George Kontrafouris
George Kontrafouris was born in Athens, Greece in 1967. He studied classical piano at the National Conservatory in Athens. At 16, he turned his interest to jazz music and followed up jazz improvised lessons with Markos Alexiou. He also studied with Jim Beard and Jarmo Savolainen. He holds a Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s in Jazz Performance from Sibelius Academy in Finland.
He has taught jazz piano and organ for several years at Ionian University, the Athenaeum Conservatory in Greece, and Sibelius Academy in Finland.
He has already given Master Classes in various schools in Greece, Ireland, Netherlands, Indonesia, and Estonia so far.
He has performed as piano or organ player with many famous and outstanding musicians such as Mark Johnson, Arild Andersen, Marcus Stockhausen, Louisiana Red, Keith Copeland, Andy Sheppard, Ralph Peterson Jr., Peter Bernstein, Bob Brozman, Carla Cook, Alvester Garnett, Stepko Gut, Olivier Gatto, David Liebman, Houston Pearson, Eric Alexander, David Sills, Lou Donaldson, Sam Newsome, Jamie Hadad, Deborah Davies, Benny Golson, Tim Hagans, Bob Shepard, Carmen Lundy, Sheila Jordan, Jukkis Uotila, Wade Mikkola, Takis Paterelis, Stratos Vougas, Dimos Dimitriadis, Lydia Fylipovic, T. Spasov, A. Pacatius.
Nikolas Tsangaris Alexandros Adam
Tip of the day
We believe that many of our new followers have the wrong impression that the right side of the stage is more privileged than the left. We set the stage in the middle of the area and how artists are placed on the stage facing each other because we wish everybody to be close to the action and enjoy the sound and vision similarly. The video that follows demonstrates it.
24th Paradise Jazz Festival | 23-24 August
📍Val’s Place, Gialia, Paphos
⏱️20:30pm
DAY 1 FRIDAY 23
SMALL TALENTED HANDS
🎶 Last music presentation of Friday's night, young talented student Andrei Voronetskii who will perform with his teacher duet the “Blue Moon” of R. Rodgers and will follow a duet with Dafni Koulas.
Happy to have with us young fresh talents.
🎟️ Tickets and Reservations INFO
~BOOK YOUR SEAT via the app Pay Pal, Quick pay, or Revolut telephone number 99386168. – only for payments.
~For instructions VISIT:
https://paradisejazzfestival.com/book-your-seat-24/#instructions
24th Paradise Jazz Festival | 23-24 August
📍Val’s Place, Gialia, Paphos
⏱️20:30pm
DAY 1 FRIDAY 23
SMALL TALENTED HANDS
🎶 Last music presentation of Friday's night, young talented student Andrei Voronetskii who will perform with his teacher duet the “Blue Moon” of R. Rodgers and will follow a duet with Dafni Koulas.
Happy to have with us young fresh talents.
🎟️ Tickets and Reservations INFO
~BOOK YOUR SEAT via the app Pay Pal, Quick pay, or Revolut telephone number 99386168. – only for payments.
~For instructions VISIT:
https://paradisejazzfestival.com/book-your-seat-24/#instructions
24th PARADISE JAZZ FESTIVAL
Official Promo Clip for RIK Television / 24th Paradise Jazz Festival
Special Thanks to
RIK https://rik.cy/ for supporting us and be our Media Sponsor
Johnny Avraamides (https://www.facebook.com/janis.avraamides) for a great editing job and to
Navid Gholimpour https://lovenlight.eu/ for the art design!
Same beautiful place 📍Val’s Place, Gialia, Paphos
📅 August | Friday 23 and Saturday 24
⏱️20:30pm
This year, we will present six shows plus two jam sessions, with the piano and keyboards being the honoured instruments at almost all shows!
🎶 BANDS | Musicians Schedule
On FRIDAY, we will be honoured to start with the organ player from Athens
1. Mr. George Kontrafouris, and his Baby Trio.
Then, we will present the Small Talented Hands-On Piano with
2. Andrei Voronetskii and Dafni Koulas.
The highlight of the evening will be the presentation of the world-famous American keyboard player
3. David Garfield.
The versatile musician will come to Cyprus especially for our festival and for a unique performance on the island!
On SATURDAY we will have a dynamic Jazz start with the powerful lineup of the
1.“Working Quartet” who will present us the music of the legendary pianist Bud Powell.
Immediately after this, we will have a small break from Jazz with the incredible classical music pianist
2. Mr. Manolis Neophytou who will perform solo on piano Astor Piazzolla, Dmitrii Shostakovich, and more.
The highlight of Saturday night will be next, with
3. “The Boston Reunion“ an unexpected meeting of old friends and musicians from Cyprus and America starring Amos Hoffman.
ℹ️ General INFO
Food and drinks will be available during the festival weekend.
For more information follow Val’s Place on Facebook or call (+357) 99494086.
🏕️ Choose Val`s camping option for the night. (showers, etc available)
~Please contact Val`s Place for camping bookings.
~Or, follow our Where to Stay during the Jazz service page on Facebook.
~Or, try our corporate local agent
Konrtafouris Baby Trio - 24th Paradise Jazz Festival
24th Paradise Jazz Festival | 23-24 August
📍Val’s Place, Gialia, Paphos
⏱️20:30pm
DAY 1 FRIDAY 23
KONTRAFOURIS BABY TRIO
🎶 We are excited to introduce the second bad from the first night Kontrafouris baby trio.
Kontrafouris Baby Trio is a manifestation of an organ trio project featuring the renowned Greek organist George Kontrafouris, playing alongside young Greek/Cypriot musicians, Alexandros Adam on the guitar and Nikolas Tsangaris (Keep an Eye prize winner) on the drums both of whom study and work as professional musicians in The Netherlands.
