Xatzidakis Manos 1925 - 1994 (69)
Those two are the enemies of politics and culture: populism and elitism.
QUOTES
Manos Hatzidakis was one of the most important Greek composers. He was born on October 23, 1925 in Xanthi, and his music education started at the age of 4, with piano lessons and a little later with violin and accordion lessons. His wealthy parents divorced in 1932 and Manos and his mother and sister moved to Athens. In 1938, his father who was a lawyer died in a plane crash, which in conjunction with the outbreak of World War II caused great financial hardship to the family. Manos was forced to work from a young age as a worker in the port of Piraeus, an ice cream vendor at the Fix factory, a clerk in a photo studio, an assistant nurse at the 401st Military Hospital. In the period 1940-1943 he attended theoretical courses at the National School of Music and began his studies at the Faculty of Philosophy in Athens without ever finishing. In 1944 he premiered as a composer at the Koon's Art Theater, where he also took acting classes. For the Art Theater he will write the music in a number of contemporary works such as: "Glass World" (1946), "Damned Marriage" (1948), "A streetcar named Desire" (1948), "The Death of the Merchant" (1949) while from in 1950 he will write music for ancient tragedies and comedies: Oresteia, Medea, Bacchae, Ecclesiastes, Lysistrata, Pluto, Thesmoforiazouses etc.
In 1959 he orchestrated and recorded Theodorakis' "Epitaph" while in the following years he wrote music for many Greek films. With one of them, "Never on Sunday" wins in 1960, the Oscar. In 1962 he financed the "Manos Hadjidakis Composition Competition". In 1964 he founded and conducted the Athens Experimental Orchestra, in 1966 he went to the USA and lived in New York until 1972. In 1975 he became the director of the radio station "Third Program" in which he left an era with his inspirations. In 1979 he established the "Music Festivals" in Anogia, Crete, in 1985 he published the cultural magazine "Tetarto" and created the first independent record company in Greece, "Sirios". In 1989 he founded the Orchestra of Colors with which he gave numerous concerts with Greek and foreign soloists. All those years he recorded dozens of records. He died on June 15, 1994 from acute pulmonary edema.