Lena Platonos

Lena Platonos
Biography

Λένα Πλάτωνος (Lena Platonos) is a Greek musician, pianist and electronic music composer. She was one of the pioneers in the Greek electronic music scene of the80s and remains active until the present day.

She has contributed much to the Greek electronic music scene with records such as Μάσκες ηλίου (Maskes Iliou), Γκάλοπ (Gallοp), Λεπιδόπτερα (Lepidoptera) which were made exclusively of analog electronic musical instruments and narration of the Greek -and often of her personal- reality.

Songs about immigrants, the absolute power of computers in our daily lives and the hermetic guard of our private spaces, through the unique narration skill and poeticalness that only Lena Platonos has
achieved, give us the image of an artist who worked ahead of her time, with an exceptional talent for conceiving issues that were to conquer our TV screens and newspapers many years later.

She was born in October of 1951 in Crete, Greece and grew up in Athens. She began learning how to play the piano at the age of two and became a professional pianist before turning eighteen. Soon afterwards she received a scholarship and studied in Vienna and Berlin where she was exposed to jazz, rock and middle eastern music.

She permanently returned to Greece in the late 70’s and began working in the Third Program of ERT radio where she met Μάνος Χατζιδάκης (Manos Hadjidakis) (at the time its director) with whom she kept a close professional and personal relationship until his death.

Her debut album, Σαμποτάζ (Sabotage), was released in 1981 to critical acclaim by critics for both its lyrical richness and content but also for the use of synthesizers, at the time not a very common thing in Greek music.

Since then, Λένα Πλάτωνος has released and collaborated on more than 18 albums of mostly electronic music. Her latest record was released in 2014 and is titled Ιερός Πόνος (Sacred Pain).

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