Cinepoeme

“Cinepoeme” is a production with live music accompanying silent films. Sakis Papadimitriou first implemented this idea twenty years ago, with Friedrich Murnau’s classic "Nosferatu", the first vampire movie: how about having the musicians on stage, at the center of the action, actually in the image if possible! And with Georgia Sylleou at his side since 1995, that’s what they have been doing: accompanying, commenting and underscoring old movies by contrapuntally converging or diverging with the on-screen action.

The group goes by the moniker “On the Spot”, which hits the spot as that’s the only way they’ll work. The current line-up has Sylleou taking care of the vocals and singing, Christos Germenoglou on drums and percussion of every conceivable sort, Christos Goussios on guitar and electronics, and Sakis Papadimitiou playing piano (the ‘Other Piano’: see his book on the subject) and coordinating things. The dizzying amount of work Papadimitriou, an important figure in Greek improvisation and jazz, has produced in the form of recordings, books, concerts, radio broadcasts and articles makes his a unique contribution to the Greek music scene. And he’s only getting started...

But Georgia Sylleou’s voice is just as central to “Cinepoeme”: an impressive range and unique timbre plus something hard to define, often unexpected and from deep within. Sounds and images brought together in performances that have traveled far and wide in Greece and beyond. Improvisations and original compositions, aural games with cinematic images, and versions of songs from the cinema in all its forms. Their goal: a new, integrated art-form in which speech, film and music complement one another.