Traditional Music Evening with Stefanos Pelekanis.

The Municipality of Eastern Paphos presents, in Agia Marinouda, a traditional music evening with Stefanos Pelekanis, musician and singer of the Greek traditional music of Cyprus, who will be accompanied by his band.

The event will take place on Saturday, 31 August at 20:30,

at the Agia Marinouda Community Building.

Below is the artist’s biography:

BIOGRAPHY

Stefanos Pelekanis is a young performer of the Greek traditional music of Cyprus and of the wider Greek world, a philologist, cantor and musician. He has already collaborated with distinguished artists in the field of traditional music, such as Evagoras Karagiorgis, Kyriakou Pelagia, Michalis Hadjimichail and Michalis Tterlikkas, as well as with prominent artists of his own generation such as Areti Ketime, Andri Karantoni, Dimitris Mesimeris and others, and has toured in Cyprus, Greece and abroad.

Stefanos was born on 3 February 1987 and took up music from a very early age, studying piano, solfège, music theory, harmony and Byzantine music. The first songs he loved and first performed before an audience at a very young age were the traditional songs “O Spinos”, “Tessera tziai Tessera” and “Lemonaki Myrodato”. From an early age he began chanting at the parish church of his neighbourhood and continues to this day. He took part in various music events and choirs during his childhood, and in his student years he participated in theatrical productions of the University of Cyprus Theatre Workshop, as well as in concerts of art and traditional music with the renowned composer Evagoras Karagiorgis. He studied Greek philology and completed postgraduate studies in Modern Greek Literature, writing his dissertation on the Chronicle of Cyprus by Leontios Machairas. From 2013 he worked for ten consecutive years as a teacher at a private primary school.

In 2019, following a major change in his life, he decided to devote himself fully and professionally to singing, giving his first concert at the Mansion on Axiotheas Street in September 2019, where the public duly honoured him with their presence. At the same time he began sharing his performances of traditional and Byzantine music online, and the public responded warmly, making his posts popular and well known to a wide audience even beyond Cyprus. Following this great response, he began to be invited to various television and radio programmes. Today he tours throughout Cyprus and abroad, collaborates with important and acclaimed performers, and together with his associates creates new compositions that leave their mark on the country’s music scene.

In January 2022 he released his first personal album, “Ta Poiitarika – The Voice of Cyprus”, featuring contributions from the world of traditional music, such as Kyriakou Pelagia, Michalis Hadjimichail, Hambis Achniotis and others. He has also released two digital albums with live recordings of beloved traditional songs, as well as a selection of Byzantine hymns. In 2023 he also released, in collaboration with other creators, two reinterpretations of traditional songs with an experimental approach, combining musical genres. In 2024 his second personal recording is released, a complete album with lyrics by Michalis Hadjimichail set to music by Pelekanis himself, titled “En I Agapi Giasemin”.