Pianist Spyros Manesis was born in Athens on 1978. He studied in the Musicology Department of the University of Athens and jazz piano in Athenaeum Conservatory in Athens with teachers George Kontrafouris and Sylvios Syrros and classical piano under the directions of Marianna Aivazova. He continued his studies in Conservatorium van Amsterdam with teachers Karel Boehlee, Hans Vroomans, Kriss Goessens and Rob van Bavel (MA in jazz piano performance). Spyros Manesis has taught music theory and piano in Athenaeum Conservatory and piano and ensembles in the Summer Academy of the Music Department of Ionio University in Greece.
He has toured performing in various projects in countries such as Cyprus, Greece, Holland, France, Germany, Portugal, Latvia, Lithuania, United States and China.
Since 2010 he has his own trio with Joao Hasselberg on bass and Kaspars Kurdeko on drums and they have recorded for Portuguese label JACC Records. http://www.jazzonline.gr/en/cd-releases/item/649-“undelivered-“.html
Other active projects he participating in are Joao Firmino 5tet, ‘Deko Motion, Andreas Polyzogopoulos — Spyros Manesis duo, Christine Corvisier – Spyros Manesis duo and Trioism with which he has recorded for Greek label Ankh.
He has also recorded his own arrangements of Lena Platonos’s music for piano solo, which was the subject of his Master Research.
“…Listening to the CD and to all the arrangements was a moment of glory for me —It feels indeed as, through refined imagination and phenomenal piano theme development, he was interpreting non-existent verses. I want to wish him success in his career and state how lucky I am that he took the initiative to interpret and arrange my work.” Lena Platonos, Athens 9.12.2011
Pianist Spyros Manesis, known in Greece from his work with various jazz projects, presents now his new project for solo piano inspired by Lena Platonos’s music. In this project, Spyros fashions a special interpretation of this important composer/songwriter’s music, and creates bridges between her original recordings and his own musical world, in which the classical/romantic tradition exists together with the jazz idiom. While arranging these works for piano Spyros was asking the following questions: How close can “Sabotage” be to Thelonious Monk’s music or the “Cadence of Spring” to the stride tradition? Does the lyricism alter when in the “pop” style compared to when it is in a classical/romantic style? Does the music retain its importance without its lyrical counterpart?
Apart from these thoughts, Spyros explores the sonic range of the piano (dynamics, textures, registers) experiments with the form, reharmonizes the original pieces and uses improvisation techniques in order to build up the development, always keeping a dialectic relation to the original works and their features, such as lyricism, minimalism, dynamic extremes and melancholic images.
More : http://www.spyrosmanesis.com