Our golden modern Greeks!

[leandros nikon]

www.ekathimerini.com/sports/1248032/greece-secured-13-medals-at-the-paris-paralympics-including-three-golds/

Greece secured 13 medals at the Paris Paralympics, including three golds.

Greece completed a very successful Paralympics in Paris, with 13 medals – including three golds – from the 37 representatives of the country.

The total tally of the Greek mission to this Paralympics was three gold, three silver and seven bronze medals.

The Greek national anthem played for track-and-field champion Nasos Gavelas who became the first Greek Paralympian to win back-to-back golds in 100 meters (T11) and confirmed his status as the world’s fastest vision-impaired man, also holding the world record.

Fellow track-and-field champion Thanasis Konstantinidis won gold in shot put (F32), as well as silver in club throw (F32).

Swimmer Alexandra Stamatopoulou finished first in 50 meters backstroke (S4), in what was her last appearance at a major event, as she confessed with tears in her eyes.

Besides Konstantinidis, Greece secured silver medals from Antonis Tsapatakis in swimming, at 100 m. breaststroke (SB4) and from sprinter Lida Manthopoulou at 100 m. (T38).

Greece’s bronze medals came from Lazaros Stefanidis, Konstantinos Tzounis and Manolis Stefanoudakis in track and field, Christina Gentzou and Eleni Papastamatopoulou in taekwondo, Theodora Paschalidou in judo and the perennial medal winner in boccia, Grigoris Polichronidis, for his seventh Paralympic medal in his illustrious career.
Stamatopoulou and Tsapatakis had the honor to be Greece’s flagbearers at the Closing Ceremony on Sunday.

[leandros nikon]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimis_Plessas

Mimis Plessas

Dimitrios "Mimis" Plessas (Greek: Δημήτριος «Μίμης» Πλέσσας; 12 October 1924 – 5 October 2024) was a Greek musician, composer, conductor and pianist.

Life and career

Plessas was born in Athens. He attended the Lycée Léonin school in the Athens suburb of Nea Smyrni, and subsequently obtained a degree in chemistry at the University of Athens.He was then awarded a scholarship to attend Cornell University in New York, where he obtained a PhD in chemistry on the protein myelin.

He began his musical career in 1952 and wrote music for over 100 films, television and radio programs, and theatrical events. He worked with such notable Greek singers as Nana Mouskouri, Vicky Leandros, Giannis Poulopoulos, Marinella, Rena Koumioti and lyricist Lefteris Papadopoulos.

Plessas combined the traditions of entekhno and laïkó with considerable success, notably making it his own style. His composition work O Dromos in 1969 (The Street) still remains the work with the most sales in the history of the Greek discography.

In 2001 he was honored with the Gold Cross of the Order of the Phoenix.

Mimis Plessas died on 5 October 2024, one week before his 100th birthday.

[leandros nikon]

en.protothema.gr/2024/10/12/athena-martinou-the-powerful-woman-of-greek-shipping-passed-away-at-the-age-of-97/

 

Athena Martinou

The powerful woman of Greek shipping passed away at the age of 97

Athina (Nounou) Martinou passed away on Friday night - She entered shipping in 1964 and in 1971, she founded the shipping company Thenamaris.

Athena (Nounou) Martinou, the strongest woman in Greek maritime and one of the pioneers in the international maritime industry worldwide, passed away on Friday evening at the age of 97. She was the founder of the shipping giant Thenamaris Ships Management. She was a woman of social sensibilities who kept a low profile and avoided publicity and display of wealth.

In 1971 she made the decision to go into the management of her family’s ships, née Methenitis. Together with her sons, Thanasis, Dinos and Andreas, she founded the company Thenamaris Ships Management. In 1975, the fleet consisted of 36 ships.

In 1991, Athena decided to hand over the reins to her children. Thanasis Martinos leaves the company to create Eastern Mediterranean Maritime.

