Home » Jazz Musicians » Georgios Anamateros
Georgios Anamateros
Georgios Anamateros, alias Anamateur, is a pianist and vocalist who focuses on the repertoire of the Great American Songbook. Among the composers whose songs he performs, are Fats Waller, Cole Porter and Duke Ellington. His interpretive approach is more akin to that of Louis Armstrong.
Anamateur is also a "jazz auteur". So far, he has composed around 100 pieces (the vast majority of them with lyrics – mainly in English and Greek, but also in the other languages he speaks: French, Portuguese, Italian and some German), which make part of surreal, yet sharp, jazz musicals about the socio-politicial situation of his native Greece: "One doubt arose in the mind of a noble vigilante", "To Pirulita with love", "Ἀνθ-'Ελλάδα 2021'" etc.
His accomplices in either performing jazz standards, or presenting musicals of his own, are the "Pros". Among them, are included some of the most distinguished jazz players of the Greek, mainly, scene (but also of the Portuguese one), such as Priamos Morakis (guitar), Yannis Oikonomidis (trumpet), Yannis Kassetas (tenor saxophone), Eduardo Lála (trombone), Manos Loutas / Yorgos Kostopoulos (double bass), Serafim Bellos (drums) and Marta Hugon / Monika Kabasele (voice).
Anamateros in "real" life is a civil engineer. And also a "whistleblowing engineer", since he is revealing top secret documents about the extremely scandalous privatisation of the Athens old airport area. So far he has escaped the usual consequences.
Tags
"Anamateur is extremely passionate for the thing he does. He lives and breathes for it. He reminds us of a 1990s stand-up comedian, an illuminated preacher and at the same time one of the protagonists of Lars Von Trier's 'The Idiots'. The most interesting thing, though, is that all of these characteristics are real on him! He represents the man who keeps total faith in his ideals and acts accordingly. An engineer in real life and a pianist in this play, he directs his musicians - turning them into actors for the necessities of the play - as a contractor operating on his building site.
Burlesque aesthetics, cabaret jazz, prose, theatrical mood and intense flirt are the main elements of 'One doubt arose in the mind of a noble vigilante'. Apparently the ancient drama connects with the story of the play, since love, war (through contemporary means) and the doubt of the protagonist to take the right decision (and reveal his guilty secrets), all constitute the frame of the play. [...] Yes, this jazz musical has something romantically old fashioned, in the sense of 'discovering again from the beginning'." https://www.elculture.gr/anamateur/ (February 2012).
Music
Georgios Anamateros
Location: Athens
Instrument: Piano and vocals
Born: December 26, 1976
