Greek Resonances

Recital with Dora Spetsioti & Nikos Ordoulidis

Greek Resonances is a piano and voice recital with Nikos Ordoulidis and Dora Spetsioti, bringing urban folk songs from the Greek-speaking world, and other historically interconnected folk repertoires, into the present. Songs emerge freed from museum-like interpretations, becoming an open field for experimentation, forming a meta-folk environment where the artists’ personal musical worlds meet the historical material. The material is approached “from the inside”, with rhythms, harmonies, and melodies being deconstructed and the artists’ musical influences being allowed to converse freely. The performance is part of the broader Eastward Piano project, an artistic and research endeavour exploring the intersections of folk music traditions and the piano’s historical and contemporary role eastwards, proposing new forms of listening and co-creation.

Dora Spetsioti was born in Mytilene. She holds a degree in Folk and Traditional Music (Vocals), which included studies at Istanbul Technical University, and a Master’s in Public History. She is currently pursuing further studies in France as a doctoral researcher at the pan-European Artemis University, combining the fields of musicology and cultural geography. Spetsioti commands a wide, multilingual repertoire, from Greek urban folk to Ottoman classical music. She has performed concerts across Greece, Turkey, and France, and has undertaken artistic residencies in France.

Born in Naousa and raised in Thessaloniki, Greece, Nikos Ordoulidis has lived, studied, and worked as a musician and musicologist across Europe. He writes music for solo piano, theatre, and popular orchestras. His work seeks to re-read and negotiate the musical idioms of a vast ecumene: from Central Europe and the Balkans to the Middle East and North Africa. He creates bands with his university students, building new aesthetic frameworks, always in the present tense. He has performed internationally in countries including Taiwan, Iceland, Germany, Luxemburg, Turkey, and France.