Thanathan Athanasius Maritimes leaves to join Eastern Mediterranean Maritime Industries and becomes the founder of Eastern Mediterranean Maritime Industries.
In 1997, Andreas followed his own path, and proceeded to establish the shipping company Minerva Marine, leaving Dinos at the helm of the parent company Thenamaris. Minerva is now headed by Andreas’ son Andreas jounior and Thenamaris by Nikolas Martinos son of Dinos.

In an interview with the show “Aeonauts” about how she fell in love with the sea, Athina Martinou had narrated: “I am a Cephalonian, but a role in my love for the sea was that I was born in Glyfada and I saw the ships passing by and I told my friends ‘we will make barges too’ and we did it. We were obsessed with it and we did it and the whole family made barges.”

“In this effort, I wasn’t alone. Close to me from the first moment was my husband, but mostly it was my son Thanasis, who from the age of fourteen was doing statistics and writing down how much crew, what a ship needed. My husband, John Martin, loved the sea. Thanasis, from the first conversation was an active part in this effort. I was not the driving force, but I was the man who could make the hard things easy. When you want something, you can do it. I was never a director. Thenamaris was what I loved, not the directing. What I wanted was for my barges to multiply, and that’s what happened,” Athna Martinou said.

Continuing about her life she said “the “Eleni”, it was the second ship, we had no money, Thanasis was finishing high school, I found money and we went to London to sign Thanasis, who told me then, we will raise the Greek flag. The Harbour Master in London asked me “do you know a typewriter?” and I said “yes” and I sat down and wrote the documents, Thanasis took them and so we took delivery of the barge. We bought the first boat in 1964 for £80,000. It was a 20-year-old ship. Thanasis was a Livanos ship, it was a junk, we built it, we made it a Cyprus ship and in 1967, we sold it to the Father family who bought it for $300,000.”

The Athena I. Martinou Foundation profiles the personality of Nounou Martinou

The starting point for the creation of the Foundation was Athena I. Martinou’s passion for the sea and the destination was her contribution to society, the one that is active around the sea and feels its daily presence in her veins.
>Related articles


Even today at 90, it is the love of life itself that defines her. She is, as she puts it, “like the sea, of the female gender”. Her whole attitude towards life is like her attitude towards the sea. Love and passion, respect and devotion. That’s why she accepts life in all its aspects, whether calm and serene, or turbulent and stormy. Because Athena I. Martinou, like the sea, is never static. Bold and ambitious, hard-working and persistent, discreet and low-key, she is the Nun of Greek shipping.

For every act, every movement in Athena I. Martinou’s life, the sea was a source of inspiration. She was generous with it, as she is with those who love and respect it. She pursued her dream with hard work, drive and passion, and managed to win the respect and recognition of the shipping world with her merit.

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www.thenamaris.com/

Thenamaris Fleet

A large and diverse fleet of modern tankers.

46 Tankers
10 Newbuildings


Thenamaris ConBulk Fleet

Bulk carriers and containerships designed to carry all major cargoes.

25 Bulk Carriers
2 Containerships
1 Newbuildings


Thenamaris LNG Fleet

A growing fleet of modern, high quality LNG and LPG carriers.

8 LNG Carriers
7 LPG Carriers


Newbuildings

Coordinating the construction
of high-specification vessels.

10 Tanker Newbuildings
1 Bulk Carrier Newbuildings

[leandros nikon]

Sokratis Malamas

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokratis_Malamas

Sokratis Malamas (Greek: Σωκράτης Μάλαμας) (born September 29, 1957) is a Greek singer and songwriter.

Biography

Sokratis Malamas was born on September 29, 1957, in Sykia in Chalkidiki, Greece. His family moved to Stuttgart, Germany for a few years, he later moved to Thessaloniki. There, he sang bouzouki songs and he learned from his father about his music. At age thirteen, he bought his first guitar and practiced for his presentations at school works and when he was seventeen, he followed his guitar studies at the Macedonian Conservatory of Thessaloniki (Μακεδονικό Ωδείο Θεσσαλονίκης = Makedoniko Odeio Thessalonikis). He returned to Germany after he finished school and later went to the Stuttgart Odeon. In one difficult period of his life, he came back to Greece and attended studies at the National Conservatory of Athens (Εθνικό Ωδείο Αθηνών = Ethniko Odeio Athinon). He was taught by Vangelis Assimakopoulos and Notis Mavroudis. At 23, he began his professional career, worked as a guitar teacher and a singer in some public shops. Before he continued into his personal way, he was a guitarist at the orchestra of Nikos Papazoglou.

