Vakia Stavrou

New website launched http://www.vakiastavrou.com

If someone wanted to start a sentence of how Vakia discovered music would end up saying that music discovered her. Even if always in the choir of her school, music teachers would listen to her voice and put her as leader voice.
Her talent started to unfold while in the National Conservatoire of Cyprus (Carl Orff Orchestra) became the soloist of the choir and at the age of 12 performed live on radio and later on at the age of 13 singing Theodorakis on radio again.
Her parallel studies in guitar and music gave her the ability to unfold another of her talents. That of composition. Combining all three gave her the ability to shine, and at the age of 16 to win the first price on a live radio performance contest singing and playing on guitar a song composed by her (music and lyrics).
It was clear already that music will be her life.

Applying a couple of years after for an entry to various prestigious music colleges got here accepted to both Berklee College of Music in Boston as well as the Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest. However the forbidden for her fees in the above prestigious schools, forced her to choose the less prestigious but equally respected College of Music in Moscow studying vocal jazz.
At the age of 18 travelled to Moscow and started to once more impress her teachers. As one of them said (Gnessenich) “I couldn’t believe that such a tiny girl would sing in such deep and mature voice. Due to the political situation and the fall of communism in Soviet Union forced her to leave the school as classes were cancelled. She applied to Conservatoire de Bruxelles for the single position open for the vocal jazz studies. A prerequisite for entering the Conservatoire was fluent French speaking. Her limited French at that point forced the teachers to fail her but their decision was hard and suggested her to try the following year.
Start of the school year was near and in order not to be lost, she followed lessons in the Jazz Studio in Antwerpen under the supervision of the very well known Brazilian jazz singer Marcia Maria. After a year in Antwerpen’s Jazz Studio, she chose to pass an audition and finally continued her lessons in the Conservatoire of Prague where she finished her studies a few years later.

Returning to Cyprus was not meant to last. Only a year after finishing her studies and sending demos of her songs to various Record Labels got her into signing with SONY music a 5 years contract. Collaborating in various CDs with singers such as Marios Frangoulis , Tania Tsanaklidou and Dimitra Galani while performing live in Athens with Fivos Delivorias, concluded in the release of her maxi cd single “O.H.E” including the song “Sozinha” composed and written by her.
“Sozinha”, even if it was written in Portoguese went up to the Greek charts and was among the favourites of the greek radio stations. Her ability to compose in various languages and play with different music patterns was both a gift and a curse.
After the "athens experience", and some important collaboration in concerts with Mario Frangoulis, and Vasilis Lekkas, she went to Paris, a place where world music is widely played and well promoted. There she started giving concerts in parisian theatres with her trio, performing songs she loved, from Brazil, Argentina, Portugal, Italy and Greece, warmly welcomed and supported by a very enthousiastic audience. In the meantime she gave two succesful concerts in London and various solo concerts in Cyprus.