It was a lovely weekend! I travelled to Creta for a concert with my friends and excellent musicians from Mandolinarte and we had lots of fun. Oh, we also gave a concert.
Here is a small diary of the trip and the concert. Participating in orchestras is definitely one of the best things a musician can do. Playing with others can be so much fun. And yes, after the concerts you can go out with the orchestra members and have fun! So, here it goes…
The concert was perceived by Despoina Drakaki. Despoina is a pianist, a soprano, a music teacher but above all a beautiful person. Despoina lives, performs and teaches in Creta.
Despoina attended a concert in April 2014 with Mandolinarte, the mandolin orchestra I play octave mandolin with. We gave the concert in Athens, inside a beautiful church and we played both classical music but also world music and some well known pieces from cinema soundtracks, including Amelie.
Despoina thought that combining the beautiful sound of our mandolin orchestra with a singer would be fantastic and she asked us what we think. We were of course positive, and we agreed to try to organise a concert within 2015 in Creta.
Soon after our discussion, we did our first rehearsal together, trying to formulate a list of songs that we could perform, and came up with:
As soon as the concert was arranged, we realised that we needed to create some marketing material. So the first photo shooting of Mandolinarte was arranged!
We used a nice park in front of the place we use for rehearsals. To me it was amazing that although the day proven to be cloudy, the photos turned out really nice.
It does not show, but it was really chilly that day, so we took some pictures inside. We turned up the heat to the maximum to warm up, so we managed to smile!
With the photos ready and the graphics art talent of Tasos Apostolou who is a member of the Orchestra as well, the concert poster is ready!
Here is how the concert was defined:
“Strings Voice”
The music art worldwide and in every era narrates the joy, nostalgy, emotions, heroism and passions of every day life. MandolinArte, the Mandolin Orchestra of Athens presents works of composer from Greece and all over the world, with the delicate sound of the mandolin, mandola, guitar, cello and double bass, performing for the first time with the lovely voice of soprano Despoina Drakaki.
With all that arranged, we got ready for the next steps.
To be continued….
