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Mikis Theodorakis, 1925-2021
Composer, songwriter and political activist Mikis Theodorakis died in Athens, Greece, on September 2, 2021, at the age of 96.
One of the most important figures in modern Greek music, Theodorakis wrote more than a thousand works encompassing songs, symphonies, operas, ballets and film scores. Internationally, however, he remains best known for the music of Zorba the Greek, Z and Serpico, which brought the sound of modern Greece to audiences around the world.
Michail Theodorakis was born on the Greek island of Chios on July 29, 1925. He began composing as a teenager and studied at the Athens Conservatory before continuing his education at the Paris Conservatoire. His early concert music showed the influence of European modernism, but Theodorakis increasingly sought to combine classical technique with Greek folk traditions, Byzantine music and popular song.
His first film scores were written for Greek productions during the early 1950s, and he soon began working internationally. Among his early credits were Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s Ill Met by Moonlight (1957), Jules Dassin’s Phaedra (1962), Anatole Litvak’s Five Miles to Midnight (1962), and Michael Cacoyannis’s Electra (1962). The latter began one of his most important director-composer relationships and established the intensely Greek musical language that would soon make him internationally famous. Read more…
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