A series of mandolin concerts in Greece become a great success!

[Chris Rizos]

I would like to share with all mandolin lovers using Mandolin Cafe forums a great mandolin-related success story taking place now in Greece.

MandolinARTE, the Plucked Orchestra of Athens is giving a series of sold-out concerts in the prestigious Athens Music Hall in Greece, a hall that sits 1600 people.

We are performing together with the famous and beloved Greek singer Alkistis Protopsalti (you can see a lot of her videos if you search youtube) that invited us to perform with her after falling in love with the sound of our mandolin orchestra.

I think this is excellent news for the mandolin in Greece, as the instrument will enjoy a lot of publicity (we are already in the news, national TV etc.) but also because almost 10.000 people will see us performing in the sold-out concerts already arranged. I expect after these concerts more young Greeks to start playing mandolin, a kind-of forgotten instrument in the Greek music scene that is dominated mainly by the guitar.

This is not about bragging, I am just very happy and wish to share the good news, hoping to give strength and motivation to more people to create mandolin orchestras and ensembles.

Success has not been easy or fast for our orchestra. The orchestra has been performing for more than 20 years, to a very limited audience, i.e. a fan club consisting mainly of friends. Although it seemed like a romantic adventure for mandolin lovers, all members continued to play and perform just because they loved the sound of the mandolin and they loved being part of a team with people that feel the same.

We know that this current publicity will fade out quickly after the concerts, and therefore we (the members of the orchestra) need to find out what to do next, to keep the momentum if possible. For the time being we are focusing on the forthcoming concerts (11, 12, 13, 15 February in Athens and 18th March in Thessaloniki) and we are doing a lot of rehearsals!

If you wish to hear MandolinARTE performing some orchestral music you can go to our web site (http://www.poa-mandolinarte.org) and also below you can see a couple of videos from our latest rehearsal with the singer Alkistis Protopsalti.





Enjoy!

[DavidKOS]

Thanks for posting!

i'm one of the few guys on this forum that has a Greek made bowlback mandolin. It's great to see mandolin in the land of the bouzouki.