ABOUT SAVINA YANNATOU
Born in Athens (Greece), Savina Yannatou studied song with G. Georilopoulou at the National Conservatory and later with Spiros Sakkas at the Workshop of Vocal Art in Athens. She attended postgraduate studies (performance and communication skills) at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, with a scholarship awarded by the Mousigetis Foundation.
Her professional career as a singer started while still a student, when she sang for the very successful and until today highly respected daily program of the Greek National Radio 3 Lillipoupoli under the direction of the famous composer Manos Hadjidakis.
Tradition and modernity
After that, she interpreted entechno (“artful”) Greek songs, collaborating with well-known Greek composers and also covered contemporary opera and music. Later she focused on medieval, renaissance and baroque music. In the early nineties she started experimenting with different vocal techniques in free improvisation. Parallel to that she started a collaboration with a number of Thessaloniki-based musicians, who at that occasion founded the group Primavera en Salonico, with which she recorded and later performed Primavera en Salonico—Sephardic Folk Songs from Salonica, Songs from the Mediterranean, Virgin Maries of the World andTerra Nostra (all released by LYRA/Musurgia Graeca, the second also in the USA by Sounds True under the name Mediterranea and the last one also by ECM).
Musical Odyssey
Savina Yannatou has also composed her own music and songs (a.o. “Rosa das Rosas” and “Dreams of the Mermaid,” both released by Musurgia Graeca), as well as music for theater – for Medea, performed in 1997 by the National Greek Theatre, Bacchai (2005) and Dibuk (2006) performed by the National Greek Theatre, and for the play The Woman of Zante by Dionyssios Solomos. She has also composed music for video art and dance theater. All together she has released and/or participated in over 20 CDs.
