Crossing Borders Outreach Presents...

The Greeks and the Sea - Music and Poetry

Recorded Live on Saturday, November 18th, 2006 - First Congregational Church

STUDIO BROADCAST

Crossing Borders LIVE, a multi-cultural concert series, broadcast live on Saturday nights on WVBR, 93.5FM, often teams up with partners to present special events that are recorded for later broadcast on the regular program. On Saturday, November 18th, 2006 Crossing Borders teamed up with Cornell University's Institute for European Studies Mediterranean Initiative to present an afternoon of Greek music and poetry - The Greeks and the Sea - featuring Lina Orfanos, Martin Neron, and Gail Holst Warhaft. The performance took place at the First Congregational Church, Ithaca, NY.

Lina Orfanos is a Greek American lyric soprano who grew up singing Greek songs. The legendary Mikis Theodorakis describes Lina as "an artistic singer with solid technique, a beautiful voice with lyricism, sensitivity, and interpretive perfection." Internationally famed singer Maria Farantouri says that Lina has a "remarkably beautiful voice." Her career began at the age of seven with the Metropolitan Opera Children's Chorus where she performed in French, German, Italian and Russian. Later she studied American musical theatre at the Herbert Bergoff Studios. She received her undergraduate degree in music from Westminster Choir College with a specialty in vocal music.

Lina has appeared at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall, Carnegie Hall and the United Nations. She has given numerous concerts at the Donnell Public Library of New York featuring the songs of Mikis Theodorakis. She arrives in Ithaca direct from a Nov 11th repeat engagement at the Cornelia Street Cafe in Greenwich Village, performing Broadway to Brazil, with world music guitarist Spiros Exaras. A previous appearance there featuring the songs of Manos Hadzidakis and Mikis Theodorakis led to her live debut CD, Greek Songs for Romantics and Realists: The Songs of Manos Hadzidakis and Mikis Theodorakis, released by One Soul Records in 2004. The album has received praise from both sides of the Atlantic. (see www.linaorfanos.com.

In 2004, Lina formed the Poetica Ensemble, to interpret her favorite Greek blues, folk, and art song cycles. The group includes Spiros Exaras on guitar, Martin Neron on piano, and Kostas Psaros on bouzouki and excels in interpreting songs based on the poetry of Manolis Anagnostakis, Brendan Behan, Paul Eluard, Odysseus Elytis, Nikos Gatsos, Frederico Garcia Lorca, Yannis Ritsos, and George Seferis. They have also been responsible for the North American premieres of Theodorakis' French songs: his cycles, Lirikotera and Beatrice at Zero Street, and well as some of his arias from the operas Elektra and Antigone. Martin Neron appears in Ithaca with Lina for Saturday's concert.

Pianist Martin Neron graduated from the Universite de Montreal, where he studied under the direction of Marc Durand and Denise Masse. The next year a grant from the Quebec Department of Culture allowed him to study privately with Andre Laplante in New York. He then specialized in vocal accompanying and coaching at Westminster Choir College and at the Manhattan School of Music where he has recently received his doctorate. He has been accompanying Lina Orfanos since 1999. Martin Neron has received yearly grants from the Manhattan School of Music, Westminster Choir College, the Conseil des Arts du Quebec, the Fonds Les Amis de l'Art, the Canadian-Italian Professional and Businessmen Association, the Canadian Music Competition and the Orford Arts Center. He has won the First Prize at the national finale of the Canadian Music Competition in Ottawa and has recorded several concerts as soloist and collaborative artist for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).

Born in Australia, Gail Holst-Warhaft worked as a musician and journalist in Greece before settling in Ithaca, New York. In the 1970's she played harpsichord with Theodorakis and other Greek composers and wrote two books about Greek music: Road to Rembetika (1975) and Theodorakis: Myth and Politics in Modern Greek Music (1980). A Ph. D. at Cornell University in Comparative Literature led to the book Dangerous Voices: Women Laments and Greek Literature(Routledge, 1995). She published a second book on grief and mourning in 2000 (The Cue for Passion: Grief and its Political Uses (Harvard U.P.). She has published translations of number of Greece's leading modern poets and prose-writers including Nikos Kavadias, Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke, Alki Zei and Iakovos Kambanellis, as well as of Aeschylus's Suppliants (U. of Pennsylvania). A collection of Holst-Warhaft's own poems is forthcoming in Greek and English later this year. Presently she heads the Mediterranean Initiative at the Institute for European Studies at Cornell and is an Adjunct Professor in the departments of Classics and Comparative Literature.