Greek pianist and vocal coach Christos Marinos has appeared in collaborative piano recitals and concerts in New York, Minneapolis, London, Vienna, Innsbruck, Athens, Thessaloniki and other European cities. He has premiered works by Greek and foreign composers, some written for and dedicated to him, in Europe and the United States. He has played for the studios of Metropolitan Opera singers and for coachings at the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. He explores and performs lesser-known art songs, writes music articles, translates music books, participates in conferences, works at summer festivals as a recitalist, vocal coach and music director, gives lecture-recitals, and is an active music researcher, pedagogue and diction coach (one of very few for Greek Lyric Diction and IPA). He is passionate about the vast and unique world of Greek Art Song, which he continuously researches, performs, coaches and teaches in Greece and abroad. He has performed vocal works by more than 40 Greek composers, from the Ionian School until our time.
His collaboration with mezzo-soprano Ioanna Vrakatseli began in the spring of 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Ioanna was in Athens and Christos in New York. Shut inside their apartments and although an ocean separated them, they decided to record some Greek art songs. In the fall of 2021 their in-person collaboration officially began with the creation of Duo Vocialo. Its aim is to present and record rarely-performed works for voice and piano of the 20th and 21st centuries. By carefully choosing its repertoire, the Duo focuses on performing works mainly by Greek composers, men and women, and on creating original themed recitals. The Duo has already performed works by Dimitris Dragatakis, Dimitri Terzakis, Jani Christou, Maria Kalogridou, Alekos Xenos, Niki Harlafti, Yorgo Siciliano, Maria Deli, Foteini Tryferopoulou, Juliana Hall, Viktor Ullmann a.o. In 2017, together with opera dramaturg, stage director and librettist Antigoni Gaitana, they founded the Colla Voce Workshop for classical singers and collaborative pianists, the first of its kind in Greece. The workshop takes place in Athens during the academic year and at the Horto Festival during the summer. The workshop's first opera production was the Greek premiere of Riders to the Sea by Ralph Vaughan Williams. During the Horto Festival, Christos teaches the class "Colla Voce ART SONG”, appears in song recitals, works as a vocal and diction coach, plays for vocal masterclasses and is the music director of the opera productions. In 2002, he was appointed curator of the Jani Christou Archive for ten years, and in 2017 he became a basic contributor to the Thomas Tamvakos Archive of Greek Classical Composers. In 2018, soprano Mária Devitzáki and Christos recorded the four books of Dafydd Bullock’s Stormlieder —the fourth book was written for and dedicated to the artists— in Germany. He has worked as an article writer at classicalmusic.gr, the periodicals Rythmoi and Krystallini Faretra, as a classical music adviser at RadioArt, and is currently a music consultant at Radio Technis. Christos holds a Doctorate in Collaborative Piano Performance (D.M.A.) from the University of Minnesota (studio of Timothy Lovelace), where he also studied musicology as a secondary field and served as a teaching assistant, and a Master’s in Collaborative Piano Performance (M.Mus.) from New York University (studio of Grant Wenaus), where he also served as adjunct instructor and staff accompanist. During the Fall 2022 semester, Christos served on the faculty of the Department of Music Studies at the University of Ioannina. He holds diplomas in Piano Performance, Tonal Harmony, Baroque and Renaissance Counterpoint, and Fugue from Conservatories in Greece, as well as the Recital Certificate in Piano Performance (with honors) from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Very significant to his development was his association with pianist, conductor, pedagogue and author George Hadjinikos (1923-2015), with whom he studied privately for ten years. In addition, he has taken cello, voice and conducting lessons, and has participated in masterclasses by Eteri Andjaparidje, Diane Birr, Margo Garrett, Evgeny Kolmanovich, Zouzou Nikoloudi a.o. Since 2011, he actively participates at the Music Workshop for Composition and Performance, directed by Alexandros Kalogeras. |