Savina Yannatou is a singer and composer from Athens, Greece, whose work spans Greek song, early music, free improvisation, and Mediterranean repertoire. She is associated with neofolklore and progressive folk, and also works with avant-garde jazz and improvisational music.

Early training and career

Yannatou studies song at the National Conservatory with G. Georilopoulou and later at the Workshop of Vocal Art in Athens with Spiros Sakkas. She then completes postgraduate study in performance and communication skills at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, supported by a scholarship from the Mousigetis Foundation.

Her professional singing career begins while she is still a student, when she performs on the Greek National Radio 3 daily programme Lillipoupoli under the direction of Manos Hadjidakis. She then performs entechno Greek songs with well-known Greek composers, and also covers contemporary opera and other music.

Repertoire and collaborations

Yannatou later turns toward medieval, Renaissance and Baroque music, then begins experimenting with extended vocal techniques in free improvisation in the early 1990s. Her repertoire with group work and solo performance draws on songs from Sardinia, Corsica, Israel, Turkey, Italy, Cyprus, Albania, Spain, Africa, South America, the Caribbean and Greece.

She forms Primavera en Salonico in 1993 with Thessaloniki-based musicians. The group combines European classical, Byzantine, traditional Greek and Near Eastern music, using both Western instruments such as guitar, violin and double bass and Eastern instruments including toumbeleki, bendir, tambourine, daoul, kanonaki, nay and tamboura. She also performs with Blue Shroud Band.

Recordings and compositions

With Primavera en Salonico, Yannatou records Primavera en Salonico – Sephardic Folk Songs from Salonica, Songs from the Mediterranean, Virgin Maries of the World and Terra Nostra. These recordings appear on Lyra/Musurgia Graeca, with Songs from the Mediterranean also released in the United States as Mediterranea and Terra Nostra also issued by ECM.

As a solo artist, she releases Spring in Salonica, Traditional Lullabies and Rosa Das Rosas. She also composes her own songs, including Rosa das Rosas and Dreams of the mermaid, and writes music for theatre, video art and dance theatre. Her theatre work includes music for Medea, performed by the National Greek Theatre in 1997.

Career range

Yannatou’s career covers performances, festivals, theatre, television and recordings. She has brought out or taken part in more than 20 LPs and CDs, and she is active as a singer since 1979 and as a composer-singer-vocalist since 1986.