Stavros Xarchakos
Here and now

At eighty-seven, I realise more than ever that life exists only in the present, as the song says. And what is the present in music? It is the music that does not bend to time; the music born before our very eyes; the music that passes like a torch from one generation to the next. I must also confess that, for the first time, I have – unintentionally – failed to keep my word to you. Last September, at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, I told you we would meet again in three years. The Athens Epidaurus Festival and its director, Michail Marmarinos, have ‘proved me wrong’ – and I thank them for it.”

Stavros Xarchakos

From Our Grand Circus to Rembetiko, from his studies in Paris with Nadia Boulanger to Juilliard in New York – encouraged by Leonard Bernstein – Stavros Xarchakos' path has been unwavering and monumental, but, above all, highly attuned to the grand adventure of modern Greek song, of which he remains one of the most authentic craftsmen. And yet, this legacy does not seem to weigh upon his shoulders. His activity in recent years reveals an artist wholly surrendered to the pulse of the present and to its vital unrest. For the present is the true dwelling of the creator: a living moment, ever expanding, capacious enough to hold all others within it.

We might conceive of this evening with Stavros Xarchakos at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus as a present unfolding in three acts. Part one: the creators meet in the present. The composer and lyricist Lina Nikolakopoulou come together in conversation and in song, accompanied by a piano and a string quartet. Xarchakos conducts, reflects, remembers. Part two: the recent present. Iro Saia takes the stage, performing new songs written for her by the composer. Part three: the enduring present. Dimitris Basis joins them on stage, and together they perform songs that have taken root in our hearts and become part of our shared tradition. Alongside them, the children of the folk orchestra "En Chordais kai Organois" (“With Strings and Instruments”) School of Syros – many of whom will be remembered from that spontaneous musical moment in June 2022, when the composer conducted them in a tavern on the island and the video recording of that evening travelled far and wide. Today, those children have grown; some are already university students. For Xarchakos, their presence is more than symbolic: it embodies a presence that nourishes a future within it.

Thus, on the stage of the ancient theatre, generations converge, and the title of the concert gains its sharpest meaning and resonance: the present of the music is where memory, experience, and new creation become one.

Because whatever endures through time
Goes on…