The encounter of Kontrafouris with musicians aged under 25, captures the essence of starting out as a musician – the naivety, excitement, and unrealistic expectations that exist before life takes a more practical turn.
George Kontrafouris: organ
Alexandros Adam: guitar
Nikolas Tsangaris: drums
🎟️ Tickets and Reservations INFO
~BOOK YOUR SEAT via the app Pay Pal, Quick pay, or Revolut telephone number 99386168. – only for payments.
~For instructions VISIT:
https://paradisejazzfestival.com/book-your-seat-24/#instructions
24th Paradise Jazz Festival | 23-24 August
📍Val’s Place, Gialia, Paphos
⏱️20:30pm
DAY 1 FRIDAY 23
DAVID GARFIELD
🎶We are thrilled to announce that the legendary David Garfield will be headlining our Festival this year! David Garfield has done numerous stints as George Benson’s musical director and had a songwriting partnership with Smokey Robinson.
Get ready for an unforgettable performance from a true jazz maestro!
David‘s music is classified as contemporary jazz.
There will be songs with funk, soul and Latin arrangements.
On stage with David Garfield who is on the keys, will be:
Alexis Kasinos on guitar, Andreas Rodosthenous on bass, and Rodos Panayiotou on drums.
🎟️ Tickets and Reservations INFO
~BOOK YOUR SEAT via the app Pay Pal, Quick pay, or Revolut telephone number 99386168. – only for payments.
~For instructions VISIT:
https://paradisejazzfestival.com/book-your-seat-24/#instructions
MEMORIES
While working on arranging this year`s festival, we had the time to go through our previous events, and we discovered documents that we felt we had to share. One of these is the concert of the Thomas Clausen Quartet, which took place during the 8th Paradise Jazz Festival at Agios Adronikos Park in Polis Cryssochous, on Sunday 9th of September 2007.
Thomas Clausen (https://www.thomasclausen.com/) is regarded by many as one of Europe's top pianists. He has performed and recorded with Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, Ben Webster, and many others.
At the 8th Paradise Jazz Festival was Idris Rahman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idris_Rahman) on clarinet, flute, and saxophone, who performed for the first time with Thomas, Fernando De Marco on bass, and Afonso Correa on drums.
The concert was recorded with a single camera by Chindos Andreas Chindos Constandinou.
The first track, Alegria, was published many years ago on our YouTube channel and is the one we present in this post.
The second track, Soft, was published last night and will follow three more tracks until the end of this week.
So, subscribe to our YouTube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNyvtkfN2v9eZ4ufVDEDN-Q) and get the news from the spring, and on time!
New Havana Noche Videos released! Here is one!
Mambo Influenciado by Havana Noche live @ 23rd Paradise Jazz Festival
Constantinos Paouros Michalis Michael @Edward Alexander Rodriguez Nicolas Tryphonos@George Koulas
Agua De Beber by Eleonora Roussou @23rd Paradise Jazz Festival
Composition by Antonio Carlos Jobim
Eleonora Roussou Andreas Rodosthenous Rodos Panayiotou Alexis Kasinos
Panther by Allusion Quartet Iive at 23rd Paradise Jazz Festival
👏👏👏 Omiros Miltiadous Antreas Yerolatsitis Marios Charalampous @Kyriakos Kesta Johnny Avraamides Andreas Rodosthenous
Ladies and gentlemen, we are happy to present Electro, a brilliant composition of Aron Nyiro, executed by MOCA at the 23rd Paradise Jazz Festival
Aron Nyiro Odysseas Toumazou Marios Menelaou Christos Yerolatsitis
Greetings!
We are very happy to announce that the first video documents from the 23rd Paradise Jazz Festival are ready and published on our YouTube channel. We started with the marvels performance of the French Connection feat. Pantelis Stoikos, and we post here the Intro / Yovano Yovanke. You can find the full playlist here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBhnzGHBjKe5nIA0sr8211YG-nXxlt8BS
We are now working on the video documents of Mario Bakuna and the Brazilian Landscapes performance. We will follow with all the bands keeping a rule of one show from Friday and one show from Saturday.
This is a perfect chance to subscribe to our YouTube channel and get notifications as song-by-song is published.
Special thanks to our sound engineer Andreas Rodosthenous Andreas Rodosthenous and to our cameraman @Jhonny Avraamides for his lovely shots with his lovely camera!
Stay well and keep in touch
Atys-Hatice Ardost Pantelis Stoikos Marios Menelaou Christos Yerolatsitis @George Koulas
23rd Paradise Jazz Festival About last night 🎶Another year full of music! Thank you so much everyone for coming and everyone that contributed to make this happen for one more year! See you next year with more and more!!! #paradisejazzfestival
About Last Night | 23rd Paradise Jazz Festival LAST DAY TODAY ! DON’T MISS IT Thank you Havana Noche, Allusion Quartet and Mario Bakuna for sharing your music ! And everyone for coming!*We keep going* today with Eleonora Roussou, Dafni Koulas, Moca and Pantelis Stoikos! #paradisejazzfestival #letsgo
23RD PARADISE JAZZ FESTIVAL
French Connection Feat Pantelis Stoikos will be playing at the Festival this Saturday!
Don’t miss it !
Gate opens 19:00
Music starts 20:30
Tickets available on our website(check the left side while booking) or at the entrance !!!
#paradisejazzfestival
23rd Paradise Jazz Festival | 25th - 26th August
CAR SHARING 🚗
If you are interested in sharing a car to arrive at the festival *send us a message* so we can help you find someone from the same city to come together !