He continued to play music in public shops, he tried and put his songs on programs. Not until the time that Nikos Papazoglou made him enter the studio and began his first album Aspromavres Istories in 1989. Sokratis Malamas wrote songs for theatrical releases and made his performance in the odeon. His direction of his works was better known and loved his charts.

He performed with famous musicians including Manolis Rasoulis, composers including Nikos Xydakis, singer Melina Kana, singer-songwriter Thanasis Papakonstantinou and cooperated with other lyricists and musicians including Giannis Tsatsopoulos, Giorgos Athanassopoulos, Alkis Alkaiou, Fotini Lambridis, Thodoros Gonis, Michalis Gkanas and Odysseas Ioannou. He also participated in works of other musicians including Dionyssis Tsaknis, Maria Thoidou, B.D. Foxmoor and Sadahzinia (of Active Member), Eleftheria Arvanitaki, Thanos Mikroutsikos, Michalis Siganidis, Takis Vouis, Maria Papanikolaou Alkinoos Ioannidis, Haris Alexiou and others.

Malamas also wrote songs and featured them in movies including To Kynigi To Lagou (Το Κυνήγι του Λαγού) and interpreted a song called To Chrono na Lavoso (Το χρόνο να λαβώσω) in a short-length film Ypsoma 33 (Ύψωμα 33)

Discography

Aspromavres Istories – Ασπρόμαυρες Ιστορίες [Stories in Black and White] (1989)
Paramithia – Παραμύθια [Fables] (1991)
Tis Meras kai tis Nixtas – Της Μέρας και της Νύχτας [Of Day and Night] (1992)
Kyklos – Κύκλος [Circle] (1993)
Lavyrinthos – Λαβύρινθος [Labyrinth] (1996)
13.000 Meres – 13.000 Μέρες [13.000 Days] (1998)
O Fylakas kai o Vasilias – Ο Φύλακας και ο Βασιλιάς [The Guardian and the King] (2000)
Ena – Ένα [One] (2002)
Adeio Domatio – Άδειο [Empty Room] (2005)
Dromi – Δρόμοι [Pathways] (2007)
Ekso – Έξω [Outside] (2010)
Perasma – Πέρασμα [Passage] (2010)
Hartis – Χάρτης [Map] (2014)
Me stoma pou gela – Με στόμα που γελά (2018)

[leandros nikon]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoe_Zeniodi

Zoe Zeniodi

Zoe Zeniodi (Greek: Ζωή Ζενιώδη, born 13 February 1976) is a conductor from Greece. She is currently the Artistic Director of El Sistema Greece.She is the first woman conductor to ever perform with Opera Southwest.She has been selected by the Dallas Opera for the residency of the Institute of Women Conductors, 2016.and a Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship Mentee.

Zoe Zeniodi, hailed by the press as “Ms Dynamite”, has an international career which has led her to collaborations with Lyric Opera of Chicago,Philharmonia Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Santa Fe Opera,Opera Queensland,New Zealand Opera,Opera Southwest, Florida Grand Opera,Gürzenich-Orchester, Orchestre National Avignon-Provence, Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, among others. She has conducted in venues such as the Paris Philharmonie, Teatro Colón and Carnegie Hall and has conducted orchestras such as the Buenos Aires Philharmonic,Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, Orchestra Wellington, Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, Bremer Philharmoniker, National Symphony Orchestra of Colombia, Cyprus, Tatarstan and Vietnam, Bogota Philharmonic, Olympia Symphony Orchestra,Brno Philharmonic and has collaborated with artists like Stephen Hough,Vadim Gluzman and Lise de la Salle.

