Manos Hatzidakis dies

Manos Hatzidakis dies at the age of 69. He was born in Xanthi on October 23, 1925. From the age of four, he began studying piano, and from 1940 to 1943 theory with Menelaos Pallantios, an important figure of the Greek National Music School. At the same time, he studied philosophy at the University of Athens, encouraged by the artists and intellectuals of the interwar generation (Seferis, Gatsos, Sikelianos). Since 1945, while working mainly with the National Theatre and the Art Theatre, he wrote music for many ancient Greek tragedies and comedies, as well as for modern repertoire: Oresteia (1950), Medea (1956), Ecclesiastes (1956), Lysistrata (1957), Cyclops (1959), Birds (1959), 1959), A Streetcar named Desire (1948), Blood Wedding (1948), Sweet Bird of Youth (1960), To Fydanaki (1989), etc. Hatzidakis reformed Greek music, opening new musical horizons. In addition to the theatre, in 1946 he  started to compose music for 80 Greek and foreign films: Stella (1955), The Dragon (1956), America-America (1963), etc. He was a multifaceted and multidimensional personality. He founded and conducted the Athens Experimental Orchestra (1964-67), the Polytropo café-chantant 1972), Music Festivals in Anogia, Crete (1978, music festival), the Music Games in Corfu (1981), Sirius (record company, 1985), the Orchestra of Colors (symphonic music orchestra, 1989). He ran the public radio station Third Program from 1975 to 81, which he transformed into a reference point of excellence and fertile ideas.