Trivia

In 1956 Markopoulos moved to Athens to further his music studies at the Athens Conservatoire under the composer Yiorgos Sklavos and the violin teacher Joseph Bustidui, while studying philosophy and sociology at the Panteion University.

While a student he composed music for the theatre, for the cinema and for dance performances.

When he was 24 he was awarded the Music Prize of the International Thessaloniki Film Festival for Nikos Koundouros' film Young Aphrodites and subsequently his works Theseus (dance-drama), Hiroshima (ballet suite) and Three Dance Sketches were performed by avant-garde dance groups.

In 1967 a military dictatorship was imposed in Greece. Markopoulos left for London, where he enriched his knowledge under the English composer Elizabeth Lutyens, while his acquaintance with the composers Jani Christou and Iannis Xenakis played an important rôle in the deepening of his contact with the most pioneering musical figures.

Markopoulos composed music for the theatre and for the cinema, collaborating with directors such as Jules Dassin, George Cosmatos, Nikos Koundouros and Spyros Evaggelatos.

Thanks to his father's extensive private library he had the opportunity to deepen his knowledge, beyond school education, in literature, philosophy, history and the arts.

In 1987 he founded the Palintonos Armonia Orchestra (the name deriving from Heraclitus) with which he would give concerts in Greece and abroad and record many of his works.

He took his first lessons in music theory and the violin at the local conservatory and played the clarinet in the municipal band. Meanwhile, other musical experiences of decisive importance were classical music as well as the music of the wider Eastern Mediterranean and, most important of all, that of nearby Egypt, which he heard either over the radio or from musicians and travellers passing through his hometown.

In 1977 he composed the music for the BBC television series Who Pays the Ferryman? The musical theme was a hit in Britain and gained the composer international renown. Numerous invitations for concerts abroad followed, in Paris, Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Canada, Russia, Australia and the United States.

In 1976 he composed the popular liturgy The Free Besieged, based on the poem by Greece's national poet Dionysios Solomos, that he conducted in the crowded Panathenean Stadium, and which was presented in London in 1979.

The Byzantine liturgy heard regularly from the church opposite his family home, Cretan traditional music, with its rapid dances of repeated small motifs, played by local instruments at the town's weekly festivities, but at the same time the sound of the waves, and the detonation of land-mines in the aftermath of World War II, all these formed part of the acoustic universe of the composer as a child.

He began composing music during his adolescence and two melodies of this time would later become songs that have enjoyed great popularity throughout Greece.

Through his work Yannis Markopoulos did much to shape the musical landscape of the 1970s.

Yannis Markopoulos was born in Heraklion, Crete. From one of the old families of the island-his father was an attorney and later the Prefect-he spent his childhood in the seaside town of Ierapetra.

In 1980 Markopoulos married the singer Vassiliki Lavina, his long-time associate, and in 1981 their daughter Eleni was born. For a period he sought a more private life with his family while preparing for the opening of a new chapter in his music, compositions that would display melodic outbursts sustained by polytonic quality and dazzling rhythms of an inexhaustible exuberance.