I live in New York City and I listen to and play a variety of music styles: classical, jazz, hip hop, Latin, Reggae, Arabic and I stay happy this way. I write my compositions including elements from all I hear in New York neighborhoods and mix it with the music of my childhood.
I call it World Jazz.
I spent my childhood in Warsaw, Poland where I was part of Greek community of refugees and a student of classical violin. All the Greeks in Poland were tightly connected with each other and with cultural and political events in Greece. Every year at holidays my father was toasting: “…and next year we all will be in Greece… “.
Greek music was my first love, especially the folk from Epirus and the clarinet playing style. I was also very drawn to all the melismatic “eastern†sounding songs called Rebetika and Anatolitika. They were outlawed in Greece at the time. Their melody and rhythms have influences from the Arabic music and the lyrics are very existentialistic – like the American blues my brother listened to with his friends. My older brother was a rebel. I watched him and listened to the music he brought home: jazz, blues, free jazz, Tibetan monks, etc. He inspired me to want to become even stronger– by studying hard and building my knowledge and my own unique musical vocabulary.
I played mandolin in a Greek children’s band but when I was in second grade I decided I wanted to switch to violin. It took my parents a while to agree, but soon I had a violin and was practicing like a maniac to catch up with what I missed starting “late†in music school. I was a bit of an outcast, my listening preferences were odd to my classmates: Greek folk, jazz, avant-garde and most contemporary classical music at the time: Lutoslawski, Penderecki etc…. I was never happy playing only one style of music.
At 16 I played in my brother’s world music group Yia Sou. The rest is part of my official biography you can read it on www.elektrakurtis.com.