2024-07-12 17:05:55
The President of the Republic Katerina Sakellaropoulou awarded composer Stavros Xarchakos the award of the Senior Brigadier General of the Order of Honor in a special ceremony at the Presidential Palace.
As Katerina Sakellaropoulou mentioned in her address, “with great joy and emotion I award you today, Mr. Xarchakos, the award of the Senior Brigadier General of the Order of Honor, as the highest recognition of your rich and varied work. A work that stamped Greek music by drawing from the inexhaustible source of our tradition, from folk and rebetiko songs, church hymns, operettas and cantades, but also from Western symphonic music and opera”.
“Your songs are on the lips of every Greek”
The President of the Republic continued by saying that “your studies, near Nadia Boulanger in Paris and later at the Juilliard School in New York, your fruitful collaboration with Leonard Bernstein, endowed you with knowledge and inspiration, which you transferred to every field of of your activity. A restless and restless creator, you were open to all genres and served them in all capacities; as composer, conductor, guide of small or large musical forms, supporter of the new forces of Greek song, always present, in a dynamic and essential relationship of deep communication with the public”.
He also mentioned that “your songs are on the lips of every Greek. To mention only two projects – milestones in your long career, you raised the democratic feeling of our people with your music for “Magalo masirko”, the legendary performance of Karezis – Kazakou in a text by Iakovos Campanellis in the middle of the dictatorship, with songs that became a symbol of the fight against the junta, and you musically reworked the rebetiko song, surprisingly rendering its ethos in your music for the film “Rebetiko” by Kostas Ferris. But at the same time, as an active citizen, you served from public positions, always maintaining your independence of thought and the autonomy of your choices.
Finally, Katerina Sakellaropoulou underlined that “with this award, the State honors a personality who stamped with the presence of many decades of Greek music, leaving an indelible mark in the field of artistic creation”.