostra live album in the US Savina gave two performances: one at Joe's Pub in New York on 16 April and one at the Kennedy Center's Millenium Stage on 17 April. She was accompanied by Dimitris Mikelis, oud; Apostolos Sideris, double bass and Mathias Kunzli, percussion. A wonderful review was published in the Washington Post (see review section). It was a very good start for the collaboration with ECM and a useful preparation for the tour with Primavera en Salonico to follow during winter.


4-19-2003
 A"voice to die for"
This is an unsolicited comment from a Global Village listener (PBS-FM: 106.7 - Sundays 3-5 pm) in Melbourne Australia, which we received through the music journalist Roger Holdsworth and which refers to her show at the Melbourne Festival end of October 2002:

"Thanks for that and thanks for your interview on "Global V" on Sunday with the Greek singer, Savina? I wasn't going to go to see her as I thought she might be too much like Nana M or another rather boring singer who was out here a few years ago but after hearing your interview and her singing I was able to get a ticket at the Concert Hall and she truly had a "voice to die for" - caught a glimpse of you in the aisle at interval but didn't see you outside to thank you. Gorgeous concert and superb musicians."


4-2-2003
 ECM release of Terra Nostra
ECM records have released the latest live CD Terra Nostra world wide. In the German speaking countries it was released on 27 January, in the UK on 4 February, in France on 27 February and in the USA on 15 March, while other countries follow. A cover very different from the Greek release was designed according to the style of the ECM products and everywhere the promotion machinery is working full. The first reviews are being received and will soon be published in the review section of this website.


4-2-2003
 Stricly Mundial Performance on Mondomix
An excerpt of Savina Yannatou & Primavera en Salonico's performance can be seen on Mondomix. A very intriguing audio interview with Francois Besignor of last October in Paris can also be heard on the same site:
http://www.mondomix.com/sm2003/index.htm


4-2-2003
 RootsWorld Interview
Another feature of Savina Yannatou can be read in RootsWorld, by Nondas Kitsos, at
http://www.rootsworld.com/interview/yannatou.html


4-2-2003
 Hadjidakis songs sung by Savina Yannatou
I am Off to Tell the Clouds is the name of a new release by Lyra in Greece (December 2002) of songs by the very much loved Greek composer Manos Hadjidakis, sund by Savina Yannatou and orchestrated by Dimitra Trypani. A unique and beautiful match of the tender and melodious Hadjidakis songs with the almost fairy-like and often playful interpretation of Savina.