Zeniodi was recently a semi-finalist in the La Maestra Competition in Philharmonie de Paris where she was chosen by the jury as one of the six women worldwide to be a member of La Maestra Academy with engagements and professional support for 2022-2024.

Musical studies

Zeniodi holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in orchestral conducting from the University of Miami and also studied at the Royal College of Music and the Mozarteum, Salzburg. In an interview to Classical 95.5 FM Radio in March 2017, Zeniodi expressed her close affiliation with American contemporary composer Thomas Sleeper, under whom Zeniodi undertook her early conducting studies and later championed his work.

Early career

Zeniodi started her early musical career performing as a piano accompanist, mainly in Europe.After her transition to conducting, Zeniodi conducted opera and ballet productions at the Florida Grand Opera,the Greek National Opera, the Onassis Cultural Center, the Festival of the Aegean and the University of Miami. As a guest conductor, she has worked with the Brno Philharmonic, the Tatarstan National Symphony Orchestra, the New Philharmonic Orchestra of Florida,the Pan-European Philharmonia, the Palm Beach Symphony, the Greek-Turkish Youth Orchestra,the National Radio Symphony Orchestra of Greece, the Kamerata/Armonia Atenea, the Florida Youth Orchestra, the Greater Miami Youth Symphony among others. She was also the artistic Director of the Organization of the Thessaloniki Concert Hall.

Recent career

Zeniodi made her debut in New Zealand in 2021, with Opera New Zealand in the production of Mozart's "Le Nozze di Figaro", a production which was postponed for a year due to COVID-19 pandemic.[29] Zeniodi made her Australian debut in 2022, conducting the Queensland Symphony Orchestra for Poulenc's La voix humaine with Alexandra Flood, and the world premiere of The Call (based on the story "A Phone Call" by Auburn Sandstrom on The Moth)[30] with Ali McGregor.[31] Zeniodi returned to Queensland for a production of Cosi fan tutte with the Opera Queensland in 2023. She had her debut in Teatro Colon performing Giya Kancheli 's Symphony No4, among other works, on 16 June 2023.Zeniodi has been announced to have her debut in Sydney Opera House in the summer of 2024, to perform Mozart's Cosi fan tutte.
Recordings

Zeniodi has released three commercial recordings on the Albany Records to critical acclaim: Thomas Sleeper's Translucence (Brno Philharmonic) and XENIA (Frost Symphony Orchestra), as well as Frank Ticheli's An American Dream (Frost Symphony Orchestra). She also released ThivaKm102 with the ARTéfacts Ensemble (Puzzlemusik) and Thomas Sleeper's Through a Glass darkly with the 21st Ensemble (Uroboros Music).

Reviews

"Zeniodi coolly rose to the occasion, drawing stupendous playing from the students of the university's Frost Symphony Orchestra ... Zeniodi drew maximum tension from the opening sequences, bringing the quiet dreamlike section to a great climax. In Shostakovich's Ballet Suite No. 1, Zeniodi drew some of the best playing the orchestra has ever produced. Ensemble playing was knife-edge precise." – South Florida Classical Review, David Fleshler, 22 November 2009

In Film

Zeniodi's life and career was a focus of the documentary film La Maestra (2023), by American actress and director Maggie Contreras.The documentary film follows five international women who participate in 'La Maestra', which, at the time of filming, was the only top-level competition in the world for female only orchestra conductors. Zeniodi took place in the Maestra competition in Paris in March 2022.The documentary film aimed to challenge the societal views on conducting being a male-dominated profession  The film drew comparisons with the psychological drama film Tár. However, La Maesrta, offers directs insights into the "normality" of lives of women conductors. For example Zeniodi is depicted playing with her children, waving the conductor's battons like magic wands, whereas Contreras argued that the documentary aimed to break free from the stereotype of the authoritarian character that belittles musicians.Acclaimed women conductors like Marin Alsop make an appearance on the film and join the discourse on the life of a woman conductor. The film made its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in May 2023 and received positive reviews and the festival's second Audience Award.

[Pyrros]

Nice MILF.