I tend to be a lot more casual and funny offstage, I make jokes and act stupid while onstage I like to dress up and rock it up a little more, being more serious and all, feeling a little nervous before the show.. It’ s really amazing to see your songs have an effect on people’s lives and make them feel good, energized, unique....other artists’ songs I love have had that effect on me and have been with me most of the time... Who inspired you to become a musician? What style of music to perform?
I think it started by watching old Hollywood musical movies and musicals with July Andrews like Sound of music, Victor Victoria, Marry Poppins..also musicals like Grease, West Side Story.. Do you write your own songs? What is your process when you create lyrics?
Yes, I write my own songs.. most of the times I think of a melody first and while I am working on it and try to sing it, a word or a phrase or even incoherent sounds that resemble a word, will come up, images and phantasy mixed with personal experiences will spring to mind and a story starts building up and take shape...my lyrics all have a sort of senario behind.. Do you write the music too? How do collaborations fit into your creative process?
Collaborations can give you a spark, can act as a springboard and give you a feeling of safety that you are not alone in your artistic endeavours. I have collaborated with producers and bands in the past as a singer and that has given me a lot of experience on recording. As a songwriter, I teamed up with the guitarist for producing my songs and it has also worked very well when I wrote music and songs for two theatrical productions, one was a musical of Oliver Twist and the other the music and songs for a new play based on Macbeth, using the director’s adaptation in greek of Shaekspeare’s poetry as lyrics. What are you reading now, and what are your favorite books?
I have started reading a historical novel by Yiannis Kalpouzos - “Yinati.The wiseman of the lake”, it is situated in the city of Ioannina. I am not an avid reader really, I would like to be able to read more.. most of the books I’ve read was while I was in the theater where I read many theatrical plays and was introduced to all the classic and modern playwrights and also when I studied for my Sorbonne degree in litterature. It might seem funny but I remember I loved reading the Three Musketeers, I had watched the movie many times but in the book there are more little details and subtleties that make a difference. I also loved Isabel Aliente’s atmospheric and magical “Stories of Eva Luna”. Who are you favorite songwriters, poets, and novelists? Why?
Jim Morrison, John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Leonard Cohen, Cat Stevens...are some of my favorite songwriters, of course loving their music first of all.. I like classic novelists like Victor Hugo, Dickens, Dumas, for their storytelling and character making, books that are based on historic events and weave fantasy or myth with reality, also modern surreal137