NANA MOUSKOURI
August 21, 2018 - 8:30 pm

With 350 million albums sold, Nana Mouskouri is the second biggest-selling female artist of all time (behind Madonna but before Céline Dion). Her fluency in multiple languages (Greek, French, English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese) enabled her to reach audiences all over Europe, the Americas, and even Asia.

She just recorded her 134th album. 134 albums, 42 of which in French, 33 in English, and 26 in German. An outright record, 1600 tracks in 19 different languages, including Greek, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarine, Taiwanese, Korean, Japanese, Hebrew, Corsican, Latin, Gaelic, Irish, Catalan and even Maori.

BIOGRAPHY

Possessed of a distinctive, angelic soprano, the product of having been born with only one vocal cord, her repertoire has varied down the years to support the universal appeal she aims for: jazz standards, well-known pop tunes from before and after the rock era, French cabaret chansons, movie songs, classical and operatic repertory, religious music, folk songs from her native Greece and elsewhere, and more.

Ioana Mouskouri (Joanna in English; nicknamed “Nana” from a young age) was born in 1934, on the island of Crete and moved with her family to Athens when she was only three. She started taking singing lessons at age 12, and listened regularly to radio broadcasts of American jazz singers (Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and Billie Holiday in particular) and French chanson stars (Édith Piaf, etc.). In 1950, Mouskouri was accepted into the Athens Conservatory, where she studied classical music with an emphasis on singing opera. By the mid-1950s Mouskouri began singing jazz in nightclubs, concentrating especially on Ella Fitzgerald’s repertoire. In 1958, she met the emerging songwriter Manos Hadjidakis, who would become her mentor in the field of popular music, and recorded an EP featuring four of his compositions for a small record label that year. Following that, year after year, she would perform at numerous festivals, win prizes and start touring Europe which would eventually lead her to sign with the Paris-based Philips-Fontana axis.

It was during the 1960s that Nana Mouskouri really started making a name for herself worldwide thanks to some of her biggest hits such as “Weisse Roses aus Athen” (The White Rose of Athens) which saw huge success in Germany, “The Girl from Greece Sings” (produced by Quincy Jones) that got her fame in the U.S and “My Colouring Book” which broke through in the U.K market.  At this point, she had settled in Paris and began releasing albums on a very regular basis, but it wasn’t until 1967 with her album “Le Jour Où la Colombe”, which featured much of the core of her French repertoire: “Au Coeur de Septembre,” “Adieu Angélina,” and “Robe Bleue, Robe Blanche”, which allowed her to catapult to stardom in France.

With each passing decade, Mouskouri found more success around the world headlining some of the most prestigious venues Royal Albert Hall (London), L’Olympia (Paris), Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Center at Lincoln Hall (New York) and selling millions of albums worldwide. By the time 90s arrived, Nana Mouskouri was still continuing her rigorous global touring schedule, while recording regularly in French, German, Spanish, English, and Greek.

In parallel to her musical success, Nana Mouskouri also dedicated herself to public works, becoming a spokesperson for UNICEF in 1993 and gaining election to the European Parliament as a Greek representative from 1994-1999.

In 2018, Nana Mouskouri celebrates 60 years as a performer with the cover album “Forever Young”, featuring songs by Leonard Cohen, Bryan Adams, Bob Dylan, Amy Winehouse, and many more!